Although the Maine Constitution permits any citizen to submit legislative proposals, for us ordinary folks, that requires gathering signatures equal to 10% of the electorate in the last gubernatorial election.
However, some private citizens are elevated as "commissioners " by the Maine Legislature and bypass the requirement for signatures.
Such was the case for LD 2003 HP 1489, a law that overwrites Maine's Home Rule, creating statewide municipal ordinances. It violated the Maine Constitution again when it was enacted as an emergency, which the Maine Constitution prohibits if the act infringes on Home Rule. It also violated the First Amendment of the United States Constitution by prohibiting references to 'overcrowding', 'overpopulation', and 'character of location'. However, despite the enactment of HP1489, I do not see these restrictions mandated in HP 1489 on freedom of speech included in the Maine statutes.
I composed this media history of one of the three commissioners that the Maine Legislature empowered to write the framework for LD 2003 HP1489, starting in 2018, when the Boothbay Register article Housing, water projects highlight Planning Commission annual meeting reported that Erin. Cooperrider suggested that market-rate housing could also be subsidized by the low-income tax credit, a concept that deters the advantages of developing low-income housing. She recommends phasing out the use of the terms “affordable: and “low income” and replacing those terms with “workforce housing,” which she correlates with an income bracket of 100-120% AMI.
Following various media resources, the history culminates in the announcement of townhouses for sale in the largest "affordable housing" development in the region, which has been granted the largest amount of funding for affordable housing, but it is not affordable housing as is clearly and openly stated in the media by the board of the BRDC which includes Erin Cooperrider, who was also a commissioner co-authoring HP1489, a law that contains three definitions of affordable housing consistent with traditional Hud policies. Nonetheless, the board of the Boothbay Regional Development Corporation openly states that, after receiving funding for affordable housing to purchase the land and install the water utilities, it will be charging 41% of income, a percentage that HUD qualifies as "cost-burdened housing." The prices that The BRDC seeks are consistent with market rate prices, but there is some confusion about the terms of the housing, as it has been reported all along as "affordable" housing, with which specific terms are associated.
I submit that the HP1489 needs to be drastically amended to be consistent with the Maine and US Constitutions, and also to take into consideration the causes of the wealth divide that create the need for affordable housing.
I would be interested in participating in such a project. My background is that I have independently been studying the Maine economic development policies for as long as Erin Cooperider has been in the housing industry. I self-published my research and opinions, which is the only explanation for why I was invited to be a peer reviewer for Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, where I review economic development papers from Asia.
This report is for paid subscribers. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to gain access to the report:
Mackenzie Andersen's The Individual vs The Empire! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Mackenzie Andersen's The Individual vs The Empire! to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.
