Maine Things Considered

The LePage administration wants to jack up fees for commercial fishing licenses. Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher says the revenues would go into research, and meet the governor’s directive for a flat budget.

Depending on your age, you may remember a school course called Home Economics. Or perhaps you knew it as Family and Consumer Science or “FCS.” Or maybe you don’t know it at all; the subject that once taught young people how to live is rapidly disappearing from Maine schools.

Maine Attorney General Janet Mills and Governor Paul LePage are at odds again. This time it is over the Governor’s plan to build a new secure mental health facility, and whether LePage needs permission from the Legislature.

Portland Mayor Ethan Strimling hit back at Gov. Paul LePage Tuesday for not backing up his claim that the city is misusing state funds by providing welfare to illegal immigrants.

The oldest among us are getting older. According to the 2010 Census, nearly 2 million people were age 90 or above, and that number is expected to quadruple by 2050. It’s among the fastest growing segments of the population.

It’s scallop season in Maine. Fishermen here have hauled in over 450,000 pounds of the tender delicacy in each of the last three years, but the state produces only a tiny fraction of the entire U.S. sea scallop harvest. So to grow a market for its own brand of inshore scallops, the Maine industry is trying to sell one particular quality that sets it apart.

A powerful nor’easter blew into Maine after midnight Monday, and by this morning, layers of ice, sleet and snow created treacherous driving conditions that prompted hundreds of cancellations across the state. At the National Weather Service in Gray, meteorologist Tom Hawley said that the storm’s effect ranged from rain to freezing rain along the coast to snow in Aroostook County. Hawley says travel conditions may not improve until Wednesday. “Now it looks like we’re going to see off-and-on sleet