Adam Cote Quoted by Bill Nemitz in Introducing Maine’s latest bogeyman: Retroactivity

View the full editorial at:  https://www.pressherald.com/2021/09/16/introducing-maines-latest-bogeyman-retroactivity/?rel=related

…“Politicians have always had the ability to pass retroactive laws, which are governed by … a Maine statute that has been on the books for decades,” he wrote. “Ballot Question One does not grant them any new power.”

What’s more, Cote cited three precedents in which the Maine Supreme Judicial Court has upheld retroactive legislation, including two that involved development projects.

The second prong of Cote’s objection centers on the implication by Mainers for Fair Laws that the lease of state-owned land between CMP and Maine’s Bureau of Public Lands for the transmission line is something “that happened legally in the past.”

“This is demonstrably false,” Cote wrote, citing last month’s ruling by Superior Court Justice Michaela Murphy that invalidated the lease for a 1-mile stretch of the corridor. Murphy found that the state failed – in 2014 and again in 2018 – to first determine that the public land would be reduced or that its use would be substantially altered by the lease. Thus, she determined, the lease is kaput. …