Mayor Craig Snow stepped down at the Lexington City Council meeting earlier this month, citing a large workload for his business and not enough time to serve the city constructively.
“I stepped down for mayor because I had some opportunities at work that’s gonna require a lot more of my time and that’s the reason I stepped down,” said Snow, who had been mayor since July 2021 and ran unopposed in November 2023.
A group of 14 bicyclists held a remembrance ride on Sunday in Brunswick, organized by the Gullah/Geechee Club and Brag Dream Team, to keep the memory of Ahmaud Arbery alive and to bring people together.
The Current is an inclusive nonprofit, non-partisan news organization providing in-depth watchdog journalism for Savannah and Coastal Georgia’s communities.
A new report by Disability Rights North Carolina found that a legal tool used to hold patients against their will for psychiatric treatment is frequently misused — violating patients’ rights and causing them long-term harm.
When a person is having a mental health crisis — such as if they’re thinking about suicide, acting erratically or experiencing hallucinations — they often end up in a hospital emergency department. They’re commonly brought in by a concerned family member or by police who have responded to a 911 call.
If a medical provider determines that the patient is a danger to themselves or to those around them, they will file a petition with the courts for an involuntary commitment custody order. These committed patients temporarily lose the right to make their own decisions while being treated for psychiatric problems or substance use. The process also usurps the rights of a parent or guardian to make health decisions for a child — a reality that surprises many family members and patients.
In this process, a patient doesn’t receive legal representation until they are admitted to an inpatient psychiatric facility. But that process can stretch out for days, weeks or, in some cases, months while waiting for an inpatient bed to become available, all at a cost of thousands — or tens of thousands of dollars — to individuals, private insurers or government-funded programs like Medicaid.
In the meantime, patients are held — unable to leave — in often chaotic hospital emergency departments without mental health treatment and without an attorney.
Requests for involuntary commitments have been on the rise in North Carolina for over a decade, increasing by at least 96 percent, according to data collected and reported by NC Health News, rising from about 54,000 in 2011 to more than 106,000 in 2021.
“It is this giant sledgehammer of a tool that is used for all manner of crises inappropriately, and it should be reserved for those very few, very limited number of cases where someone doesn’t have another option, really is posing risk of serious harm to self or others,” said Corye Dunn, who leads policy efforts at Disability Rights NC. The group is North Carolina’s federally mandated protection and advocacy organization charged with looking after the legal rights of people with disabilities.
The Disability Rights team conducted a yearlong investigation into the use of involuntary commitments in North Carolina. They monitored 10 emergency departments across the state and interviewed those involved in the commitment process, including hospital staff, legal experts and mental health advocates, as well as patients and their family members.
The organization found that the involuntary commitment process is frequently overused and misused to address behavioral health crises, and the state is not keeping track of how often or where that is happening.
“Shifts in policy and culture have advanced convenience over due process to the point that one psychiatrist describes IVC [involuntary commitment] as ‘the easy button,’” Disability Rights staff wrote in a comprehensive report released Tuesday. “This description bears out as evidenced by the ease with which IVCs are initiated as well as the sheer volume of petitions represented in the data.”
Disability Rights chronicled what the report called an “expensive, wasteful and abusive” process that leaves countless children and adults stuck in emergency departments — legally unable to leave — with no access to their phones, jobs, education, family or friends as they wait for a psychiatric bed to open, all while receiving little mental health treatment beyond medication.
The report makes more than 30 recommendations to improve North Carolina’s involuntary commitment process, including policy changes, procedural changes, data collection and calls for specialized professional education.
North Carolina involuntary commitment laws allow adults and children to remain locked in an emergency department anywhere from days to months without any due process. Many are physically tied down, locked in rooms or chemically restrained, meaning they’re placed on drugs to subdue them.
The Disability Rights team went into emergency departments across the state and saw this problem up close.
“At one small, rural hospital, two men under IVC custody orders languished in the open on medical gurneys beside a nurse’s station because there wasn’t a private room available to them. The men used their sheets to cover their heads, perhaps to shield them from the bright lights and busy activity around them, and perhaps to provide some measure of dignity,” the report reads.
At another emergency department, Disability Rights staff saw a mental health patient in a four-point restraint, meaning his hands and feet were strapped down to his bed.
“This is almost like science fiction to me,” one hospital staff member told Disability Rights. “I am watching what is happening to human beings and wondering, are we actually helping people?”
The dense, 45-page report gives the example of one young man who was committed where the “facts” section of his petition was left blank, meaning it gave no reason for why he should be detained and treated involuntarily. The magistrate signed it anyway. He was held in the emergency room, handcuffed and transported by law enforcement — which is common practice.
Once he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, his appointed attorney noticed the petition was blank and submitted a motion to a judge and had the commitment dismissed. Disability Rights asserts that he was illegally detained for five days.
“Even really savvy health care consumers, parents and advocates find it difficult to push back against the tide once this process starts,” Dunn said. “They’re just stuck.”
Parents often find themselves blindsided by the involuntary commitment process, where they lose decision-making power over what happens to their children. Many are left in the dark about where their child is going or what treatment they’re being provided.
