PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • February 28, 2025
Introduced by Gov. Janet Mills, a bipartisan bill would create a $15 million grant program to help Maine residents prepare their homes for storms, increase state funding for disaster relief and preparedness, and create a $10 million revolving loan fund to help communities qualify for federal disaster relief. The legislation, LD 1, adopts recommendations in the first report of the Infrastructure Rebuilding and Resilience Commission that Mills created last year following a series of winter storms that killed four people and caused an estimated $90 million in damage to Maine’s public infrastructure. The proposal would be funded by existing fees collected from insurance companies, most of whom are from out of state, and not from the general fund of the state budget.