The counties and municipalities that receive a direct share of the settlement funds from opioid manufacturers, distributors and retailers have spent less than half of the money paid out so far, a Maine Monitor survey found.

Since payments began three years ago, the counties and municipalities have received about $20.3 million out of the $66.4 million they’re set to receive by 2038. The money has been used for a wide range of initiatives, from grants to community organizations providing recovery services to scholarships for residential treatment beds.

Over the past five years, nationwide settlements were reached with 10 pharmaceutical companies accused of fueling the opioid crisis as the result of a years-long, massive multidistrict litigation case. The settlements, with household names like Johnson & Johnson and Walgreens, will pay out billions of dollars over 18 years, approximately $230 million of which will go to Maine.

Maine’s share is split in three ways, including 30 percent divided up among the “direct share subdivisions” — the 39 counties, cities and towns that were either party to the multidistrict litigation case and/or have a population of at least 10,000. (The percentage each subdivision receives is determined by the settlement agreements.) That includes all 16 counties, the 21 largest municipalities, Rockland and Calais. 

Fifty percent of Maine’s share goes to the Maine Recovery Fund overseen by the 15-member Maine Recovery Council and the remaining 20 percent goes to the state and is overseen by the attorney general’s office, per the state’s memoranda of understanding.

The settlement agreements say that the money must be used for “opioid abatement” and lay out a long but fairly open-ended list of approved uses. Oversight is scant, however: outside of public access laws, subdivisions are under no obligation to publicly report how they are spending their money. And the trusts themselves have limited oversight power.

While subdivisions can spend up to 15 percent of their funds on “non-opioid remediation,” disclosure is all self-reported to the trusts. As of early May, no subdivisions in Maine had reported any spending on non-opioid remediation.

As part of ongoing efforts to shed light on how the millions from these landmark settlements are being spent, The Monitor has sent three surveys to the subdivisions since 2023. Thirty subdivisions responded to The Monitor’s latest survey from mid-March on how they are spending their funds.

Results show that spending for programs within county jails, sheriff’s offices and police departments remains a popular choice. Ten counties have used nearly a third of all funds expended so far to help pay for medication-assisted treatment, counseling services and other costs related to substance use treatment in jails. 

At least seven counties and municipalities have put the funds toward hiring mental health liaisons to work directly with law enforcement. Several others used the funds to purchase equipment for police departments, including Saco and Falmouth, both of which bought handheld drug-checking devices, and Lewiston, which purchased a vehicle for its mental health worker ride-along program.

Ten subdivisions used at least some of their funds to provide grants to local organizations working on substance use response. Cumberland County, for example, put out a request last year for proposals that “support treatment innovations and capacity building projects.”

Greater Portland Health’s proposal to launch a mobile medical van to conduct outreach among populations most at risk of overdose, including people experiencing homelessness and those recently released from the Cumberland County jail, was selected among nine proposals, according to public health director Liz Blackwell-Moore.

The only subdivision that has spent all of the money it has received so far, about $1.4 million, is York County, which decided early on to allocate all of its funds to build a new regional recovery center in Alfred.

In mid-March, The Monitor sent administrators from all of the subdivisions a survey asking how much money has been spent or allocated so far and the process for determining how the funds are spent. Using those responses — together with data compiled from two previous Monitor surveys conducted last spring and summer of 2023 — The Monitor created a database of estimated spending so far.

Each subdivision has responded to at least one survey, with the exception of Waterville. Gorham, Lewiston, Oxford County, Piscataquis County, Sanford, South Portland, Wells and York did not respond to the Monitor’s March survey, so data from the most recent survey they responded to was used. For all except Sanford, that was April 2024. Sanford last responded to The Monitor’s June 2023 survey.

Administrators from six subdivisions — Auburn, Calais, Kennebunk, Orono, Oxford County and Wells — said they have not spent any money yet, leaving nearly $1.6 million untouched. (Standish signed an agreement with Cumberland County to provide its entire estimated $44,100 payout to the county.)

As the warm air of a spring day milled across the acres of pasture along the long dirt road leading through Old Crow Ranch in Durham, Steve Sinisi and his wife, Seren, settled onto the porch of their farm stand. Sitting just inches apart, they shared laughs and voiced anxieties about their decision to become farmers in rural Maine and spoke of failures and successes. 

One big concern loomed large: the possibility that they may not receive money owed to them by the federal government, which they were counting on when planning for the season ahead.  

Their farm, which produces pasture-raised beef, pork and poultry, is one of only two working farms remaining in town. The couple launched the farm in 2008, and worked with the Maine Farmland Trust to designate it as a “forever farm,” so the land will always be used for agriculture, even if it is turned over to new owners.

Seren, who grew up in Union, said she’s used to the feeling of just barely scraping by. She had hoped farming would bring a sense of security, but with funding freezes and uncertainty under the Trump administration’s government efficiency efforts, these warm spring days serve as a reminder of the upcoming projects they have committed to for the coming season, and raise a question of whether they can still meet them.

“I don’t know a farmer that’s gonna go plant… just not knowing,” Steve Sinisi said. “That’s not how we work. Our margins don’t work that way… We don’t just (decide) oh, I’m going to go buy 180 pigs just for fun.”

Last year, their farm was awarded a $34,000 grant through the Rural Energy for America Program, which they planned to use to install a solar array. But the Trump administration has paused the funding, leaving the Sinisis to cover the costs of the project at a higher interest rate than the initial agreement would have required, which they said will be a challenge.

“We will make it work, because we are committed to farming,” Seren Sinisi said. “But it won’t be pretty.”

The Rural Energy for America Program is just one of several U.S. Department of Agriculture initiatives that have been paused or cancelled by the Trump administration as it aims to slash what it sees as wasteful bureaucracy and overhead. 

Cuts and funding freezes

The department has cut the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement and the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement, programs that gave schools and food banks money to buy produce from local farmers.

And it cancelled the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program, which was set to give Maine projects $3 million for efforts that would help farms build resilient practices as the climate changes. 

The administration argues the climate-smart program did not give enough funding directly to farmers, and is planning to overhaul the program into something it’s calling Advancing Markets for Producers, which will require that 65 percent of federal funds go directly to farmers. 

