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Letter to the editor: Anti-trans Maine bills don’t address real threats to women in sports
To help female athletes, ‘protect us from predatory coaches, unequal funding and cultural norms belittling our participation,’ a reader says.
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Thank you for your editorial against anti-trans legislation in sport (Our View, March 30). Both L.D. 926 and L.D. 1401, sponsored by Rep. MaryAnne Kinney, further disenfranchise the trans community and have no real base in sport.
The primary sponsor of L.D. 926, Rep. Beth O’Connor, says it “protects” people like me: cisgender women. Having competed in college and internationally in skiing and rowing (sports that reward “male” characteristics), transgender athletes were never from whom I ever needed protection. If our legislators want to protect female athletes, then protect us from predatory coaches, unequal funding and cultural norms belittling our participation in sport. When the Women’s Sports Foundation
Legislative panel votes to keep Maine’s ban on plastic shopping bags
Enforcement of the law has been temporarily suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Efforts to repeal a 2019 state law banning single-use plastic shopping bags suffered a blow Wednesday when the Legislature’s Environment and Natural Resources Committee voted 8-3 to keep the ban in place.
Rep. Chris Johansen
Photo from Maine Legislature
The law originally was scheduled to take effect on Earth Day, April 22, 2020, but changes in consumer demand caused by the pandemic as well as disruptions in obtaining replacement materials would have made the ban difficult to enforce, state DEP officials said at the time.
Next step for Maine’s climate goals: Proposed laws to make them reality
Dozens of ideas being promoted by lawmakers this year represent the next phase of state government s aggressive effort to address a rapidly changing climate.
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Workers are installing 30,000 solar-electric panels at the BNRG/Dirigo solar farm off Route 26 in Oxford, part of an unprecedented wave of large-scale solar projects being developed in Maine. The 38-acre site, adjacent to Oxford Plains Speedway, had been zoned for a business park.
Photo courtesy of BNRG/Dirigo
Some new proposals for environmental legislation in Maine are aimed at specific goals, such as speeding up weatherization efforts in Maine homes, or expanding solar energy use and evolving battery technology to store the power at night. Others are broader, such as conserving more land to sequester carbon dioxide, or asking Maine residents to bond $50 million to help communities adapt to a rising sea level.