Some of the best things in journalism are the kinds of unique obsessions that come from working a specific beat for the right amount of time. The retail electricity supply market is one such obsession for me.

Maine’s first post-vaccine legislative contests brought on a 50 percent leap in campaign contributions and spending, according to the latest campaign finance records available before Election Day.

Election season is all up on us. Again. It’s an off-cycle year, the last two years have been a blur: it’s hard to believe. But it’s back – and so is former Gov. Paul LePage (see Maine’s term limits).

COVID-19 cases have been on a sharp rise in Maine even before identification of the first cases of the new Omicron variant in the state.

Electricity sellers charged Maine households $175 million more than the going rate for electricity from 2012 to 2020, driven largely by predatory marketing practices.

Redistricting data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows how Maine’s total population changed by town in 2020.

COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus, continues to spread throughout Maine, with the first signs emerging of “community spread” in Cumberland County as of Tuesday, March 17.

Maine’s competitive Senate race has already attracted more than $20 million in contributions and outside spending, with election day still months away.

Maine political donors have so far given at least $81,000 to presidential candidates who have since dropped out of the race, according to the latest FEC reports going through September.

Vermont Democrat Sen. Bernie Sanders has so far pulled in the most money from individual contributors in Maine, where in 2016 he won the party caucus.

In the past 20 years, Maine lost more than half of its newspaper publishing jobs.

In the Maine county with the highest rate of opioid deaths in the state in 2016, three communities received some of the highest amounts of prescription opioids statewide from 2006 to 2012, according to data acquired through a freedom of information lawsuit by The Washington Post and HD Media.

From individual donors, incumbent Sen. Susan Collins received two of every $10 from people outside of Maine, according to the latest campaign finance reports.

Gov. Paul LePage last year picked 31 census tracts in Maine where investors could receive federal tax benefits.

Central Maine Power Co.’s controversial power line proposal winds its way through 37 different communities, which has elicited opposition from towns along the route and even from three communities outside of the project path.

After a rough 2018 election for Republicans in Maine, it appears they might have a statewide electoral problem: winning Maine’s truck country was not enough to take the Blaine House.

Want to know exactly where Central Maine Power Co. plans to weave its controversial power line through the state? Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection has the answer.

The subsidized newcomer to Maine’s biomass industry, Stored Solar, will miss out on at least 80 percent of the taxpayer dollars it could have collected under a two-year legislative bailout.

After you’ve found data relevant to your reporting, you have to figure out what role it’s going to play.

Before a reporter contacts any source, they need to understand why that person’s in a position to know the answer to their question.

This is the first in a series of posts covering the basics of what I’ve learned, with tools that require little – if any – any coding.

The door-to-door sales operation of a company selling electricity to homes and businesses in Maine faces new allegations of trying to defraud customers into contracts.

South Portland-based WEX on Wednesday disclosed CEO Melissa Smith gets paid 173 times the amount of the company’s median employee, a higher disparity than at Westbrook-based Idexx.

The company due to get $1 million from a competitive round of grants from a Maine economic development fund disclosed this week that its Arizona-based CEO gets paid 972 times the international firm’s median employee.

Idexx CEO Jonathan Ayers makes 121 times what the median employee of the Westbrook-based company brings home each year, according to new federal disclosures.

The number of hobbyist drones registered in Maine jumped to 7,416 by the end of January 2018, a nearly 160 percent increase from February 2017, according to Federal Aviation Administration data.

Maine officials will pick 31 of roughly 123 low-income areas of the state for new tax incentives that aim to help distressed areas. The question is, how will they go about doing that?

It was a busy and endlessly distracting news year (even including the 86 days President Trump went golfing). So – partly for my own accounting – here’s a rundown of the top stories from 2017, guided by my own notebook and a review of all the various things I filed this year (warning: there’s a ton).

Last weekend camping near the Dead River was a bit foggy and mostly cloudy, but when bits of sunshine came through, it was beautiful, especially from 400 feet up.

The latest chapter in the saga of subsidized biomass generator Stored Solar LLC took a curious turn.

A new batch of census data shows poverty fell and incomes and health insurance coverage in Maine was basically flat last year. Data released Thursday showed the share of the population on private insurance rose.

After some insisting, Maine state government published recommendations from consultants and others about rulemaking on the road to legalizing marijuana.