“The Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities initiative was largely built to advance the green new scam at the benefit of NGOs, not American farmers,” said USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins in a press release.

In addition to these cuts, more than $12 million in Maine contracts that were approved by the Natural Resources Conservation Service are in limbo, according to Sarah Alexander, the executive director of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association.

“Prior to this administration, the USDA has long been viewed as a partner in helping support farm viability, access to markets, creation of markets, and the trust has really been broken,” Alexander said. “Farmers really aren’t sure if they can trust these projects and these programs moving forward, and that’s really devastating.”

In mid-April, dozens of farmers and supporters gathered at the statehouse in Augusta to voice their frustration, emphasizing the tight margins most farms operate on and the important role government contracts can play. 

Training farmers

Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment in Freeport was one of the organizations receiving funds through the now-cancelled Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program, which it used to help farmers in 22 states learn about conservation resources and develop resilient practices. 

The farm is in the third year of a five-year, $35 million agreement and has received $7 million to date. It expects to receive some additional funds for costs incurred through mid-April, but no later. 

The center’s executive director Dave Herring said they have furloughed nine staff this month in light of the cuts, and in total will lose nearly a quarter of their staff.

“Every type of farming operation, big and small … they’re being impacted,” Herring said. “This is a huge lost opportunity for farmers across the country.”

Herring said that federal grants account for nearly two-thirds of the center’s budget.

“Things like training farmers, performing research, providing technical assistance to farmers, these are at the core of our programs and the things that we do and certainly the federal government has been a really trusted and important partner up until January 20th,” Herring said. “That’s funding (and) support for them to improve their practices that they’re not going to receive.”

There were 16 programs in Maine receiving money through Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities, including Wolfe’s Neck Center and the New England Forestry Foundation.

The USDA has said select projects can continue if they demonstrate that enough of the funds are going to farmers. Wolfe’s Neck Center is currently evaluating whether it will apply for the new program.

‘A small lifeline’

Seth Kroeck is the owner and manager of Crystal Spring Farm in Brunswick, which cultivates organic produce for wholesale buyers like Whole Foods. The farm is home to Little Bluestem, a natural habitat where blueberries grow wild that is “critically imperiled.” 

Cold snaps are something farmers used to experience once a century, Kroeck said. But his farm has suffered from two late-frost cold snaps in just five years, destroying entire crops of wild blueberries.

The farm receives two grants from the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. The first allocated $50,000 over the course of four years to purchase wood chips to cool the blueberry crops, and the second was for $37,000 over the same period to install windbreaks and pollinator strips.

“These programs … are a small lifeline,” Kroeck said. “Farmers have one of the most high risk businesses out there, in addition to a market that supplies really low margins.”

Improving the soil and climate resiliency leads to higher crop production and helps the natural ecosystem of the farm, Kroeck said. The fact that the USDA grants are in limbo makes continuing this work more difficult.

“It really leaves farmers guessing, holding the bag, and trying their best to fulfill their end of the contract,” Kroeck said.

Ultimately, he said losing these funds will impact the prices Mainers have to pay at the store.

“It’s going to affect our bottom line. It’s going to affect what we need to charge for food,”

 Kroeck said. “There’s going to be no other results.”

Pushing back

Representative Chellie Pingree, who has an organic farm on North Haven, marched with farmers at the rally in Augusta earlier this month. She spoke out strongly against the cuts and said she would continue advocating for farmers in Washington.

“We’ve also lost a tremendous amount of staffing because of this unelected billionaire Elon Musk and DOGE,” Rep. Pingree said at the rally. “They’re talking and said, ‘We’re going to get rid of waste, fraud and abuse.’ Well, I don’t think anything you’ve heard about today is waste, fraud and abuse. None of it.”

Maine has seen 20 percent of its local USDA staff cut, according to Alexander.

Senator Angus King has cosponsored a bill that would release federal funding for all contracts previously agreed to by USDA. 

“Farmers are an original building block of our state economy, providing jobs and a secure food source for thousands of people in Maine and across the northeast,” King said in a statement. “The Honor Farmer Contracts Act would ensure that Maine’s farmers receive the federal funding from all signed agreements and contracts as quickly as possible to prevent any operations from having to shut down.”

Sinisi, at Old Crow Ranch, said he was debating whether or not to speak out against the cuts.

But he and his wife agreed that it’s a privilege that they’re able to do so. Other farmers they know, especially migrant workers, didn’t even feel safe enough to attend the rally, let alone speak out.

“You feel like you’re going to put a target on yourself,” he said. “It’s absolutely awful.”

Sinisi said he has always been inspired by his grandmother, an immigrant who fled an abusive marriage in war-torn Croatia in search of a better life.

When she passed away, he used the money she left to him to buy a tractor, the first piece of equipment he had on the farm.

“She brought us to a place of freedom,” he said, then expressed dismay over how things have changed. “I am just so grateful that grandma is not here to see it.”

[ad number=”2″]

Over a dozen plans to bolster Maine communities against the threats of climate change will have to find new sources of funding after the Trump administration moved to end a popular grant earlier this month.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency program — Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC — has dished out roughly $133 million to fund local resilience projects since it was launched in 2020 under the first Trump administration.

In 2023, FEMA awarded an additional billion dollars through BRIC after the agency received a windfall in congressional funding from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law and saw a surge of applicants.

The program’s most recent applications included $5 million for more than 30 separate resilience projects at the state, tribal and municipal level in Maine that have been awarded BRIC grants or identified for further consideration by FEMA.

According to the agency’s April 4 announcement, any future grants and funds not yet distributed to local grantees will be returned to the U.S. Treasury or the Disaster Relief Fund, a separate FEMA program that reimburses localities after disasters strike.

“The BRIC program was yet another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA program,” a FEMA spokesperson said in a statement. “It was more concerned with political agendas than helping Americans affected by natural disasters.”

Some communities in Maine, however, see BRIC as a lifeline for reducing the impacts that climate change-fueled natural disasters like last winter’s inland and coastal flooding wreaked on local infrastructure and homes.

A 2024 study from insurance company Allstate and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce found that communities save $13 in disaster damages, cleanup costs and economic losses for every $1 spent on climate resilience measures. 

On North Haven, the program’s cancellation temporarily halted the island’s waterfront resilience project just as it was picking up steam. 

