November 15, 2022 AUGUSTA – Attorney General Aaron Frey today announced that Maine along with 39 other attorneys general, has reached a $391.5 million multistate settlement with Google over its location tracking practices relating to Google Account settings. This is the largest multistate Attorney General privacy settlement in the history of the U.S. Maine will receive over $4 million from the settlement.  “Google users were misled into believing they had control over their location data when they did not. Consumers have a right to know whether their data is being collected and what it is being used for,” said Attorney General Frey.  Location data is a key part of Google’s digital advertising business. Google uses the personal and behavioral data it collects […]

November 16, 2022 By Ramona du Houx Hallowell, Maine –The Maine Public Utilities Commission accepted bids and set new Standard Offer electricity supply rates for residential and business customers of Central Maine Power Company (CMP) and Versant Power-Maine Public District (MPD).  For residential and small non-residential customers of CMP, the Standard Offer price will be 17.63 cents per kWh effective January 1, 2023.  The Standard Offer electricity supply amount accounts for about 60 percent of the total customer bill, therefore the total bill increase will be about 26 percent for an average customer using 550 kWh/month, or an increase of $31.98, from about $122.59 to about $154.58.  The standard offer price set last year was 11.8 cents per kwh, so the 17.6 cents […]

Fiction Thomas Votary, Medieval Oxford Coroner: The King’s Gold Double Leopards  Oxford has no law only landowners who try and control Votary so he won’t unveil their secrets but Thomas believes in justice & love. Soto’s SongTravel with Soto on his mystical journey through an imagined reality, where he gains perspective and listens to the wisdom in the air, water, fire, and earth. Art book. Conversations with Quetzalcoatl Humorous, lighthearted vignettes about pre-Columbian culture, with flashes of fantasy and wonder of the unexplained. The Proud andthe ImmortalTakes us into the world of a homeless community living in disused Amtrak train tunnels in New York City. My Tainted BloodFollows the author as a German/Jewish boy/teenager in wartime Breslau and post WWII […]

November 3, 2022  The new $400 million investment in a Houlton-area manufacturing plant by LP Building Solutions adds to the mounting evidence that consumer-owned electric utilities are very good for business development in Maine. When asked to comment on this new investment, Wayne Jortner, lead petitioner on the Our Power citizen initiative and retired Senior Counsel to the Office of the Public Advocate, said, “It’s not at all surprising that more well-paid jobs keep coming to towns like Houlton, Kennebunk and Madison; that’s because those towns are served by non-profit, consumer-owned electric utilities. Manufacturing is very energy intensive, and electricity rates for CMP and Versant are about twice as much as they are in towns served by non-profit electric utilities. […]

October 23, 2022 Augusta, MAINE – Maine small businesses and nonprofit organizations will soon receive a one-time electric utility account credit of more than $2,000 to provide relief from increased energy costs. This relief is the product of legislation sponsored by Senate President Troy Jackson, D-Aroostook, and signed into law by Governor Mills.   The program, created by LD 2010, Resolve, to Help Certain Businesses with Electricity Costs offers tiered relief based on electricity usage, and aims to assist small businesses and nonprofits in Maine facing increased costs due to volatile global energy prices following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Funding for the credit is provided through the Governor’s Maine Jobs & Recovery Plan, through funds allocated by the Legislature for small business relief.   […]

August 18, 2022 On August 16, Avangrid, Central Maine Power’s (CMP) parent company, announced CMP’s quarterly financial report. CMP is the major electricity company in the state of Maine. According to Avangrid, CMP made $40,459,000 in profits over the past three months (April, May, June 2022), up 23 percent from the same period in 2021. In response, Our Power Executive Director Andrew Blunt issued the following statement: “Our utilities are making money hand over fist while Maine people are struggling to make ends meet. Everyday, CMP is sending $444,604 to make Avangrid shareholders and executives richer and richer. In the midst of the inflation crisis we’re in, it’s unconscionable.” “Customers of Maine’s nine customer-owned utilities are paying literally half as […]

August 12, 2022 By Ramona du Houx Our Power Executive Director Andrew Blunt and Senior Advisor Former State Rep. Seth Berry, longtime House Chair of the Maine Legislature’s Joint Standing Committee on Energy, Utilities and Technology, issued the following statement in response to the announcement that the Energy Office of Governor Janet Mills will intervene at the Public Utilities Commission to oppose the latest request for a three-year rate increase by Central Maine Power. “Our Power applauds this effort by Governor Mills,” said Blunt. “But let’s be honest: the profits made by private utilities on investments like this are protected by US Supreme Court case law. State law and regulation is powerless here. Either we invest in improving our grid […]