Samantha Hogan, The Maine Monitor’s first full-time reporter, focuses on a range of government accountability projects. A 2019-2020 corps member for Report for America, she is spending this year reporting exclusively on Maine's court system through ProPublica's Local Reporting Network. Samantha previously worked for The Frederick (Md.) News-Post, covering state politics, agriculture, the environment and energy, and interned twice for The Washington Post. She lives with her cat Ida – named for the mother of investigative journalism, Ida Tarbell.
Maine invested millions of federal dollars in protective medical equipment and emergency ventilators to prepare its hospitals for infectious disease, bioterrorism and mass casualty events. Yet, years of spending cuts left Maine’s three regional resource centers strapped for cash to replace aging and expiring medical supplies.
Maine is reducing its jail population as the state aims to avoid potential exposure of staff and inmates to COVID-19, the illness widely known as coronavirus, inside its locked facilities.
Major reforms to Maine’s public defense system are expected to be delayed until at least 2021, after the Maine Commission on Indigent Legal Services missed its window to submit rule changes by more than five weeks.
As a yearlong probe into the financial management of Maine’s public defense system begins to take shape, here are the five things you need to know.
Half of Maine’s public school buildings have exceeded their life expectancy or have documented structural problems that require major renovation. But retiring and rebuilding a school can take a decade or longer.
An investigation into how Maine pays private attorneys to represent the state’s poor in court unanimously passed the Government Oversight committee on Tuesday as lawmakers aim to separate “actual overbilling” from billing errors uncovered in the last three years.
Plea deals negotiated before defendants meet with the state’s free ‘Lawyer of the Day’ have Maine defense attorneys calling a constitutional foul.
Defense attorneys, criminal justice advocates and formerly incarcerated individuals share concerns about the Maine Commission on Indigent Legal Services during marathon public hearing.
Potential over-billing by lawyers and a lack of visibility into the hours worked by those attorneys have sparked multiple investigations of the Maine Commission on Indigent Legal Services
In a Senate race that will break state campaign finance records, Maine Independent Tiffany Bond plans to run without raising a dime.
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