WHEREAS, older adults contribute expertise, time, wisdom, and experience to our great State and deserve to be treated with respect and dignity; and

WHEREAS, June 15th marks World Elder Abuse Awareness Day to promote a better understanding of abuse and neglect of older adults and recognize the significance of elder abuse as a public health and human rights issue; and

WHEREAS, Maine communities endured severe damage from record-breaking riverine flooding, coastal storm surge, and high winds during three extreme storm events striking in rapid succession between December 18, 2023 and January 13, 2024; 

Hello, this is Governor Janet Mills, and thank you for listening.

In addition to being Governor, you know that I’m the daughter of a long time public school teacher in Maine. And I’m someone who raised five daughters who went to public schools in Maine. And I’m the grandmother of five children in Maine. I know how hard all of our teachers work every day to set our kids on a path to a bright and successful future.

Well, last week – which also happened to be Teacher Appreciation Week – I was very proud to welcome sixteen of Maine’s teachers to the State House in Augusta and to name them “County Teachers of the Year.”

Taken altogether, these County Teachers of the Year have taught thousands of students from kindergarten to grade 12 on every topic, from social studies and science to health and phys. ed to biology and technology.

All the colleagues, parents and community members who nominated these teachers spoke highly about their decades-long dedication to their classrooms, their commitment to holding their students to the highest standards, and their compassion for the children in their care.

For example, Teacher of the Year from Franklin County, my home county, is Vickie Lailer. Vickie has taught second grade students at the Mallett School in Farmington since 2019, but she’s been teaching overall for about 15 years. When she nominated Vickie Lailer, her principal Tracy Williams said Vickie is “a great example of finding ways to connect with each student all while she ups her game instructionally.”

I’m glad I was able to congratulate Vickie in person and thank her for the contributions she’s made to our state and our students. I hope that you send your thanks to the County Teacher of the Year from your hometown too. You can find the list on the Department of Education’s website at Maine.gov/doe. That’s Maine.gov/doe.

Maine teachers deserve our respect and our recognition every day, not just during Teacher Appreciation Week. And in my administration, they have it.

Just this session of the legislature, I’m proud to say we enacted a supplemental budget this year that provides an additional $22.6 million for Maine’s public schools in order to maintain the state’s commitment to pay 55% of the cost of education. And it was my administration that was able to meet that 55% of education funding for the first time in history, something I’m pretty proud of.

And over the course of my administration, we have invested in hands on learning opportunities, expanding computer science, outdoor education, technical education opportunities. In fact, we’ve seen a lot more students enrolling in the CTEs which is great because, you know, we need a lot more students entering these important, good-paying and in-demand jobs, plumbing, electrician, etc. These are the kinds of engaging learning opportunities that teachers and students truly value.

On behalf of the many children that you serve across Maine, I want to thank teachers across our state for everything you do. And I congratulate, again, our county teachers of the Year on this well-deserved honor.

This is Governor Janet Mills, and thank you for listening.

Maine's working waterfronts are the lifeblood of our coastal communities, and, you know, they were hit incredibly hard by last winter's devastating storms. So to help our communities rebuild, I proposed and the legislature has approved $60 million in storm relief.

Well, this week I was proud to announce that applications for some of that funding are now available.

Hello, this is Governor Janet Mills, and thank you for listening.

Through these Working Waterfront Resilience Grants, which are part of the Maine Infrastructure Adaptation Fund over at the Maine DOT, my administration will dedicate funds to projects that are rebuilding wharves and piers and that provide a significant and compelling community benefit to our commercial fishing and aquaculture industries.

We will measure that community benefit by how many fishermen use that property, as well as the number of people who work there. To make sure that we can support as many commercial fishing and aquaculture operations as possible, we will start by issuing grants of up to $2 million each to infrastructure projects that support 20 or more commercial fishermen and/or aquaculturists. If funding remains available after that, we'll look at the projects that support ten or more commercial fishermen and aquaculturists.

These grants can be used to reconstruct or improve damaged wharves and piers and buildings such as bait sheds, as well as electrical and fuel systems that support the commercial fishing industry. Applicants will be expected to match the grant funds they request and to show that the repairs they make on their properties will make them more resilient to future weather events.

You can apply for these grants at maine.gov/dmr/resilience. That's maine.gov/dmr/resilience. Applications are open from now until Monday, June 10th, 2024 at 4:30 p.m. Funds should be available sometime in August.

Two additional grant opportunities are also in the offing. Next week, the Department of Economic and Community Development will make applications available for $10 million of the same funding source through the Maine Business Resilience and Recovery Fund. Those grants will help businesses and organizations, including nonprofits that were affected by the storms.

