Steve Meyers Cartoons

10/22/2026

August 16, 2026, Maine Sunday Telegram

10/15/2026

August 9, 2026, Maine Sunday Telegram

10/08/2026

August 2, 2026, Maine Sunday Telegram

Many Maine cities and towns struggle to retain their managers, a growing challenge that experts and local officials describe as a “revolving door.”

These administrators serve as chief operating officers, overseeing daily municipal operations, balancing budgets, hiring department heads and ensuring essential services run smoothly.

In rural communities struggling to fill government jobs, town managers often shoulder extra responsibilities. Tight budgets and persistent staffing shortages pull them into duties far beyond their traditional job descriptions just to keep their towns running...
.. Kate Dufour, director of advocacy and communications for the Maine Municipal Association, said multiple factors drive high turnover across the state, starting with an aging workforce.
“Like all other industries, public and private, the workforce is aging out,” she said. “Many managers are retiring after serving one or multiple municipalities for decades. Additionally, managers grow their careers by moving from smaller to larger communities.”

Dufour also pointed to the job’s complexity.

“From knowledge of taxes, public works, public safety and General Assistance, just to name a few, there are many pressures and expectations placed on municipal managers,” she said.

Dufour added that the manager and municipal staff members remain “readily accessible to the people.”

“With growing frustration with all levels of government, public stress, fear and frustration often target the manager,” she said.

Dufour said municipalities also must recruit realistically.

“Finally, in the process of hiring a manager, the community needs to be honest about what they expect the manager to produce and what they are willing to pay for that service,” she said. “The community and manager must be on the same page.”

Mark Brewer, a political science professor and chair at the University of Maine, echoed those concerns and cited an additional challenge: a shrinking pipeline of trained municipal leaders.

“I see two primary drivers here,” he said. “The first is that for a variety of reasons, the number of trained town managers in Maine has declined significantly in recent years.”

The second, he said, “is that local politics has become more contentious in Maine, with many towns seeing more conflict. Sometimes this causes town managers to leave. Sometimes they are forced out.”

Brewer added that turnover can destabilize local government.

“There can be significant disruption to town affairs and (a) decline in the quality of town services and administration,” he said. “Sometimes these can put the town in legal jeopardy.”

Those pressures are reflected in communities across Maine, where turnover is no longer isolated, but recurring — and in some cases, extreme.

In several towns, leadership changes have occurred in rapid succession. Old Orchard Beach saw Town Manager Tim Pellerin resign just two weeks after beginning the role in June. In Lincoln, interim Town Manager Wade Schaefer stepped down after less than two months, becoming the fourth person to leave the position since November 2025.

Some communities also face deeper instability. Limestone cycled through 11 town managers in the past seven years. The revolving door forced the town to rely on interim and temporary managers, though local leaders said they remain hopeful that recent structural changes will improve stability....
.. “Maine has over 490 municipalities, and in almost all of them, the town manager is a statutory position — unless you’ve got administrative selectmen or some other setup,” he said. “Right now, there are more people leaving the profession than coming into it.”

Michalowski said a combination of factors drives the shortage.

“Here in Maine, some town managers function as health officers, tax collectors, treasurers, animal control officers and General Assistance administrators, in addition to guiding the strategic direction of their communities,” he said. “And if you’re in a place that’s politically volatile, on top of limited resources and doing all those tasks, it can create burnout, and people move on once they’ve hit their limit or realize it is not sustainable.”
.. While the reasons for high turnover vary by community, Maine’s municipal leaders and experts agree on the root challenges: a shrinking pipeline of qualified candidates, increasingly demanding job responsibilities, political tensions and growing public expectations." - The Maine Monitor, July 15, 2026, 'Why are Maine communities struggling to keep their managers?' by Makayla Morello

Code enforcement officers are also difficult to find.

10/02/2026

10/01/2026

July 26, 2026, Maine Sunday Telegram

09/23/2026

July 19, 2026, Maine Sunday Telegram

I can't recall a popular candidate's campaign collapsing so quickly. Maybe Gary Hart's 1987 presidential run where the Miami Herald reported his extramarital affair with Donna Rice is the closest comparison. Yeah, I'm that old.

"... (Platner's campaign collapsed) just a little more than 48 hours after Politico published a story containing allegations from an ex-girlfriend that an intoxicated Platner had entered her home uninvited in 2021 and sexually assaulted her. He has denied the allegation.
.. Earlier reports of offensive social media posts, a chest tattoo with N**i connotations, sexually explicit text messages sent to women after he was married in 2023, and allegations from former girlfriends of threatening and "toxic" behavior did not deter 72% of Maine's Democrats from casting their ballots for him in June's primary.