The Disability Rights report, which frequently cites reporting by NC Health News, includes an interview with Dan and Megan, parents of a child who was committed and taken to a facility against her parents’ wishes where she was mistreated and allegedly sexually assaulted by another patient. NC Health News reported the family’s experience and dug into additional complaints against the psychiatric hospital.
“That’s one of the hardest things — the helplessness. It was very hard to learn we were not in control of what was going to happen to her,” Dan told Disability Rights.
North Carolina law encourages voluntary treatment over involuntary, but that is not what happens in reality, the report found.
The report recommends amending state law to require that involuntary commitment petitions of adults under guardianship and children include information about the legal guardian’s and/or parents’ involvement in the patient’s care and why voluntary treatment could not meet the respondent’s needs.
“If the checkbox is on the form, then more magistrates ask questions about it,” Dunn said. “I think of them as speed bumps. They’re not barriers, but they slow you down enough to ask the questions, like ‘Does he want to go voluntarily?’”
Once a patient is under an involuntary commitment custody order, they must wait until hospital staff can find an inpatient bed in one of North Carolina’s psychiatric facilities. A patient can be held under a custody order for seven days, and if a bed is not found by then, the petition can be renewed.
According to state law, this can go on indefinitely.
Disability Rights found that these successive commitment petitions create a loophole where the patient continues to be held against their will without legal representation, because that only are assigned attorneys once they have been admitted to an inpatient bed — not while they wait in an emergency department. People detained in jails are arraigned within 72 hours of arrival — more due process rights than people who have been involuntarily committed.
The report recommends amending state law to eliminate successive petitions and to appoint legal representation to the patient at the time a magistrate issues the custody order so respondents can have timely representation.
The report also reveals that data on successive seven-day petitions is not kept, so there is no way to know how often or where this is happening.
The report found that roughly 37 percent of the total number of involuntary commitment petitions from the past six years were people who went on to receive forced psychiatric hospitalizations. That means 63 percent of petitions didn’t meet criteria for commitment or could be successive petitions on some of the same individuals.
There is no way of knowing what’s truly happening with the majority of petitions for involuntary commitment in this state because the data is not collected.
“So it is impossible to analyze where adjustments to law or policy should be made to prevent its wrongful, wasteful, or inefficient use,” the report reads.
The report recommends additional reporting and interpretation of data, including the outcomes of each petition for involuntary commitment and the number of people discharged from the emergency department after a custody order because they didn’t meet the criteria — danger to self or others — for an involuntary commitment.
It suggests making all data readily available to the public on an electronic dashboard, similar to one in Florida. Even the current limited amount of data is not easy to find.
Nearly all of the emergency department leaders included in the report described instances where businesses and organizations would use the involuntary commitment process inappropriately to drop off patients — particularly children in the foster care system or older adults with dementia living in nursing homes.
Hospital administrators complained to Disability Rights NC that county Department of Social Services agencies from all over the state had dropped off kids that have been removed from their homes when they are unable to find foster family or other placement for them.
“I can appreciate it is hard for the DSS agencies, but it is not a receptacle for kids,” an attorney who represents children under involuntary commitment told Disability Rights staff. “I would be interested to see what can be done about DSS using hospitals as dumping grounds.”
The report mentions a hospital administrator in eastern N.C. who threatened to sue different social service agencies three times for room and board, which resulted in the agencies picking up their kids within days. Children in the foster care system are often the ones who end up living in emergency departments the longest, the report found.
“From the hospital perspective, it feels like these people who have a responsibility to these folks with disabilities have dumped them here and not given us any tools to deal with it,” Dunn said.
Rusty Miles, emergency department director at Carteret Health Care in Morehead City, told Disability Rights that housing foster children in the emergency department is a challenge.
“These kids don’t get the services they need — they miss school, socialization and outside play,” Miles said. “We do the best we can, but it’s a real disservice to keep these kids here.”
The report recommends an expansion of community-based care options to prevent overuse for patients who really shouldn’t be committed and who do not meet the criteria for an involuntary commitment. It also recommends looking into shifting costs for “frivolous” or repeated commitments to those agencies inappropriately seeking a commitment to leave patients at the emergency department.
When asked about some of these issues last week, Sen. Jim Burgin (R- Harnett) told NC Health News that if patients are inappropriately left at the emergency room by a county DSS or a nursing facility, that the hospitals “ought to be able to charge back to their facility for that.” He’s introduced legislation in the past that’s addressed a similar accountability issue.
Burgin had not seen a preview of the report, but he’s been a leader in the state Senate on mental health issues. He has requested — and accompanied Disability Rights staff — to visit psychiatric facilities in the past. He said he’s been keeping tabs on a few patients to see how they fare over time.
There is a 7-year-old child in his district who stayed in a local emergency department for 119 days, he recounted. And it wasn’t this child’s first involuntary commitment. Burgin said the 7-year-old has autism, and his behaviors sometimes become more than his single mother can handle. She takes him to the emergency room looking for help.
