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Police block the road going to Just-In-Time Recreation in Lewiston on Oct. 27, 2023, two days after a shooting there left eight people dead. Two years later, voters approved a red flag law at the ballot box. Photo by Emily Bader.
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Uptake of Maine’s new red flag law has been slow. But advocates aren’t worried
After Maine’s red flag law was passed via ballot referendum last fall, advocates expressed hope that the law would expand pathways for family members to get dangerous weapons out of their loved ones' hands quickly.
But in the two months since the law went into effect, only four petitions for a red flag order have been filed in Maine courts. Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies have completed 86 yellow flag orders, an average of one per day since Feb. 21.
Both processes are typically used to remove guns from people who are suicidal or pose a risk of harm to others. A yellow flag order must be initiated by law enforcement and requires that the individual be taken into protective custody and given a mental health evaluation, while a red flag order can also be initiated by a concerned family member going directly to the courts, without a behavioral assessment. Red flag forms are available online or in-person at the courthouses.
Both laws require a judge’s approval before weapons can be temporarily removed.
Although law enforcement agencies appear to be favoring the yellow flag law, Nacole Palmer, the Maine Gun Safety Coalition executive director, isn’t overly concerned.
“From our perspective, it’s good that the law is already being used,” she said. |
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Earlier this month, Gov. Janet Mills signed an emergency bill that will require a hospital to notify the Maine Department of Health and Human Services at least 120 days before shuttering or reducing maternity services. The law took immediate effect.
The change follows the closure of Houlton Regional Hospital’s maternity unit last year, which was announced just a month before it shuttered. Roughly half of Maine’s 34 hospitals do not offer birthing services. My colleagues at The Monitor have reported extensively on how the worsening maternity care crisis is hitting Maine’s rural areas particularly hard.
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My colleague, Rose Lundy, did a deep dive into Northern Light Health’s finances and found that the second-largest health system that serves the northern two-thirds of the state has lost money four years in a row. One big culprit: Its flagship hospital, Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor. In 2024, EMMC’s losses made up half of the health system’s losses.
Three policy experts told Rose that, while Northern Light Health will likely have to make more difficult decisions to address financial losses, they believed there was little risk of EMMC closing because the hospital is too big to fail.
“I don’t mean ‘too big to fail’ like they can’t fail. I mean they’re too big for all of us to let them fail. We can’t let that happen,” Steven Michaud, the former president of the Maine Hospital Association, told Rose in early March. “They will have to make very painful changes like so many of our hospitals are having to, but we can’t afford to let them go away.”
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The Maine Monitor is a publication of the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, an independent and nonpartisan nonprofit news organization that produces investigative journalism. We believe news is a public good and keep our news free to access. We have no paywall and do not charge for our newsletters. If you value the reporting we do for Maine, please consider making a donation! We cannot do this reporting without your support. |
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