Maine

The climate crisis is wreaking havoc on Maine’s marine ecosystems and its fishing industry. Yet in 2023, lobbyists for one of the country’s largest operators of gas-fired power plants, NextEra Resources, also represented two groups fighting to protect Maine’s waters from the crisis–the Gulf of Maine Research Institute and Protect Maine’s Fishing Heritage.

The lobbying firm for these inimical interests was Pineau Policy Associates. Maine requires lobbyists to disclose the numbers of the bills on which they are lobbying, however as of June 2024, its new lobbyist disclosure site only had information on 2024, so a deeper dive on Pineau’s clients was not possible. Under its “Legislative Interests” disclosure for its relationship with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, the firm lists the erroneous but actually perfectly appropriate “coastal impacts of client change,” instead of “climate change.” Because to its credit, Pineau no longer has NextEra Resources as a client, which shows the positive climate impact of client change.

Pineau lobbied on ten bills for the Institute in 2024, on topics such as rebuilding infrastructure damaged by extreme weather events; dealing with invasive plant species; and disclosure of flood risk by sellers of real estate.

Best feature: site gives total lobbying expenditures by subject area and bill number.

Worst feature: lobbyists are allowed to make meaningless activity disclosures like “Following bills in the Legislature that support or are in opposition to our mission.”

Additional Findings

Maine’s lobbyist disclosure website is generally well designed, and much improved after a recent update, but there are still some slight misrepresentations of what types of information are available. The most obvious misrepresentation is that a list of firms is available, but mixed with a much larger list of all clients. A downloadable list of all lobbyists previously listed only one client for each lobbyist, but this has been fixed after updates. Downloads have also greatly improved after updates, making true downloadable integrated lists an option.