Platner adamantly denied this latest allegation, but within hours of the interview's publication, his political support evaporated. State and national Democrats, including his closest allies on the progressive left - (Senator Elizabeth) Warren and (Senator Bernie) Sanders included - withdrew their backing. The national party announced it would no longer help finance his campaign. By midweek, it became clear it was only a matter of when, not if, Platner would step aside.

In announcing the end of his campaign, Platner said he was not stepping down because of the allegation." - BBC, July 9, 2026, 'Platner's disastrous candidacy exposes rifts that could dampen Democrats' Senate hopes' by Anthony Zurcher

When the s**t hit the fan, events were unfolding so quickly, I would think up an editorial cartoon and it would become irrelevant a few hours later. It's speed had me thinking of a fly hitting a car's windshield.

09/17/2026

July 12, 2026, Maine Sunday Telegram

09/10/2026

July 5, 2026, Maine Sunday Telegram

"Christiana Lauzon answered a call from an unlisted phone number and had a five-minute conversation that she said left her shaking. It was a cold February morning, and the state agency that investigates reports of abuse and neglect of dependent adults had just called to say it was closing its investigation into her father’s care.

Her father, Mark Lauzon, had relied on caregivers to help him at his home in Augusta, but Christiana Lauzon had discovered it in a state of squalor with rat f***s covering her father’s bed. Water from the sink flooded the counters. He had gotten an infection that spread to his bones, requiring his toe to be amputated.

In the call, the staff member with Adult Protective Services did not say what the investigation found — or whether investigators had found anything at all — and declined to answer her questions.

“He said, ‘This is a courtesy call. I’m just doing my job,’” Christiana Lauzon said. “I said, ‘You didn’t.’”

About a month later, a similar situation played out again when the state agency declined to release records to Christiana Lauzon that she hoped would give her more insight into its investigation. She is now her father’s legal guardian. Yet to this day, she still does not know what Adult Protective Services found in its investigation or understand why the agency opted to keep her in the dark.

It’s not known how often the agency shares details about its investigations into allegations of abuse, neglect or exploitation of dependent and incapacitated adults. The agency can decide to release investigation records to family members or legal guardians, but it doesn’t have to. It retains discretion, and it doesn’t have to explain its reasoning.

Under Maine law, Adult Protective Services records are subject to limited disclosure because even adults who are dependent retain privacy rights, an agency spokesperson said. The state will release investigative records to the dependent adults if they ask.

But the fact that adults who cannot care for themselves have to request details about investigations into their own abuse or neglect may mean they don’t ask for the records at all, making it difficult to gain insight into the state’s findings and investigative process.

To Christiana Lauzon, this feels like a cruel Catch-22...
.. Concerned that Adult Protective Services wasn’t acting quickly enough, Christiana Lauzon called the agency 25 times that December, according to her call logs. But she found she could not learn any details about its investigation. Some of her calls were official reports to the intake team, and she was able to share information that could be relayed to investigators. But when she tried to reach the case manager for her father’s investigation, and then later the case manager’s supervisor, she said she didn’t hear back until Dec. 30, after her father’s toe had been amputated.

While the agency’s policy is to not give updates on a case, people who submit reports of alleged abuse or neglect — such as Mark Lauzon’s daughter and doctors — always get a call back, Gina Googins, associate director of Adult Protective Services, said in an interview.

“In situations where I’ve received complaints of that and looked into it, the calls have been returned,” she said.

Adult Protective Services saw calls to its intake line nearly double in the last seven years. It received about 9,900 calls in 2019 and 18,500 last year. Googins attributed the increase to heightened awareness of reportable incidents...
.. When Christiana Lauzon received a call back from Adult Protective Services on Dec. 30, she recalled the case manager telling her she did not have concrete evidence of abuse. A month and a half later, on Feb. 10, an investigation caseworker called to say the case was closed. He didn’t tell her whether the state had substantiated abuse, neglect or exploitation.

Adult Protective Services told The Maine Monitor this is standard protocol. People who submit reports are not told the outcome, only that a case was closed. If the agency substantiates abuse or neglect, it sends a letter to both the victim and the perpetrator letting them know what it substantiated and the appeals process, Googins said.

Christiana Lauzon, who collected all her father’s mail, never saw a substantiation letter from the state, so she said she believes the state closed his case without finding any abuse, neglect or exploitation.

“I’m upset that I couldn’t get help for my dad,” she said. “I had nowhere to go for help but APS. … It doesn’t feel like it mattered at all.” - The Maine Monitor, June 5, 2026, '‘Just dead ends’: Daughter said investigation into father’s care left her in the dark' by Rose Lundy