“I think involuntary commitment into an emergency room is a failure for us,” Burgin said. “Unless they are injured, that is not the place we need involuntary commitments to go. They’re not set up to handle them properly. They don’t have anything to take them to the next level of care. So basically, they get them in and check them, and then sedate them, do a telepsychiatry, or have somebody look at them, and then it’s a holding pen.
“We’re basically warehousing them until we find another place to put them,” he said.
Burgin called the entire process inappropriate and unnecessarily expensive. He emphasized the need to get ahead of the problem and provide adequate services up front so people don’t end up in emergency rooms and psychiatric hospitals with mental health issues.
“I want to fix this end of it, too, but we’ve got to get to the front of it. It’s the old adage about saving the kids coming down the river, but let’s also go up and stop the kids from ever getting in the river,” Burgin said. “We’ve got to deal with the other end of how these kids ever got in the situation that they end up being involuntarily committed.”
State lawmakers have put significant funding toward alternatives to the emergency department for patients in mental distress. In the 2023 budget, they allocated $835 million for behavioral health needs, with $80 million to increase crisis services and $20 million to start a non-law-enforcement transportation pilot program for mental health patients under involuntary commitment.
The involuntary commitment process comes with a lot of trauma for patients being held against their will, even when they agree to treatment.
They are often strip-searched for items they could use to hurt themselves. They languish in emergency departments with no access to fresh air, sunlight, family or even their phones. Some experience being restrained, locked up or drugged into submission. Once a bed is available, they are then handcuffed and placed into the back of a law enforcement vehicle to be transported to the next facility.
Many find they are more harmed than helped through this experience. And then, when they’re discharged, they have to deal with the consequences of having been locked away. Forced hospitalizations have caused some to lose their jobs or housing, and they end up with medical debt from care they didn’t want, Disability Rights found.
“Your mortgage might not get paid. Your job doesn’t get done. Your kids need care,” Dunn said. “We have to stop pretending that people experiencing emotional distress are a different group of people. They are not sitting to the side with no responsibilities and no relationships.”
Research shows that people who have been involuntarily committed tend to subsequently distrust the medical system, and they can be reluctant to seek care in the future — sometimes with tragic consequences.
Inpatient psychiatric hospitalization is expensive; costs can be more than $2,000 per day, depending on the facility. Disability Rights reports that even in the smoothest possible scenario — where a person goes to the emergency department and is quickly transferred to a psychiatric hospital and is released after a few days — the cost will be at least $10,000. A 30-day commitment order could easily equate to a $60,000 bill, according to the report.
“Unfortunately, the law says the patient is responsible for the cost even if they didn’t want the treatment,” the report states.
Involuntary commitments stay on an individual’s record and can prevent them from pursuing certain types of careers, as was the case for a 34-year-old man in western North Carolina, an example included in the report. He served in the National Guard and had been working as an EMT and volunteer firefighter for a decade when he was recruited for a law enforcement position. But he failed the firearms background check and was told he couldn’t move forward in his training at the law enforcement academy. The reason: He was involuntarily committed during a rough period of his life while a teenager.
The report recommends additional training for magistrates, who sign off on the initial custody order, on the impact of involuntary commitments and the alternative mental health crisis options available in the community. Magistrates in North Carolina do not have to be lawyers, and their training only includes four hours on the involuntary commitment process. Their annual continued education also doesn’t include information on involuntary commitments.
“If you want to prevent basically a carceral mental health system, you’ve got to provide something that’s less restrictive in the array of services,” Dunn said. “That’s peer respites. Respite for caregivers. Peer living rooms and resource hubs, and all the ways that we know we can provide support to people without locking them up.
“If we’re not doing that, we aren’t really serious as a state about our commitment to the well being of our residents.”
The report highlights two hospitals that have recognized the harm and unnecessary burden of excessive involuntary commitments and launched initiatives to reduce their use.
WakeMed Health in Raleigh reduced its involuntary commitments by 60 percent, with most patients receiving care on a voluntary basis, hospital leaders reported to Disability Rights. To further reduce unnecessary distress and law enforcement involvement, WakeMed covers the cost of transportation for both voluntary and involuntary commitments.
In Avery and Watauga counties, similar progress is unfolding. Involuntary commitment rates there have also dropped by 60 percent. Before this initiative, “IVCs were passed out liberally, and there was a lack of understanding of the long-term impact,” said Stephanie Greer, president of the Avery Healthcare Market over Cannon Memorial Hospital and Appalachian Behavioral Health Hospital. “Magistrates were begging for guidance.”
In 2010, leaders from across the two counties formed a small, focused team to address the issue. They held each other accountable, even when discussions got uncomfortable, Greer said. One breakthrough came when a district court judge suggested requiring mental health assessments before magistrates issued custody orders. That led to the creation of crisis units at local hospitals and mobile crisis teams to evaluate patients before commitment petitions moved forward.
The impact has been substantial. Magistrates now issue custody orders only 40 percent of the time. Law enforcement involvement has also plummeted — from an average of 2,800 hours per month in 2010 to just 120 by 2015, according to Greer.