FEMA awarded North Haven a $150,000 BRIC grant in 2024 for its Thorofare Waterfront Project, an effort to study the impacts of sea level rise on waterfront infrastructure and homes, then design and construct a technical solution to mitigate risks of future flooding. 

After a year of public meetings and consultations a town-contracted engineering firm was set to begin drafting preliminary project designs this spring — that is, until the BRIC funding was withdrawn.

“This has brought our project… to a complete halt,” the town posted on its website earlier this month. “More information will be posted as it is available, including the Select Board’s response and next steps.”

The town announced this week, however, that the project is back on track after receiving confirmation from the state that FEMA has already committed funds to the Thorofare Waterfront Project’s BRIC grant that cannot be withdrawn.

Other BRIC grantees in Maine are also moving ahead despite the program’s cancellation. 

On Back River Creek, near Woolwich and the mouth of the Kennebec River, project organizers say plans to restore a freshwater marsh and reduce local flooding are unscathed by FEMA’s announcement.

For the past year, the Kennebec Estuary Land Trust has been working with the Maine Department of Transportation, Bath Water District and Woolwich town government to study how best to restore the depleted marsh and prevent flood waters from spilling out onto U.S. Route 1.

As in North Haven, the Back River Creek project’s BRIC grant has already been obligated by the federal government and is not in the initial acceptance phase like most other Maine projects. 

A total of 18 resilience projects in Maine have had their BRIC applications terminated with the cancellation of the program, according to a spokesperson for the Maine Emergency Management Agency — the state office that coordinates federal grants.

Of those 18 projects, however, MEMA has been able to find alternative funding for 14 of them, said MEMA spokesperson Vanessa Sperrey, keeping the projects alive despite BRIC’s termination.

The program’s cancellation comes as Maine is gearing up to provide more state assistance to connect tribes and communities with a variety of federal hazard mitigation grants.

On Tuesday, Gov. Janet Mills signed a bipartisan climate resilience bill that will create a new state office focused on supporting climate resilience projects at the local level. The legislation includes funding for a new grant navigator position and millions in state funds to provide the local matching that federal hazard mitigation grants require.

Many community officials in Maine have been overwhelmed by the multiple FEMA disaster assistance applications they’ve had to fill out over the past two years, let alone the additional funding applications for proactive hazard mitigation grants. New state assistance could help town managers and emergency managers across the state unlock funding opportunities like BRIC that are buried under mountains of paperwork and bureaucracy.

Arthur Cleaves, director of the York County Emergency Management Agency, told The Maine Monitor that the county had applied for millions in BRIC money to help with coastal resilience projects from Ogunquit to Old Orchard Beach and that he was shocked when it abruptly ended. 

“It was problematic for us… FEMA just cancelled (BRIC) out of the clear blue,” Cleaves said. 

But that isn’t keeping the county from pursuing other funding avenues. Cleaves is hopeful that other FEMA mitigation grants will continue, and if not, there’s the potential for congressional funding and a $75 million bond measure for Maine resilience projects that was recently proposed by state Sen. Donna Bailey (D-York).

“Yes, there have been some impacts,” Cleaves said. “We don’t let anything stop us. We just keep looking for other avenues.”

[ad number=”2″]

This story is part of The 89 Percent Project, an initiative of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now, which includes ICT.

Stewart Huntington
ICT

Since 1970, people all around the world have set aside April 22 as Earth Day, pausing to focus on caring for the planet.

Since time immemorial, of course, Indigenous peoples have been doing the same thing. Every day.

“This is about how we think, how we live, our ways of knowing … about being human,” said Inuit leader Sara Olsvig, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council and a former member of the Greenland and Danish Parliaments. “And also being human in close interaction and with nature. It represents our worldview of humans not being separate from nature.”

The one-day focus of Earth Day — although in some circles the commemoration has grown to become Earth Month — can strike a slightly discordant note to Native ears.

“It’s an odd thing to even say, ‘Oh, it’s Earth Day,’” said Penobscot citizen Darren Ranco, an anthropology professor at the University of Maine. The Penobscot are Wabanaki – the People of the Dawnland – and are taught to greet the sunrise every day and appreciate their place in the natural world, their connection with the earth.

“That connects us to our places,” Ranco said. “I think the cultural framing [of having a single Earth Day], of course, is quite different.”

Native people are still leading the way, however, in approaching climate change and the efforts to preserve and protect the natural environment. A worldwide survey found that 89 percent of people across the continents believe their country should do more to fight climate change.

Researchers reached out to people in 125 countries that account for 96 percent of the world’s carbon emissions, with the results published in the journal, Nature Climate Change. People in China, the world’s biggest polluter, were among the most concerned, with 97 percent saying its government should do more to fight climate change.

The United States, the world’s second biggest polluter, was near the bottom but still had 74 percent of its citizens saying its government should do more. New Zealand, Norway and Russia were also relatively low-scoring.

Read more about The 89 Percent Project

The percentage of Native people who believe the same is likely even higher.

“I always say that, Planet Earth, Mother Earth, would be in a much better place if we had more Indigenous lawmakers,” said Whitney Gravelle, the president of Michigan’s Bay Mills Indian Community.

“Because the way we think about decision making … is deeply rooted in our teachings,” Gravelle said. “We’re always thinking of those future generations, and how the decisions we make today are going to impact future generations. We never think about ourselves. We never think selfishly. We’re always thinking of how we can take care of others, take care of Mother Earth, so that we’re providing for future generations. I know that’s inherent in all of the values that we carry as Indigenous people.”

A single-day celebration of Earth Day doesn’t get in the way of welcoming fellow travelers, however. It provides an opportunity for education and the spreading of Indigenous values, Gravelle said.

“It’s is a wonderful opportunity for education, especially since so much of the rest of the world then becomes focused on Mother Earth and how we are going to be taking care of her,’” she said. “So if there’s one thing we can do on Earth Day, it’s to educate others of those values and how we can all find a way to exist and make meaningful progress that takes everyone into consideration.”

Sherri Mitchell, a Penobscot citizen and executive director of Maine’s Land Peace Foundation, agreed.

“We as Indigenous people have become accustomed to having things stolen from us,” she said. “Though we do not want to encourage the continuation of this behavior, these are ideas worth stealing.”