Meanwhile, the Department of Transportation will also make grant applications available for the remaining funds in the Infrastructure Adaptation Fund to improve infrastructure such as culverts and drinking water systems and stormwater systems to reduce our climate impacts, especially flooding.

I hope this new funding, as approved by the Legislature, can provide some sense of certainty as we rebuild stronger and better to preserve our working waterfronts and other critical infrastructure across the state for years to come in the face of worsening weather.

I will continue to do everything I can to help rebuild damaged wharves and piers that commercial fishermen, our coastal communities and our entire state depend on for livelihoods and for our economy.

This is Governor Janet Mills, and thank you for listening.

WHEREAS, about every two minutes, a person in the United States is diagnosed with lung cancer; and

WHEREAS, lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths for women and men; and

WHEREAS, although new case rates have dropped significantly in recent years, Maine still has the 5th highest lung cancer incidence rate in the country and an estimated 965 Mainers will be diagnosed this year alone; and

WHEREAS, Jewish Americans have resided in Maine since colonial times, and today, there are over 12,000 Jews living in our state; and

WHEREAS, Bangor was home to Maine’s first synagogue, established in 1849, as well as the largest Jewish community at the time which consisted of six families; and

WHEREAS, throughout their presence in Maine, Jews have faced antisemitism, frequently called the “world’s oldest hatred” and a scourge that still persists today; and

WHEREAS, landmark infrastructure investments from the federal government, including through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, are creating millions of construction jobs nationwide in the transportation, clean energy, and manufacturing sectors, providing an opportunity to significantly expand access to high quality jobs in the State of Maine;

Hello, this is Governor Janet Mills and thank you for listening.

You all know that last October a gunman took the lives of 18 innocent citizens and injured many more — in an act of senseless and unconscionable violence which devastated our communities and shook our sense of security — the worst mass shooting in Maine history and the tenth worst in our nation’s history.

In the months that followed that tragedy, my office talked with Republican and Democratic lawmakers and with people and organizations across Maine, listening to ideas and concerns and trying to develop a reasonable and balanced approach to the difficult issue of gun violence in the state of Maine. Each person had ideas about what we could do, and each of these ideas was different.

But what was not different — and what was largely agreed upon — was an overarching belief that violence prevention is important; that we must strengthen our mental health system; and that dangerous people should not have easy access to firearms.

Out of those discussions, I introduced legislation earlier this year to enact meaningful public safety protections, to honor the rights afforded by our state and federal constitutions to safe and legal gun ownership, and to uphold our state’s longstanding outdoor heritage.

I am proud to say that last week, one day after the six-month anniversary of the Lewiston tragedy, I signed that legislation into law after the legislature enacted it. 

This law improves Maine’s extreme risk protection order law, it expands checks against the National Instant Criminal Background Check System for advertised sales of guns, and it encourages other sellers to check the buyer’s background so that dangerous people do not have access to firearms.

I also signed into law a supplemental budget. And that budget establishes an Office of Violence Prevention. And it strengthens Maine’s mental health system.

In addition to the supplemental budget and my public safety bill, the legislature also advanced two other proposals related to gun violence, including a bill to require a 72 hour waiting period before purchasing a firearm.

Well, I spent ten days, the maximum time allowed under the Constitution, speaking to people who oppose and who support establishing a “cooling off” period in Maine. These are people of good faith with strongly and sincerely held beliefs who offered arguments on both sides. And I listened to them, I was conflicted.

But after carefully considering all the arguments, I decided to allow the 72-hour waiting period bill to become law without my signature. I did so, however, with some concerns and with the hope that it can be implemented to accomplish its intended goal of preventing suicide by firearm without overburdening our outdoor sports economy and the rights of responsible, law-abiding gun owners and dealers.

The other proposal advanced by the legislature aimed to ban the sale and possession of devices that might be used to turn a semi-automatic weapon into something that operates like a machine gun. 

Well, let’s be clear, machine guns have long been prohibited under Maine and Federal law, and I agree that devices whose sole purpose is to convert a lawful firearm into a weapon that is the functional equivalent of a machine gun ought to be restricted. But I was concerned with this particular bill because its unusual language was more expansive than Federal law and unlike any other state law, and the manner in which it was developed in the short time available during for any public comment or review created serious questions about this bill. And for those reasons, I vetoed that measure.

Look, violence is not a simple problem, nor is the remedy a single, simple measure. But I am proud that we have enacted practical, common-sense measures to keep people safe. Measures that are Maine-made and true to our culture and our longstanding traditions while meeting today’s needs.

This is Governor Janet Mills, and I thank you for listening.