Sen. Harold “Trey” Stewart III represents District 2, which includes communities in Aroostook and Penobscot counties, in the Maine Senate. He is the Senate Republican leader and a member of the Legislative Council.
“People in this country work so d*** hard and still feel so d*** broke,” U.S. Senate candidate and former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson said in one of his recent campaign ads. When I worked with Troy in state government, his blind party loyalty kept costs high and kept Mainers broke.
In 2023, representing Maine Senate District 2, I co-sponsored legislation to address the skyrocketing energy costs in Maine.
This legislation would have eliminated net energy billing, a law that, since it passed in 2019, has subsidized rich folks in suburban Portland by raising the cost of electricity for all Maine ratepayers.
Under this law, the Maine Legislature guaranteed those who want to generate solar power a rate of return that is almost four times as high as what Maine pays for electricity from the regulated market.
At a hearing on this policy, an independent public advocate testified that by 2025, the cost of this policy would grow to approximately $220 million a year, or approximately $275 per year for each ratepayer, and continue to increase each year.
I introduced and supported legislation to stop this policy, which favors wind and solar over more competitive power generation alternatives. Mainers should not be forced to buy more expensive renewable energy when cheaper alternatives exist.
We can support environmentally friendly options without mandating that all Mainers pay more to subsidize them.
This repeal represented a common-sense, bipartisan approach to lowering energy costs. In 2023, it passed the Democrat-controlled House. But it died in the Senate under President Troy Jackson.
This was not an isolated case. During Jackson’s Senate presidency, 20 bills aimed at reining in Net Energy Billing costs died. Meanwhile, his leadership PAC received more than $110,000 from the solar lobby.
Between 2014 and 2024, the average retail price for electricity in Maine increased at the third-highest rate in the country. Maine’s rate of increase, then, was more than twice the national average.
Under Troy Jackson’s leadership, the government in Augusta continued to purchase electricity at inflated, arbitrary prices, even when doing so hurt Mainers’ pocketbooks. Cheaper energy was available for purchase, but he decided that we could all afford to pay more.
This behavior was a dereliction of duty by someone who took an oath to serve the people of Maine.
This experience showed me that Troy Jackson is not interested in making life more affordable for Mainers when the solution threatens his ideology. We need senators willing to work across the aisle to reach solutions, not ones who turn their noses up at real solutions because they require collaboration.
Troy Jackson is selling himself to Mainers as someone concerned about working people. But when he had the chance, he was willing to let working Mainers pay a higher bill even when other Democrats wanted to work together.
He bears responsibility for making Maine less affordable for the very people he claims to represent.