Policy Action 2025

As GrowSmart Maine and Build Maine launch Policy Action 2025, we look forward to MAP member participation, and appreciate this opportunity to share a bit of background and plans for the upcoming legislative session.

Policy Action is a crowd-sourcing of policy ideas and actions around a shared goal. The power of this method is to advance policies that achieve multiple interdependent outcomes by welcoming varied viewpoints. One of the current policy challenges includes: How do we address the current housing crisis without undermining work to address the climate crisis, and without creating the next crisis of access to food and farmland, open space and natural habitats? This is the challenge and value of land use practices based on smart growth.

All documents are available for viewing here: PUBLIC FOLDER Policy Action 2025.

Policy Action 2023

Through Policy Action 2023, we engaged with the Legislature in 2023 and 2024, with terrific success and an opportunity to learn how to do this work even better.

You can review the Policy Action 2023 Scorecard HERE.

Highlights include improvements to the Public Transit Advisory Council and increased transit funding, creation of the Office of Community Affairs which will coordinate municipal resources within state government, and a resolve to encourage coordination of effort between state agencies in high-use corridors near downtowns and village centers.

And review Successes to Celebrate and Lessons Learned HERE.

Beyond the bills passed, successes can be measured in stronger advocacy capacity, expanded networks, and hosting of difficult conversations that will lead to better public policy.

Policy Action 2025

Where Are We?

Policy Action 2025 will engage with the Legislature for the two sessions of the 132nd Legislature (2025 and 2026), building on the 2023 successes and lessons, and continuing to increase participation among an even broader group of participants.

In May and June, GrowSmart and Build Maine hosted two public Zoom meetings and an in-person gathering at the Build Maine conference. All three sessions included a look back at Policy Action 2023 followed by a process to gather policy suggestions targeted at our shared goal: to address barriers to and create incentives for equitable, sustainable growth and development that strengthens downtowns and villages of all sizes while pulling development pressure away from productive and open natural areas. We do so acknowledging that Maine has urban, rural, and suburban settings for which any solution may/may not be a fit and a variety of people who deserve to be welcomed to their communities.

This second time around we are increasing facilitation, improving communication, and creating opportunities to address conflict early, by budgeting funds for targeted facilitation. We are also following the NESAWG Community Agreements to help set clear expectations related to how we treat each other, and how to remain focused on the shared goals.

What’s Next?

We welcome members of MAP to work with others from across the state to help shape critical policy. Just as the best plans are shaped by many hands, so too is policy! We look forward to guiding the process as it unfolds, as people organize themselves in the coming months. We are excited to see which policy ideas have enough energy supporting them to move forward.

You can review the shared goals and actions levers, as well as review and interact with the Miro board. Links below.

This is a 2-year process that will run through the final days of the 132nd Legislature, which will adjourn in April of 2026. This effort is intended to proactively shape state policy by working across disciples through an open crowd-sourcing approach to find solutions that address systematic and specific issues. You are invited to be part of this process in whatever way works for you, with the hope that most people will engage on the front end of the process to help craft the best bills possible. These sessions are open to all who endorse the shared goal and vision statements and are willing to work collaboratively with others. Our goal is to have partners in nonprofit, municipal, regional, state agency, legislative, financial, and business perspectives.

2024 Timeline for Policy Action 2025

July to December: working groups will develop concepts for legislative proposals. In order to meet the legislative schedule, with proposals required to be submitted to the Revisor's Office by mid-December, the working groups will develop their bill intent and specific proposals and reach out to potential sponsors through the summer and fall.

We will bring people back together periodically for large group sessions in late summer and early fall to touch base throughout the process across working groups. By November, bills and resolves should be in a form for sponsors to submit to the Revisor’s Office ahead of the December deadline.

Even as we wait for bills to be printed and begin their journey through the legislative process, working groups will meet as needed; working group leaders, who we refer to as “bus drivers,” will connect with each other and GrowSmart and Build Maine in our roles as “dispatch” to coordinate these efforts. We will do our best to ensure policy proposals align with the goal statement and that the buses are running smoothly, in the right direction, and not into each other!

Links

How is This Going to Work, from Policy Action 2023, lays out the basics of the process behind this crowdsourcing of public policy. It remains as relevant today as it was two years ago.

Policy Action 2025 Goals and Levers

Miro Tutorial (3 minutes) The Basics of Using Miro YouTube

Policy Action 2025 Miro Board