“Their work shows that when communities come together to solve an issue, they can design systems that work for them,” the report reads.
The post Scathing new report details North Carolina’s involuntary commitment problem appeared first on North Carolina Health News.
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Bring up Memorial Day to a friend, and the conversation will likely lead to a chat about family getaway plans, barbecues or swimming pools. In fact, many will observe the federal holiday not only as the unofficial first day of summer, but instead, as what Commander in Chief John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic intended it for in 1868.
Logan wrote that Memorial Day was designated as the day “… for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion…”
He never once mentioned summer fun.
Still, there are honor-bound citizens and United States veterans who will pay tribute to those who died serving in the U.S. Armed Forces by attending a parade or ceremony. Veterans are also likely to attend, as well as the VFW members and Honor Guards participating.
VFW honor guards will continue to serve their fallen brothers and sisters after the last Monday of May passes; Memorial Day comes 365 days of the year for these volunteer veterans.
Post 9242 Commander Bernie Ramirez told BenitoLink that Hollister’s VFW Post Honor Guard participates in more than 10 funerals a month. They are actually one of the five VFW Honor Guards within 50 miles of Hollister (San Juan Bautista’s Leslie L. Garratt Memorial VFW Post 6359 also has an honor guard). “We have a total of fifteen honor guard members,” Ramirez said of Post 9242, “and it takes four to seven members to do military honors.”
The guard primarily serves San Benito County veterans, but also assists in ceremonies in Santa Cruz, Monterey, and Santa Clara counties. VFW Post 9242 member and Honor Guard member Adam Mendolla said they have assisted as far to Fresno and Santa Ana.
“We do that for the families that request it,” he said, noting that requests come from those who have ties to San Benito County or a Post 9242 member.
Mendolla said the honor guard serves not only for the funerals of soldiers who died while serving, but also for those of U.S. veterans who died as civilians—or even those who served in the military during peacetime and/or on American soil.
“Everyone that has served this country—here at home, abroad, or in combat, and no matter what branch of service they were in—deserves full military honors,” Mendolla said, explaining that the service includes full military honors such as the firing of the three volleys, the playing of the melancholy bugle call “Taps,” and the folding and presentation of the U.S. flag to the next of kin.
“They all left their homes, families and friends to serve this country and were ready to do their part if called upon,” he said.
And these services are available and can be given to any U.S. veteran who has passed away—for free—according to Ramirez.
“When a veteran passes, the family can tell the funeral home that they are a veteran,” he said. “The burials and the honor guard are at no charge. We do it as an honor. And the ceremonies are not always at burials. We’ve done them at churches and private residences.”
Regardless of the veteran, the VFW Post 9242 Honor Guard treats every funeral with the same level of dignity and respect.
“Sometimes we go to funerals where there’s only five family members, and sometimes there’s a lot of family,” Ramirez said. “We’ve also done it for homeless veterans—and it’s all the same honor for us.”
For more information on the Hollister VFW Post 9242 Honor Guard, visit its social media pages on Facebook and Instagram. To request services, contact your local funeral home, email vfwpost9242@gmail.com or call Bernie Ramirez at (831) 902-7811.
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The post They once served their country; now they serve fellow veterans appeared first on BenitoLink.
The power to grant a disaster declaration and access to the FEMA assistance programs for states hit by storms lies solely in the hands of President Trump, who wants to scale back FEMA and pass recovery costs to states. State officials say they’re not ready to take on that burden.
The post Uncertainty About Federal Disaster Aid Looms As Storms Roll In appeared first on Mississippi Free Press.
Visit just about any downtown on a weekend and you will likely happen upon a farmers market. Or, you might grab lunch from a food truck outside a local brewpub or winery.
Very likely, there is a community-shared kitchen or food entrepreneur incubator initiative behind the scenes to support this growing foodie ecosystem.
As rural America gains younger residents, and grows more diverse and increasingly digitally connected, these dynamics are driving a renaissance in craft foods.
One food entrepreneur incubator, Hope & Main Kitchen, operates out of a school that sat vacant for over 10 years in the small Rhode Island town of Warren. Its business incubation program, with over 300 graduates to date, gives food and beverage entrepreneurs a way to test, scale and develop their products before investing in their own facilities. Its markets also give entrepreneurs a place to test their products on the public and buyers for stores, while providing the community with local goods.
Food has been central to culture, community and social connections for millennia. But food channels, social media food influencers and craft brews have paved the way for a renaissance of regional beverage and food industry startups across America.
In my work in agriculture economics, I see connections between this boom in food and agriculture innovation and the inflow of young residents who are helping revitalize rural America and reinvigorate its Main Streets.
An analysis of 2023 U.S. Census Bureau data found that more people have been moving to small towns and rural counties in recent years, and that the bulk of that population growth is driven by 25- to 44-year-olds.
This represents a stark contrast to the 2000s, when 90% of the growth for younger demographics was concentrated in the largest metro areas.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the shift to remote work options it created, along with rising housing prices, were catalysts for the change, but other interesting dynamics may also be at play.
