Primary Legislative Candidate Questionnaire

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1. What are your three top priorities?

2. The past few years, Maine Housing Authority has utilized the HOME Fund (Housing Opportunities for Maine)

to help finance fundamental programs as loans for first-time homebuyers, housing for people who are homeless, affordable rental housing, home repair, and housing for people with special needs. The Fund also helps finance programs that makes homes safer for children and makes homes accessible for people with disabilities. Over the last two years, the legislature has considered taking money from the HOME Fund in order to balance the budget. If elected, would you support the protection of the HOME fund? If so, what other ways would you suggest balancing the budget?

3. A major concern among young people is the rising cost of health care. 17,000 more Mainers are now uninsured since HMOs first arrived in Maine.

State-funded health care programs like MaineCare is facing consistent cuts, while publicly financed heath insurance like Dirigo, has a current freeze on new applicants. Many First World countries have supported comprehensive health care systems that cover every person with health care. Within the United States, states like Massachusetts and Maine have taken steps towards universal, comprehensive health care coverage. Would you support state legislation for universal single payer health care in Maine?

4. It seems that every month there is another recall or concern about children's toys or consumer products.

The fact is that Maine families are exposed to hazardous toxic chemicals found in the consumer products that we use everyday. Toxic chemicals in the environment are among the causes of critical health problems that can be prevented. What would you do to help Maine ensure that hazardous chemicals in everyday consumer products are replaced with safer substitutes?

5. The State of Maine is currently a participant in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, an innovative project geared toward cutting global warming emissions by establishing a cap-and-trade system for power plant emissions.

Do you support Maine's participation in RGGI? Would you support the establishment of an economy-wide cap-and-trade program in Maine that would cut greenhouse gas emissions from all sectors (i.e. transportation, commercial and residential heating, etc.)?

6. The Maine Department of Transportation estimates that it faces a shortfall of more than $2 billion to simply maintain the existing transportation infrastructure. What, if any, funding solution do you support:

LD 2019, An Act to Implement the Recommendations of the Governor's Task Force on Funding Passenger Rail, which would secure funding for transit by dedicating a portion of revenues from general fund sources like meals and lodging, sales tax, and car rental fees?

Using Maine Turnpike Authority funds, which are currently dedicated to highway maintenance and expansion, for all transportation projects, including transit?

Raising car rental fees to subsidize transit?

6a. Please detail other funding options you might propose or for which you might advocate:

7. With the state facing a $200 million revenue shortfall in the current biennium (a projection that may change when April receipts are tallied),

Do you support increasing the sales tax in order to avoid balancing the budget entirely through program cuts? If you do not support a tax increase of any kind – and given that “enhanced government efficiencies” will provide only very modest savings if any at all -- which programs do you propose to cut and by how much?

8. As municipalities continue to provide what are increasingly expensive public goods (like education, police and fire protection), what is your plan for controlling growth in property taxes while maintaining these fundamental government services?

9. The Opportunity Maine program will allow students who graduate from any Maine college or University, and continues to live, work and pay taxes here, to be reimbursed for student loan payments through a state income tax credit or an employer tax credit.

Projections show that in ten years, this strategy could cost the state as much as $55 million annually, but the return on that investment is conservatively estimated at $75 million in new state and local tax revenues and decreased social expenditures. If elected, will you commit yourself to protecting this long-term economic development strategy, without any reduction in the credit’s size or availability?

10. Portland schools are seeing less funding from the state due, in part, to increasing value of residential and commercial property.

Although property valuation is a measure of taxable resources, it is not necessarily a good indicator of the ability of taxpayers to meet the funding needs of our schools. What are your thoughts on how to balance local and state contributions to school costs?

11. What do you see as the strengths and weaknesses of the state's new school district consolidation law, particularly as it affects Portland?

12. Given Mainers’ struggle to balance work with family care responsibilities would you support:

Paid sick days to full and part-time workers

Paid family and medical leave

Legislation that allows workers to request flexible work schedules without employer retaliation

13. Do you support current Maine law (22 M.R.S.A. § 1502), which allows minors to consent on their own behalf for health care including contraceptive counseling, mental health care and substance abuse treatment?

14. Currently seventeen states fund abortion care for poor women on the same or similar terms as other pregnancy-related and general health services in their state-run Medicaid program.

Maine’s Medicaid program only covers abortion care when the life of the pregnant woman is at risk or she is the victim of rape or incest. Would you support funding abortion care for women covered by Medicaid in Maine?

15. There is a significant move in Europe, Alaska, and Southeast Asia toward the independent certification of fisheries as sustainably-harvested.

In effect, consumer demand for sustainable fisheries is moving faster than regulatory bodies to save fisheries from overfishing. New England is behind the rest of the world in this regard; Maine has no independently certified fishery. Would you support a similar move toward independent certification in Maine?

16. What do you see as the biggest challenge for Maine fisheries over the next five years? Biggest opportunity?

17. Do you favor creating a path of citizenship that allows undocumented immigrants to come forward and begin the process of permanent residency and then legal citizenship?

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