‘Core cultural values’

Mitchell is using Earth Day to help share that knowledge

She’s helping to organize a march – the Journey of Peace and Friendship – that kicks off on Earth Day on the Penobscot Reservation and ends a week later at the statehouse in Bangor. It’s open to a wide range of faith leaders – Sikh, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Indigenous and others – and “all who come in a spirit of peace and friendship.”

“We’re not interested in being a voice for what we don’t want, we want to be a voice for what we do want,” she said. “We want to stand up for our core cultural values as Indigenous people: kinship,collective care, kindness, inclusion, acceptance, compassion and deeper understanding. Earth Day is the perfect opportunity to model for others the welcoming spirit and generosity that Mother Earth has modeled for us.”

The effort could also move the dial on combatting climate change.The worldwide study indicates that climate change is of primary concern and that 80 to 89 percent of people think their government should do more.

Those numbers might be low in Indian Country, said Ranco.

“The different kinds of studies and data points that I’m aware of and the oral traditions and cultures that I’m constantly exposed to as an Indigenous academic would tell me that it’s always of greater concern in Native communities,” he said.

“I think there are a bunch of different reasons for that. You have, of course, the ongoing commitments to caretaking and relational responsibility that Indigenous people continue to carry out as it relates to our mother, the Earth. And then you have the very real experiences of people who are living closer to the land.”

Native people are also feeling the impacts of climate change in their communities, where rising sea levels, flooding, droughts, wildfires, increasingly strong hurricanes and heat are wreaking havoc.

“A lot of Indigenous people are experiencing the impacts of climate changes already, and they’re very much more keenly aware that the climatic change is happening in a way that has never happened while humans have been living on this planet,” Ranco said.

Increasingly, they are stepping up to address the realities of the Anthropocene.

“In some ways, that’s part of why indigenous people, around the world, have assumed such important leadership roles around climate, justice and, and conservation work independent from any particular political moment,” said Ranco.

“We’re rising up for something that’s a deeper or more fundamental moment around sort of our condition as humans,” Ranco said. “Our responsibility doesn’t end at the reservation lines. It’s a universal responsibility that is part of our teachings.”

Looking ahead

Olsvig, drawing on years of experience watching Arctic treaties negotiated and signed, wants to see more of those teachings in practice.

“Often we see international agreements built on the basis of a worldview that humans and nature are separate things. And for us, it’s not,” Olsvig said. “So when we are there pushing for not just our knowledge, but our worldviews to be included into these [agreements] and new approaches to conservation. … We come with the worldview that humans are inseparable from nature, that we are one.”

It’s a perspective that has worldwide implications.

“I think that we share with Indigenous peoples from all over the world, and we must continue to stand shoulder by shoulder in that very important push because we see time and time again that decisions are taken without us,” Olsvig said.

“And so we need to maintain our push and stay in the seats at the table wherever we’ve created those seats,” she said. “And if we don’t have a seat, we have to kick in the door and make sure that Indigenous peoples are part of the negotiations.”

This story is part of The 89 Percent Project, an initiative of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now, which includes ICT.

Tractors stand at the ready along rolling wild blueberry barrens Downeast, where fields of naked stems offer no hint of the glorious techno-color display to come. By late spring, roughly 47,000 acres across Washington and Hancock counties will be carpeted in white blossoms before bursting into tiny blueberries.

But new federal immigration policies and ramped-up deportations have businesses across the state — especially in rural, agricultural communities — concerned about migrant workers showing up to rake those fields — out in plain sight.

“Our producers are very careful about vetting their workforce to ensure that they all have the necessary and proper documentation if they are coming from outside of the U.S.,” said Eric Venturini, executive director of the Wild Blueberry Commission. “But I am concerned about a decrease in the agricultural workforce due to shifting immigration policies that could make it more challenging for farmers to get their crops.”

Wild blueberry farms aren’t the only businesses statewide that could be facing a labor shortage, compounded by escalating threats of deportation and revoked visas. Agricultural farmers of all types, as well as wreath factories, restaurants, hotels, fisheries, and other businesses have come to rely on the largely Latino migrant and year-round immigrant communities. 

According to the most recent 5-year estimate reported in the American Community Survey, Maine’s foreign-born population is about 53,600. Among those aged 16 and over, 63 percent are in the workforce, or about 31,500 workers, according to Jessica Picard, communications director for the State of Maine Department of Labor.

Among those who employ foreign-born workers is the group of Whitney Family Companies, which owns and operates Whitney Wreath, Whitney’s Tri-Town Marina, Machias Glassworks, and Downeast Packaging Solutions, all located in Machias. Owner and CEO David Whitney employs an undisclosed number of seasonal migrant workers at his companies, workers he depends on to supplement his local workforce.

Whitney said he fully supports the Trump administration’s tightened immigration policies. In 2011 Whitney’s company became the first in the state to sign on to the federal IMAGE program, a voluntary partnership initiative between the federal government and private sector employers that strengthens hiring practices and monitoring of migrant worker documentation through an electronic verification system, regular audits, and payroll reviews.

“We’re under tremendous scrutiny, which is all the more reason that I continue to be motivated to follow the letter of the law. Always have,” Whitney said. “I sleep very well at night.”

But as federal immigration officials ratchet up surveillance around the nation, advocates say many immigrants — even those who are documented — fear deportation, with more of them choosing to lay low, avoiding school or work. 

Along the shores of Englishmen’s Bay, sea spray wafts over the wild blueberry fields of Welch Farm in Roque Bluffs, owned and operated for more than a century by Lisa Hanscom’s family.

Everyone pitches in on this small but productive farm, including Hanscom’s 77-year-old father. But come harvest time, they still rely on a handful of migrant workers to help get the tender berries raked and crated before they rot in the field.

So far this season, Hanscom hasn’t heard from the two Mi’kmaq migrant friends from Canada and the young Guatemalan man who she’s counted on in past years.

“The young man was legal, working on his citizenship and everything. But I don’t know what that means for me this year, whether he’s even going to be around,” Hanscom said.

Hanscom chairs the volunteer Wild Blueberry Commission in addition to running the farm and her full-time job as director of the Washington County Emergency Management Agency. She knows the blueberry business and is used to dealing with unexpected crises. But Hanscom said it’s hard for farmers to come up with contingency plans to deal with such a rapidly evolving immigration landscape.

