CMP Transmission Project Pits High-Profile Maine Republican Against State's Largest Business Lobby

MAINE PUBLIC • March 19, 2021

The political, legal and legislative efforts to thwart Central Maine Power’s $1 billion transmission corridor continued apace this week as state lawmakers considered a slate of bills that could sideline a key financial beneficiary and a Superior Court judge ruled that the state didn’t follow the law when it leased public lands for the project. At the same time, a Republican state senator denounced the Maine State Chamber of Commerce in a searing broadside that accused the state’s leading business organization of siding with foreign interests. State Sen. Rick Bennett, R-Oxford, has emerged as one of the Legislature’s most vocal critics of the corridor, known as the New England Clean Energy Connect, or NECEC.