One is social connectedness. Sociologists have long believed that the community fabric of rural America contributes to economic efficiency, productive business activity, growth of communities and population health.
Maps show that rural areas of the U.S. with higher social capital – those with strong networks and relationships among residents – are some of the strongest draws for younger households today.
Another important dynamic for both rural communities and their new young residents is entrepreneurship, including food entrepreneurship.
Rural food startups may be leveraging the social capital aligned with the legacy of agriculture in rural America, resulting in a renewed interest in craft and local foods. This includes a renaissance in foods made with local ingredients or linked to regional cultures and tastes.
According to data from the National Agricultural Statistics Service, U.S. local sales of edible farm products increased 33% from 2017 to 2022, reaching $14.2 billion.
A 2020 study I was involved in, led by agriculture economist Sarah Low, found a positive relationship between the availability of farm-based local and organic foods and complementary food startups. The study termed this new dynamic “AgriCulture.”
We found a tendency for these dynamics to occur in areas with higher natural amenities, such as hiking trails and streams, along with transportation and broadband infrastructure attractive to digital natives.
The same dynamic drawing young people to the outdoors offers digital natives a way to experience far-reaching regions of the country and, in some cases, move there.
A thriving food and beverage scene can be a pull for those who want to live in a vibrant community, or the new settlers and their diverse tastes may be what get food entrepreneurs started. Many urban necessities, such as shopping, can be done online, but eating and food shopping are local daily necessities.
When my colleagues and I talk to community leaders interested in attracting new industries and young families, or who seek to build community through revitalized downtowns and public spaces, the topic of food commonly arises.
We encourage them to think about ways they can help draw food entrepreneurs: Can they increase local growers’ and producers’ access to food markets? Would creating shared kitchens help support food trucks and small businesses? Does their area have a local advantage, such as a seashore, hiking trails or cultural heritage, that they can market in connection with local food?
Several federal, state and local economic development programs are framing strategies to bolster any momentum occurring at the crossroads of rural, social connections, resiliency, food and entrepreneurship.
For example, a recent study from a collaboration of shared kitchen experts found that there were over 600 shared-use food facilities across the U.S. in 2020, and over 20% were in rural areas. In a survey of owners, the report found that 50% of respondents identified assisting early-growth businesses as their primary goal.
The USDA Regional Food Business Centers, one of which I am fortunate to co-lead, have been bolstering the networking and technical assistance to support these types of rural food economy efforts.
Many rural counties are still facing shrinking workforces, commonly because of lagging legacy industries with declining employment, such as mining. However, recent data and studies suggest that in rural areas with strong social capital, community support and outdoor opportunities, younger populations are growing, and their food interests are helping boost rural economies.
Dawn Thilmany receives funding from the United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Development Administration, and Colorado state agencies focused on agriculture, economic development and food systems.
Powering Rural Futures: Clean energy is creating new jobs in rural America, generating opportunities for people who install solar panels, build wind turbines, weatherize homes and more. This five-part series from the Rural News Network explores how industry, state governments and education systems are training this growing workforce.
This reporting is part of a collaboration between the Institute for Nonprofit News’ Rural News Network and Canary Media, South Dakota News Watch, Cardinal News, The Mendocino Voice and The Maine Monitor. Support from Ascendium Education Group made the project possible.
The sputtered drone of a vacuum pump filled the former milking barn that now houses Kennebec Valley Community College’s heat pump lab. Instructor Dave Whittemore, who held the yellow vacuum in one hand and displayed an app tracking atmospheric pressure on his phone in the other, explained in a raised voice how to do an “evacuation,” ridding the heat pump of air and moisture to avoid malfunctions down the road.
“The longevity of the equipment is important,” said Whittemore, who teaches students how to install the increasingly popular electric heating and cooling units. “If it’s not done right, then it’s going to fail prematurely. And that’s the biggest reason that I personally try to keep up with industry best standards and I pass that on to my students.”
Six years ago, Gov. Janet Mills traveled to the college to sign a bill aimed at transforming Maine’s market for heat pumps, an environmentally friendly alternative to oil furnaces and gas boilers, and set a goal of installing 100,000 units by 2025.
The state, now a national leader for heat pump adoption, met that goal two years ahead of schedule, and Mills once again traveled to the rural Somerset County campus to announce a new target: another 175,000 heat pumps by 2027.
Maine needs skilled workers to reach this goal, demanding training initiatives from all corners of the state to build HVAC, refrigerant and electrical knowledge in the clean energy workforce. Without a strong pipeline, the state risks delays in reaching its heat pump target, putting its climate goals at risk.
So far, rural counties have seen some of the fastest rates of clean energy worker growth, according to state data. In Somerset County, where KVCC is located, the number of clean energy workers has grown by 44% since 2020.
As part of this push, the community college launched a high-tech heat pump training lab in 2021 and has trained over 300 students. The initiative is one of many clean energy programs the school offers as part of a broader, state-supported effort to meet Maine’s goal of reaching 30,000 clean energy jobs by 2030.