Nationwide arrests and detentions are up sharply since Trump took office, and worries are mounting among seasonal employers in Maine. In late March, the detention of a teenager on his way to work in Lewiston rattled the local community; he was reportedly taken to New York City, more than 300 miles away from his mother and three younger siblings, according to the Bangor Daily News. His family was told by a Border Patrol agent that he would likely be deported to El Salvador, according to Maine Public.

In early April, the Wells Police Department in southern Maine entered into a formal agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, allowing the police department to enforce certain aspects of federal immigration law. While ICE has similar agreements in place with other municipalities around the country, this is the first of its kind in Maine.

The Internal Revenue Department also struck a deal with federal immigration authorities to share the sensitive data of migrants who pay federal taxes under formerly shielded tax ID numbers. The exposure could make migrants reluctant to file taxes or share documentation with employers.

During an online presentation in February, Patrick Woodcock, the executive director of the Maine Chamber of Commerce, said that employers need to be aware of the potential ramifications on Maine’s workforce.

“Regardless of the merits of the polic[ies], we really do want to ensure that employers understand how to be in compliance,” Woodcock said. “There may be employees that were authorized to work that may be affected by changes and may not be authorized to work now or in the coming months.”

The Trump administration has signaled that it is considering eliminating, scaling back, or revoking some visas that employers have relied on to augment their work teams for decades.

The Monitor reached out to more than a dozen business owners and managers to gauge concerns. Half of those responded, with only one business expressing concern about losing the visa program it uses to supplement its summer staff of about 30. 

Victor Trafford, who owns the Fishermen’s Wharf Inn and Restaurant in Lubec, said the business typically employs 4-6 young women, mostly from Eastern Europe, each summer through the J-1 visa Exchange Student Worker Program. 

“I think we’re going to be okay. But laws can change — can change without notice,” Trafford said. 

The Trump administration has also revoked the visas of hundreds of international students and detained roughly a dozen others from college campuses across the US, often without any warning or recourse for appeals, according to a recent report by the BBC.

A J-1 visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows students to study, work, or conduct research in the United States for three months or longer, depending on the visa. It’s one of roughly 200 types of U.S. non-immigrant and immigrant visas that grant foreign nationals permission to stay in the country for residence, study, or work. Another category is the H-1B visa program, which allows highly educated foreign professionals to work in “specialty occupations.”

But the visas that most impact farmers seeking to boost their local workforce are H-2A agricultural visas, which allow foreign workers to come to the U.S. to perform seasonal agricultural labor. Employers in the service industry, meanwhile, often rely on H-2B visas, which allow workers to temporarily come to the U.S. to perform non-agricultural services or labor, such as hotel and restaurant work. 

Last year in Maine, 41 agricultural companies each received anywhere between one and 140 H-2A visa approvals. Cherryfield Foods, Inc., a grower and producer of wild blueberries located in Cherryfield and Machias, received the most agricultural visas of any business in the state, a total of 140 H-2A visas.

A 2015 Maine Department of Labor 2015 survey, the most recent report available from the Department, found that 56 percent of migrant farm workers were from Mexico, with others from Haiti, Canada, Honduras, El Salvador, and the Philippines. A 2019 University Maine report found that Maine’s migrant workers also come from Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Guatemala and from elsewhere in the United States.

Ricker Hill Orchards in Turner was granted 33 agricultural visas in 2024. The tenth-generation small farming business has survived 200 years of challenges, including a slumping local workforce that began during WWII.

Although it’s bureaucratically burdensome and costly — north of $80,000 some seasons — company president Harry Ricker and his wife Nancy, who is the CFO, said H-2A visas have helped them hang on to the farm, allowing them to bring in dozens of hard-working apple pickers each harvest season, mostly from Jamaica. 

“There are a lot less local people that want to do it, so we have to have this program,” Ricker said. “Without it, we’ll just be out of the industry. We go away.”

Since businesses foot the bill for all visa fees, travel, and lodging, Ricker sees no reason for the administration to tamper with the H-2A visa program. 

Some critics, however, including authors of the controversial Project 2025, are pushing the Trump administration to cap and then phase out the program because they say it squeezes American workers out of the market. Nationally, DOL certified over 378,000 temporary H-2A jobs in FY 2023 — more than six times the number certified in 2006.

But H-2A visa advocates point to data that show persistent workforce shortages and the federal laws that tightly regulate migrant worker pay to make sure it doesn’t undercut the local market.

Employers must recruit U.S. workers, including posting jobs on the US Department of Labor’s seasonal jobs website, and give preference to U.S. workers over H-2A workers. The employer also must pay all workers at the same federally mandated Adverse Effect Wage Rates (AEWRs), which in Maine is $18.83 per hour, compared to the state’s current minimum wage of $14.65 per hour.

Non-agricultural workers also nervous

The authors of Project 2025 also have the H-2B non-agricultural temporary visa program in their sights, calling for the elimination of the visas that a host of industries depend on, from tourism and hospitality to restaurants and services at some national parks. 

The H-2B program is capped at 66,000 each year for the entire country, with an additional number of visas typically added to the cap each year, including an extra 64,716 for 2025 announced earlier this month. 

Although Trump recently signaled support for businesses that rely on H-2B temporary workers, the release of the supplemental visas was delayed this year. According to a recent U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services press release, only employers who will “suffer irreparable harm,” will be approved for additional H-2B workers, and must attest to that harm in writing on a new form as part of their petition for the workers.

There are never enough visas allotted to meet demand, requiring employers to compete in a lottery system, according to Kathryn Ference, director of Workforce Development for the Maine Tourism Association. 

“The programs are incredibly important to the [tourism] industry in Maine and making sure that we have what we need to make this industry run, which brings so much economic value to the state, adding $16.3 billion to the Maine economy in 2023, [is very important.]” Ference said.

Downeast’s largest tourism draw, Acadia National Park, doesn’t use any visa-permitted workers at the park. The seasonal National Park Service jobs all have U.S. Citizenship as a condition of employment, according to Perrin Doniger, vice president of communications and marketing for the Friends of Acadia.

But in neighboring Bar Harbor, 99 lodging facilities and 66 restaurants rely heavily on H-2B visas, including five of the six Witham Family Hotels, said Managing Director Jeremy Dougherty .

