Erin Cooperrider and her Public-Private Conflict of Interest

The democratic process is slipping away before our eyes.

Airbnb’s business doubled in Maine from 2015 to 2016. So the Maine Legislature stepped up to increase the sales tax on short-term rentals and related services from 7% to 9%. In 2019 Maine’s Airbnb earnings jumped from 67 million to 100 million and there was a dramatic increase in the shortage of Maine residential housing units. image public domain

Politicians always have a calibrated reason why the public should do what they want. In example, the reason why the Boothbay Center has a traffic circle in the middle of a once unproblematic road is that the Peninsula leadership colluded in a narrative about an out-of-the-way four-way stop being highly dangerous, claiming that some glided past the stop signs at high speeds. Despite no history of incidents, something had to be done about the dangerous intersection. The solution was to reroute the roads around the Center so that they all converge in a circle at the soon-to-be-developed entrance to the country club, replacing stop signs with y…