TODAY'S TAKE: Maine Governor Paul LePage signed a budget on Monday (June 20) that includes tax cuts, the phasing out of a statewide health care plan and spending cuts in pensions and welfare.
TODAY'S TAKE: Maine is one of two states - along with Wisconsin - that flipped from all-Democratic to all-Republican rule on Election Day. On Wednesday (December 1), the state's new GOP-dominant Legislature begins work.
Maine Governor Paul LePage appears poised for a head-on collision with the Obama Administration over the issue of Medicaid eligibility. In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s health care ruling last month — the federal government cannot take away existing Medicaid funds to penalize states that refuse to expan
TODAY'S TAKE: The Maine House of Representatives voted largely along party lines to loosen the state's laws governing how much teens can work, which are currently the strictest in New England.
TRANSITION WATCH: Jerry Stermer returns three months after he resigned in Illinois, charges of nepotism in South Dakota and other news of the historic shift in power in the states.
In amateur hands, fireworks are as dangerous as ever. But states have a hard time passing up the revenue they bring in.
A May 2011 report, Measuring Transportation Investments: The Road to Results, found considerable differences among the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
TRANSITION WATCH: Fewer state-level Democrats are becoming Republicans than in 1994, new Speakers of the House are elected in Montana and Tennessee and other news of the historic shift in power in the states
Although Maine paid, or exceeded, its full annual pension contribution from 2005 to 2010, the system was 70 percent funded in fiscal year 2010 and faced a $4 billion funding gap.