According to Dougherty, the Witham chain employs roughly 500 people, with about 200 at the Bar Harbor Inn alone, including about 82 foreign nationals working on temporary H-2B visas. Dougherty said many are from Jamaica, as well as El Salvador, Haiti, and other countries. He said they are some of his best workers and that some have returned for 15 summers — if they are lucky enough to secure a visa lottery slot.

Dougherty said the visa process is arduous for both the company’s human resource department and for the migrant workers, requiring months of applications, interviews, waiting, and then travel and housing arrangements before they even get to their first day on the job. This year, he said, some of the migrants are a little nervous, and not just about the possibility of being confronted by ICE agents.

“Some of our staff have asked how to best handle it if somebody were to say something that would maybe be inappropriate,” Dougherty said. “In the last few years, people are a little more emboldened to say things to people of color than they used to, and it just puts us more on alert, a little more protective, you know, like protective parents.”

School kids in rural Maine have benefited from a national U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) program bringing local produce, including seafood and Maine-grown grains, to school cafeterias.

Those same rural kids and their families will likely face an increase in food insecurity as the USDA notified states that they are ending the Local Foods for Schools (LFS) program, a national pandemic-era program that provided $660 million for schools to purchase food from local farmers and producers in all fifty states, US territories, and for federally recognized tribes.

This change comes at a time when the USDA is finalizing changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), including adding work requirements, limiting work exemptions, and reducing the benefit amounts, all of which would disproportionately affect rural Americans.

Full Plates, Full Potential is a food advocacy and implementation organization in Maine. They support schools and other organizations that provide food to kids through federal nutrition programs, including supporting schools in applying for federal funds to purchase local foods. 

“A lot of our work in Maine has involved ‘how on earth are we going to feed our kids?’,” Anna Korsen, the Policy and Program Director for nonprofit Full Plates, Full Potential, said.

Maine provides free lunches to all students, not just those who qualify as low-income, making the loss of $2.8 million in federal funding for local food purchasing hit the state especially hard. 

As most of Maine falls within USDA’s rural designation, most of Maine’s kids and schools are in rural communities. 

In Maine, over 179,000  people are enrolled in SNAP, and 34% of SNAP recipient households in Maine include children. With Maine being a primarily rural state, it’s no surprise that 1 in 7 rural households participate in SNAP. In fact, 14.2% of rural Maine households use SNAP benefits, and 20.5% of those are families with Children. Maine also has the highest rate of childhood food insecurity in New England, with 1 in 5 kids unsure of where their next meal will come from. 

“For kids who are experiencing food insecurity, the only reliable meals that they have in a day are often breakfast and lunch. Those are also the healthiest meals that they have access to. So when the federal government pulls this funding, that’s going to impact the nutrition and quality of the meals that those kids are receiving,” Korsen said.

It isn’t just students who will suffer. The funding cut will also affect Maine’s agricultural industry, as the funds specifically went to purchase produce from farms that partnered with schools. 

“Schools are often the biggest restaurant in a community, especially in rural areas in states like Maine. And so, you know, that’s going to have a big impact on these small farms,” Korsen said.

Full Plates is taking steps to ensure Maine decision-makers understand how important these programs are to kids, families, schools, and farms. They’re also thinking about things like mutual aid, though Korsen admits it will be tough to fill a funding gap that could be billions of dollars without federal support.

Allison Leavitt, the nutrition director for Lisbon Schools in southeastern Maine, has seen benefits from the assistance received through the LFS program. She also noted that in the current economy, they could use more federal help to make their food, not less.

“I’ve already blown through what was budgeted for my regular food allowance as of today, and we have until June to keep feeding kids,” Leavitt said. “Anybody that goes to the grocery store knows that everything is more expensive. So every single little last dollar that we could have, and especially if we can keep it in the local economy, is very much needed.”

The cuts to the LSF program come at a particularly stressful time for rural families. The House GOP has proposed 230 billion in cuts to SNAP benefits in addition to cuts already made to the LSF program. 

“We are very concerned that millions of people could be at risk of losing some or all of the food benefits that they need to put food on the table,” Katie Bergh, Senior Policy Analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said.

SNAP helps 42.2 million Americans, or roughly one in eight people in this country, afford groceries, and although the average benefit is only about $6.16 per day right now, it has a huge effect on food security, particularly in rural areas. 

In 2023,14.3% of rural households participated in SNAP compared to 11.9% in metropolitan areas, Bergh told the Yonder. In addition to SNAP’s direct benefits to the families who need to put food on the table, it also acts as an important economic stimulus. The Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service estimated that every additional dollar spent on SNAP in a weak economy generates $1.54 in economic activity. 

“It is highly effective at reducing food insecurity, and poverty research has linked participation to better health, improved educational attainment, better labor market outcomes, particularly for people who participate in SNAP as children,” Bergh said. 

“Those food benefits are federal dollars that go directly to low-income families who then spend them at local grocery stores in their communities. And that’s not only generating revenues for the local grocery store, it’s also supporting jobs throughout the entire food supply chain,” she said.

“School meals are often the most reliable and nutritious meals available to food-insecure kids, so the termination of LFS will negatively impact the quality of food being served to food-insecure children,” according to Korsen. 

According to Bergh, everyone involved with emergency feeding networks agrees that charity won’t be able to fill the gap in funding. He also doesn’t think states will be able to pick up the bill.  

“The states don’t have the resources to meet those additional costs without having to make really painful trade-offs, to raise revenue or cut other programs and services that low-income families rely on.” 

The post Rural Youth Face Funding Cuts for Local Foods for Schools Program  appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

Mount Desert Island Hospital announced Thursday that it will close its labor and delivery unit effective July 1 — making it the tenth Maine hospital to announce such a closure in the past decade.

Chrissi Maguire, the hospital’s president and CEO, said the primary reason was a steep decline in birth rates, which in turn made it difficult for staff to keep up with required skills.

The hospital delivered 32 babies last year — a nearly 46 percent decline from the previous year. Nine babies have been delivered so far this year. A decade ago, the hospital averaged about 100 births annually.

Maguire, who said she gave birth to both of her children at MDI Hospital, called the closure a “devastating decision.”