Efficiency Maine, a quasi-governmental agency that oversees the state’s energy efficiency programs, has invested more than $400,000 in installation and weatherization training programs at KVCC and supports 29 similar programs at other institutions each year.
Another key piece of state support comes through the Governor’s Energy Office’s Clean Energy Partnership, which has awarded nearly $5 million in grants for clean energy training and apprenticeship programs across the state since 2022 and has seen over 3,500 participants. Businesses have also developed their own on-the-job training programs to help meet demand.
But the state still faces a daunting challenge: It must employ more than 14,000 new workers to reach its goal of 30,000 clean energy jobs by the end of the decade. Between 2019 and 2023, the number of workers in the field grew by less than a thousand.
While the state says it remains dedicated to this goal, some in the industry worry federal funding cuts and tariffs could create challenges for the workforce development pipeline.
Efforts underway in many corners of Maine
Heat pumps have emerged as a pillar of Maine’s clean energy strategy: The units can reduce carbon dioxide emissions between 38% and 53% compared to a gas furnace, according to a 2022 study in the academic journal Energy Policy, and have been touted as a way to reduce energy costs.
Rural areas have historically spent more on energy bills and participated less in residential energy and efficiency financing and rebate programs to lower costs, according to a state report from 2023. To help rural Mainers overcome geographic barriers in accessing cost-lowering energy initiatives, the state must bolster its rural workforce, according to a 2018 study the Island Institute produced in partnership with the Governor’s Energy Office.
The demand for cleaner energy has grown not only in response to the state’s climate goals, but also as Maine’s electricity costs rise. A Maine Monitor analysis showed that electricity costs increased at the third-highest rate in the U.S. between 2014 and 2024.
A Maine Monitor analysis of 2023 U.S. Department of Energy and Bureau of Labor Statistics data prepared for E2 shows that two-thirds of the state’s clean energy jobs were in the energy efficiency sector, while about a fifth of jobs were in renewables.
Workforce development has become a priority for the state as the clean energy industry grows, said Tagwongo Obomsawin, the program manager for the state’s Clean Energy Partnership, noting that it can provide good paying jobs for Mainers and reduce energy costs.
“Employers are definitely a really important part of the picture, but we don’t want to leave out anyone,” Obomsawin said. “We recognize that training providers, academia, state government, organized labor and industry all have a role to play in making sure that we have a robust system that supports people in finding job opportunities, getting access to training and localizing the benefits of the energy transition.”
Heat pump training is just one of several clean energy programs offered through the Maine Community College System, which includes KVCC. The system works with industry and state leaders to grow the workforce. The network of schools also trains students in electric vehicle maintenance, fiber optics, aquaculture and more.
Dan Belyea, the system’s chief workforce development officer, said short-term training and scholarship funding are centered on needs that arise in the industry, which the schools gauge by looking at labor market data and talking to employers. Programs that are highest in demand tend to include electrical and heat pump training, Belyea said.
In 2022, KVCC hoped to use a nearly $250,000 grant from the Clean Energy Partnership to offer programs on electric vehicles and NABCEP solar photovoltaic installation. But trouble finding instructors and low interest among students made it difficult to launch.
Instead, KVCC doubled down on energy efficiency. It launched a building science program with the funding last fall, which had five students, two of whom were able to complete the certification.
Other clean energy workforce initiatives have popped up across the state. Some employers run their own heat pump or solar installation training labs, and several adult education programs and nonprofits also offer classes designed to help people move into the industry.
PassivHaus, a Freeport-based organization, received $180,000 in Clean Energy Partnership money in 2022 to host training programs on the state’s energy code. The company ran 29 trainings across the state, from Portland to Presque Isle.
Naomi Beal, executive director of PassivHaus, noted that getting enough students to attend the training was easier in areas like Portland, but trickier in more rural areas.
“I always feel like it’s very important to consider when going into Greenfield or Machiasport or wherever that there are just not that many people.… So if we get five people showing up, that’s probably statistically way more interest than (a larger number of attendees) down in Portland,” Beal said. “We just try to be patient and persistent with the smaller towns and the smaller attendance.”
A need for more collaboration
In Freeport, Scott Libby, the owner of Royal River Heat Pumps, walked through his training center as he explained that all his workers go through heat pump training that starts with the basics, regardless of experience, to ensure each worker is equipped to handle the job.
“A lot of these heat pumps have 12-year warranties,” Libby said. “That’s 4,380 days. The most important day is Day 1. It needs to be installed properly.”
Libby, who has worked with the U.S. Department of Energy on workforce development and sits on a new energy efficiency workforce subcommittee being developed by the Governor’s Energy Office, said he’s aware of a number of different workforce development initiatives but that it’s difficult to comprehend how they all work together.
He said some forms of programming aren’t sufficient for what’s actually needed in the field: Students who sit through a six-week or six-month program that teaches the basics of how heat pumps work may come out with little to no hands-on experience with a power tool or climbing a ladder.
Libby emphasized the need for more collaboration between different workforce development efforts and a more systematic approach, with quality checks in place. He suggested putting more thought into designing industrial arts and home economics programs in middle and high schools to introduce students to different career pathways early on.
