Regulatory Reform in Maine, Part II

The Sun Journal tells us that LD1, the regulatory reform package created by this year's legislature, no longer proposes rolling back a wide laundry list of environmental protections as was proposed by Governor LePage earlier this year.

It doesn't look like the text of the legislation is available online yet, but I'm cautiously excited to read it. Regulatory reform should not take away from what makes Maine great, which is our land and water.  The first sentence of the opening paragraph of Virginia's Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act could easily apply to Maine as well, if you change "Chesapeake Bay" to the more generic "environment":

Healthy state and local economies and a healthy Chesapeake Bay are integrally related; balanced economic development and water quality protection are not mutually exclusive.

(I'll note here that Virginia includes some of the most vibrant local economies in the country, the majority of which are in the Chesapeake Bay watershed and thus fall under the requirements of the Bay Act.  I'm just sayin'.)

Speaking as someone whose Maine business is made or broken by the health of our water and woods, I applaud the legislature's decision to remove some of Governor LePage's more extreme environmental protection rollbacks from LD1.  That being said, I also look forward to LD1 streamlining some of the regulatory processes that Maine businessfolks have to deal with.