“I have to really bifurcate myself from that emotion and think about the health and wellness of our patients,” she told The Maine Monitor.

In addition to the declining birth rate, Maguire also cited “skyrocketing costs, a shrinking rural population, and inadequate reimbursement from federal and state sources.”

The Maine State Nurses Association said Thursday that union nurses at the hospital were “fiercely critical” of the announcement.

The news comes at a time when roughly half of Maine’s 36 hospitals do not offer birthing services. 

This fits into a national trend: 537 hospitals closed their labor and delivery departments between 2010 and 2022, according to a study published in December. As of 2022, more than half of the nation’s rural hospitals did not offer labor and delivery services.

Maguire said discussions about how to prevent a potential closure began 10 months ago, when the hospital noticed a significant decline in deliveries.

Since then, she said they have held strategic planning meetings, asked for assistance from the state, worked with a regional maternal health program and coordinated with partners at Northern Light Health to figure out how to address the significant decline in births.

Then they entered the first months of 2025 with a small number of births. “We’re in this domino effect for rural maternal health and eventually we needed to make a very difficult decision,” Maguire said.

MDI Hospital has about 30 patients who are currently pregnant and will be affected by the closure, Maguire said, noting that only half of them were expected to give birth at the hospital. They called each of the patients this week and are working on a transition plan with Northern Light Health, which runs the two nearest hospitals, in Ellsworth and Bangor.

Maguire said she didn’t know how many staff would be impacted but said they would all be given the option to continue working for the MDI health system in positions that align with their expertise.

Cokie Giles, president of the Maine State Nurses Association, said the union condemns the closure.

“This is an abject failure by the hospital’s administration, particularly CEO Chrissi Maguire,” Giles said in a press release. “For the good of this community and of our state, MDIH’s OB department must remain open.”

Janice Horton, a nurse who has worked in the hospital’s obstetrics department for over three decades, called the decision short-sighted and said it was made by administrators without input from nurses and caregivers.

“Nurses are deeply concerned about the permanent, damaging effects this decision will have on families MDIH is supposed to serve in Bar Harbor and surrounding towns and outer islands,” Horton said.

The hospital responded by saying that nurses had been involved “early and meaningfully” in the process, including in meetings held from June through December.

Before official news of the closure broke, the union had scheduled a town hall meeting on Sunday to “discuss the future of our OB department.” The group still plans to hold the meeting, which is set to take place at 4 p.m. Sunday, March 30, at the Mount Desert Island YWCA at 36 Mount Desert Street in Bar Harbor.

Maguire said hospital officials had already planned on making the announcement Thursday morning and the town hall did not impact their decision.

MDI Hospital is planning to expand its emergency department to include a new room equipped with labor and delivery equipment for emergency births on the island, Maguire said.

In response to questions about why the hospital is able expand the emergency department while closing the birthing unit, Maguire said the expansion is being paid for by donations and grants that could not be repurposed, and it is in response to a community health needs assessment that highlighted a desire for better access to emergency and hospital services, primary care and mental health.

The hospital is coordinating with nearby facilities to transfer deliveries and is making plans for emergency care staff to rotate through partner hospitals to maintain their skills in labor and delivery. Maguire also said the hospital is exploring a new program that would give expectant mothers support and care coordination through prenatal, delivery, and postpartum care.

Maguire sees the statewide closures as part of a larger demographic and economic challenge. 

“This is not stopping,” she said. “I am not the only hospital having these discussions.”

Kevin Leavitt was just days away from getting reimbursed by the U.S. government for $48,000 when the Trump administration signed an executive order freezing federal funding and stopping payments to farmers across the country. 

Leavitt, who owns Farmer Kev’s Organic in West Gardiner, Maine, was authorized to receive money through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Energy for America Program (REAP). The funding was approved to help with costs attached to a $140,000 project to generate efficient electricity on the small vegetable farm. 

The project has been up and running since December, and Leavitt told the Daily Yonder he was on track to get his reimbursement at the end of January. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, or USDA, requires a 30-day waiting period between project completion and reimbursement to verify that the project has been completed, Leavitt said. Since the executive order was signed, he has not heard anything from the USDA about when he can expect to receive the payment.

“It’s getting to be over a month now, and every day that passes, we lose faith in the money coming through,” Leavitt said.

Leavitt is one of approximately 2,252 farmers waiting to be paid by the government for 2024 REAP awards. The amount owed totals $410 million, according to data compiled by Jeremy Fisher using information from USA spending, a government website that tracks federal dollars. Of that outstanding $410 million in REAP payments, just under $300 million is set to go to Republican-led Congressional districts, according to Fisher, who works as a senior strategy and technical advisor with the Sierra Club’s Environmental Law Program. 

“This isn’t something that shakes out cleanly along blue or red lines,” Fisher said. “And, this is not large corporations who are making these decisions, these are individual farmers, small businesses that have to put their own money down on the table in order to be able to make this happen.”

If the REAP money Leavitt is expecting doesn’t come through, he will have to foot the bill for the entire project. He said that doing so could put his farm in a vulnerable position to continue operating.

On February 20th, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced that the USDA would release $20 million in contracts that had been paused due to a review of funding in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the legislation Congress passed in 2022 that appropriated billions of dollars for clean energy projects across the country. That $20 million represents less than 1% of all USDA funding, according to the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

REAP predates the IRA by several decades, though Congress added $1 billion in funding to the program when it passed the piece of legislation in 2022. The purpose of REAP, according to its landing page, is to guarantee loan financing and grant funding to agricultural producers and rural small businesses for energy efficiency improvements and renewable energy systems. Legally, farmers and small businesses are entitled to the money that has already been obligated to them by the USDA for REAP projects.

“These are programs that are meant to save people money, make their lives easier, provide stability and certainty,” Fisher said. “People are entitled to the money that Congress has allocated to this purpose, irrespective of what the administration thinks about any particular recipient.”

Funding from the USDA also supports smaller farms and younger farmers trying to get into the industry, like Leavitt, who is 33. 

“To be able to start producing food and do something sustainable, you do need some assistance — farming is a very capital-intensive industry to get into,” Leavitt said.

REAP is just one program under the USDA’s Rural Development umbrella, which encompasses billions of dollars appropriated by Congress for federal spending for rural programs in the form of grants and low-interest loans. 