He also said more stringent licensing requirements could help with the quality of workers moving into the field. As it stands, there is no specific licensing required to install heat pumps in Maine, though workers need an Environmental Protection Agency Section 608 license to deal with the refrigerant used inside the unit and an electrical license to complete the wiring.
He acknowledged that new regulation could “cripple” workforce development efforts but said the move is imperative to control the level of training workers receive and make sure everyone is qualified to install heat pumps. There are hundreds of contractors listed as qualified heat pump installers on Efficiency Maine’s website, a list he said in his opinion should be much shorter.
Uncertainties lie ahead
At KVCC’s heat pump lab, Whittemore gestured at eight heat pumps mounted on prop walls used for training, listing the types of new units he hopes to get soon – ideally through donations from companies who have given units in the past.
Regulatory changes to refrigerants that went into effect this year mean the school needs to replace the heat pumps it uses to train students.
“Most of the procedures with the new refrigerants are the same, it’s just that we can’t put this new refrigerant in these existing heat pumps,” he said. “So I’ve got to get eight new heat pumps.”
The broader challenge he sees for the industry is tariffs, which he fears could lead to higher equipment prices and lower demand. This, in turn, could mean a lower need for workers.
“I think that’s going to slow this down,” he said.
Maine has two years to reach its goal of installing 275,000 heat pumps and five years to reach its goal of 30,000 clean energy jobs. But uncertainties in building Maine’s workforce lie ahead.
The Clean Energy Partnership Project, which has funded many of the state’s clean energy workforce development programs, typically announces new grants in the summer, but the Governor’s Energy Office stopped short of committing to another round of funding this year.
“We can’t predict the future, but the existing programs that we have will continue on for at least another couple of years,” Obomsawin said.
She said a partnership the Energy Office has with the Department of Labor to provide career navigation services will continue into 2026, as will workforce development programs that received funding and are already operational. But she cautioned that it is still too early to know what impact policy changes at the federal level will have on the clean energy sector.
Efficiency Maine said that the state is still on track to achieve its heat pump goals – at least for now. Executive Director Michael Stoddard said that the heat pump rebate program has funding from the Electric Utility Conservation Program and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative for at least the next three years.
However, some smaller initiatives, such as a revolving loan to help Mainers buy new heat pump systems, face uncertainty as the federal grants funding the project are in flux.
Libby, of Royal River Heat Pumps, has 40 years of HVAC industry experience and said funding uncertainty will make it a challenge to reach the state’s heat pump goal.
“I think it’s definitely going to be harder,” Libby said. “I mean, I’m not ready to give up on it yet. I don’t think anybody is ready to give up on it.”
Powering Rural Futures: Clean energy is creating new jobs in rural America, generating opportunities for people who install solar panels, build wind turbines, weatherize homes and more. This five-part series from the Rural News Network explores how industry, state governments and education systems are training this growing workforce.
MENDOCINO CO., 5/21/25 — A plan to nearly double the amount of electricity drawn from naturally occurring heat deep below Mendocino and Sonoma counties could create thousands of new jobs in the region.
The Sonoma-Mendocino GeoZone project still faces a long list of legal, regulatory and financial hurdles before construction, but the developer is already thinking ahead to hiring.
Sonoma Clean Power CEO Geof Syphers said the not-for-profit power producer is committed to hiring local workers for at least 30% of the jobs it creates. Meeting that goal, he said, will depend on building partnerships with local education and workforce development programs, along with a long-term commitment from California to streamline geothermal energy.
“We’ve been building partnerships with schools and trades and landowners and public officials, permitting agencies,” Syphers said. “But what really needs to happen before the permitting phase begins is we have to change state laws.”
Clean energy makes up a small but growing slice of Mendocino County’s employment, accounting for just under 600 jobs in 2023, according to an analysis of federal data by the nonprofit Environmental Entrepreneurs, which advocates for state and local policies benefiting the environment and economic interests.
Mendocino County workforce and education officials are taking note, gradually ramping up programs to train students to weatherize buildings, install and maintain solar projects and take on other related construction roles.
Noel Woodhouse, an instructor who runs Mendocino College’s sustainable construction and energy technology program, said the program has already evolved since launching in 2011 and will continue to do so. He’s confident that his students’ skills in clean tech, solar and sustainable building would easily transfer to geothermal construction — especially since the non-credit certificate program could rapidly train a large number of students in a short time.
“Our students come out of our program with experience in heavy equipment machinery and ready workers for that type of project,” Woodhouse said.
Clean energy jobs pull in a wide range of professional skills, from plumbing and electrical work to pouring concrete and operating equipment.
“What I love is the people who work in oil and gas know exactly how to operate 100% of the equipment on a geothermal job site, and it’s the same wages,” Syphers said.
Geothermal energy is harnessed by drilling deep below the earth’s surface to access naturally occurring heat. The steam flows to a turbine to drive a generator that in turn produces electricity — a process that can occur 24 hours a day.