Across the country, Fisher said grant and loan recipients are waiting to hear from the USDA on payments for projects approved under other programs, including the Empowering Rural America (New ERA) program. 

Payments Across USDA Programs

Established by the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, the New ERA program provides $9.7 billion in loan and grant financing for rural electric cooperatives to transition to clean, affordable, and reliable energy. It is the largest investment in rural electrification since President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Rural Electrification Act into law in 1936. 

Before the USDA’s funds were frozen, approximately $9.4 billion had been obligated to rural electric cooperatives in 24 states. Overall, the Sierra Club estimates that about 40% of all rural electric cooperative customers in the U.S. are in line to receive funding through the New ERA program. Those dollars have yet to be released by the USDA. 

Since the New ERA funds account for around 25% of the total cost of any given project, Fisher said the total investment for rural cooperatives to transition to more efficient and affordable energy is much higher. 

“It’s spurring $35 billion, at least, worth of investments across these cooperatives, and in each of those circumstances, substantially reducing costs for customers,” Fisher said. 

Beyond USDA programs supporting energy and electricity, the USDA has a host of other programs that go toward supporting farmers and others in rural communities across the country. Sarah Alexander, executive director of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA), is seeing money frozen for those programs, too. 

“The $20 million that was released is just a very small drop in the bucket compared to the national amount that those programs would normally be funding at this time of year,” Alexander told the Daily Yonder. Right now, many of the farmers who MOFGA supports, like Kevin Leavitt, are being told that their grants are under review in accordance with the statement made by Secretary Rollins on February 20. 

Alexander said that cuts to the federal workforce, including in local USDA offices, are affecting access to information for farmers trying to track down answers to their funding questions. 

“Some folks are calling the office and nobody’s answering. There’s nobody to pick up the phone, or the person that they were in contact with may no longer be there,” Alexander said. 

In West Gardiner, Leavitt said that the federal funding he was expecting helps reduce the price of food, like the vegetables he grows. Without it, prices may go up in the coming season.

“If these payments don’t come through, that’s going to add a pretty significant burden to these farms, and it’s hard to see how that wouldn’t end up ultimately impacting consumers,” Alexander said.

The post Farmers Still Owed Hundreds of Millions in REAP Payments After Federal Freeze   appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

As the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for health secretary heads to a final vote, and the national conversation around vaccines intensifies, it’s worth examining Maine’s childhood vaccination rates.

During the last school year, vaccination rates among kindergartners across Maine were around 97 percent for all four mandatory vaccines. The rates have increased steadily since 2019, when the state passed legislation ending nonmedical exemptions. But some public health advocates worry that vaccine hesitancy could increase under the Trump administration.

Under state law, all kindergarten students in a public or private elementary school must have the following vaccines: Diphtheria/Pertussis/Tetanus (DTaP), Poliomyelitis, Measles/Mumps/Rubella (MMR) and Varicella (VAR).

In 2019, Maine passed a law that eliminated religious and philosophical exemptions in response to dropping rates of vaccination among schoolchildren. At the time, Maine was one of only 17 states that allowed exemptions if a parent or guardian cited a personal reason, according to reporting from the Bangor Daily News.

Since then, annual vaccination data shows that exemption rates have dropped across the board for the four required vaccinations. The exemption rate for the polio vaccine dropped from 5 percent in 2019-20 to 0.6 percent last year.

Before the law went into effect, Maine had one of the highest opt-out rates in the country: it was 5.3 percent in 2017-18 when the national median was 2.2 percent. Last year, Maine’s opt-out rate was 1 percent compared to the national median of 3.7 percent.

A student who isn’t vaccinated can still be enrolled in school under certain conditions: a parent or guardian provides written assurance the student will be vaccinated within 90 days; a licensed physician, nurse practitioner or physician assistant provides a written statement noting that immunization may be medically inadvisable; or students have an individualized education program that began before September 2021 that included a philosophical or religious exemption.

Last year, 19 schools had kindergarten exemption rates above 5 percent (it’s worth noting that in some of these schools class sizes are quite small). 

Ashwood Waldorf School, in Rockport, had the highest vaccine exemption rate for kindergartners last year at 33 percent – four out of 12 students.

Jeremy Clough, school director, said all four of the exemptions last year were temporary and at least two of the students are now caught up on their vaccines. These temporary medical exemptions often apply to new students who were previously homeschooled and are behind on their vaccinations.

Clough said most of the conversations he’s had with families about vaccines involve explaining the law. 

“There’s really no pushback that the families can have because it’s like, ‘Here’s the law and … you either need to be caught up or you need to talk to your health care provider,’ ” he said.

He said it’s helpful that there’s no gray area in the law. “We’re not doctors,” he said. “I feel like we have no idea what is appropriate medically for anyone. What we know how to do is educate children. So yes, I think it is helpful to have something that’s very clear.”

Jay Corbin, teaching principal of Penobscot Community School, agreed that the law makes conversations more straightforward. He said there wasn’t much resistance from families when the nonmedical exemptions were eliminated and he doesn’t anticipate more pushback going forward.

Penobscot Community School had among the highest exemption rates last year at 14 percent, but that was due to one exemption out of seven kindergartners. Corbin said the school has historically had high vaccination rates. 

The county with the highest exemption rate for kindergartners last year was Piscataquis County at 3.7 percent.

Sue Mackey Andrews, who was a national consultant to health and education departments for 25 years and now is active in public health efforts in Dover-Foxcroft that include childhood vaccine initiatives, said she was surprised the exemption rate wasn’t even higher in her county because Piscataquis has historically had low vaccination rates.

One factor Mackey Andrews pointed to is the lack of access to health care. The closest pediatrician may be in Bangor, which could make it hard to keep kids up-to-date with their vaccines. She said she has also seen the anti-vaccine movement grow in her area due to a “phenomenal” amount of misinformation and fears it could increase under the Trump administration.

In the years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mackey Andrews said there’s been a “dramatic increase” in homeschooled families in the region.

“I suspect that some of it, at least, is vaccine related,” she said.

Mackey Andrews said she would urge people who have concerns about vaccines to listen to their doctors and ask questions. 

“That’s a lifelong, perhaps critical, decision that you’re making,” she said.