Mendocino County, along with neighboring Sonoma and Lake counties, sits on one of the country’s prime geothermal zones. The world’s largest complex of commercial geothermal power plants, known as The Geysers, is located in the Mayacamas Mountains near where the three counties connect. Owning the majority of the units there, Calpine Corporation generates about 725 megawatts of electricity using geothermal energy. Sonoma Clean Power’s GeoZone proposal aims to build another 600 megawatt geothermal power plant.
The labor needed to develop 600 megawatts of new geothermal energy capacity will require hundreds of white-collar workers and thousands of construction workers during the building phase, and the project will create about 1,000 permanent jobs, Syphers said.
“Today, about 400 people from Sonoma, Lake and Mendocino work at The Geysers,” Syphers said. “If we can roughly double that for permanent jobs, that’s very exciting to me.”
Connecting students to skills and employers
As director of employer partnerships for Mendocino College, Pamela Heston-Bechtol’s job is making connections between students and employers. She combs through job postings at least once or twice a week and distributes opportunities to respective departments.
“It’s giving our students as much exposure as possible to be able to see themselves in those jobs by inviting industry to our advisory committees and inviting our students to job shadowing,” Heston-Bechtol said.
The Mendocino County Office of Education also offers career technical education programs with various pathways for youth. Eric Crawford, the office’s director of career and college programs, and Natalie Spackman, a workforce development coordinator with North Bay Construction Corps, together work with high school seniors interested in construction trades to complete a 14-week program.
“At the end of the instruction, they get a tool belt, and then they go out for boot camp for two weeks, and they work with contractors for 80 hours on a live build site and find out what it’s really like to do the work,” Crawford said, noting that this helps students determine which type of work interests them most.
At the completion of camp, the contractors are invited to interview students and potentially offer them jobs.
The newest career technical education program set for Ukiah High School, called Roots of Success, will train high school students specifically for green energy fields. However, Spackman said that basic training in construction gives students skills that transfer to a variety of work, especially given the state’s regulations for the trades to go green.
“No matter where they go, contractors ultimately work for their customers — what’s in demand?” she said. “The skills that they’re learning, that’s going to translate.”
Leaders from both the high school and college workforce development programs agree that while there’s plenty of work for their students and a growing demand for clean energy workers, trades training is hindered by a severe shortage of teachers.
Crawford said anyone with three years of experience in a specific field can get a designated subject teaching credential and become qualified by the state of California. Woodhouse said that Mendocino College’s minimum qualifications include an associate degree and experience in the field.
Other challenges, Woodhouse said, are those stacked against the students in a county with high rates of substance abuse and poverty. To address those, he highlighted support systems at the college that include a food pantry, mental health services and transportation, among others.
A student perspective
Kevin Vasquez says participating in the Mendocino College program changed the course of his life.
When he was 11 years old, Vasquez received a message at school that his father wouldn’t be able to pick him up. He had been deported.
“I felt violated that they took my dad from me,” he said. “I started drinking alcohol, trying to escape.”
The quiet habit morphed into an addiction that left him aimless and jobless in his 20s. Yet he remembered his father, an immigrant from Mexico who had worked tirelessly in stone masonry to give him a better life. He knew he needed to make something of that life, but he needed help first.
He went through rehabilitation, where a counselor suggested he check out Mendocino College’s construction program. For Vasquez, that program sparked light in the darkness.
“It got me back out there, doing what I love, which is building with my hands,” said Vasquez, who now offers help to other students as a lab tech.
For Vasquez, the prospect of GeoZone tapping into more renewable energy within the county brings an exciting opportunity to put his skills to use at a potential union job.
Mendocino County’s hiring contractors are small, and while they offer great one-on-one experiences, Woodhouse said, they’re not unionized.
Syphers shared that Mendocino County workers won’t need to be union members to work on the GeoZone project.
“You don’t have to be a union signatory to get hired through a union and then work on these projects,” he said. “That gives you an option to decide later if you want to become a signatory and be part of the union.”
The construction phase for GeoZone is projected to be six or seven years out, but Syphers said those years will be spent cultivating relationships with local schools, unions and smaller contractors.
Ultimately, he hopes the state will streamline permitting and make long-term commitments to invest in geothermal work.
“That’s how we actually get unions to open apprenticeship centers in Mendocino County,” Syphers said.
While the Biden administration helped streamline the geothermal process nationally, most of California’s geothermal opportunities are not on federal land, he pointed out. Sonoma Clean Power has worked with California Assemblymembers Diane Papan, D-San Mateo, and Chris Rogers, D-Santa Rosa, to introduce assembly bills 526, 527 and 531, which all aim to advance geothermal energy development.
“Everyone universally agrees California is the best place in the United States to do this if the permitting changes,” he said, noting that the state requires a full environmental review that can take anywhere from two to eight years. “This region has enough geothermal potential to support areas beyond Sonoma and Mendocino. That’s really, really valuable for the state.”
This reporting is part of a collaboration between the Institute for Nonprofit News’ Rural News Network and Canary Media, South Dakota News Watch, Cardinal News, The Mendocino Voice and The Maine Monitor. Support from Ascendium Education Group made the project possible.
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