Some worry the move might spur more commercial sex in Maine as pimps tell young exploited women ‘you won’t get in trouble because it’s legal in Androscoggin.’
Steve Collins
Columnist
Steve Collins became an opinion columnist for the Maine Trust for Local News in April of 2025. A journalist since 1987, Steve has worked for daily newspapers in New York, Connecticut and Maine and served as the State House reporter for the Sun Journal since 2016. The Maine Press Association named him Maine's Journalist of the Year in 2022. Among his other awards are the Society of Professional Journalists’ 2016 Ethics in Journalism Award, the I.F. Stone Whistle-Blower Award in 2015 and the Bob Wallack Community Journalism Award from the New England Newspaper & Press Association. Steve is a founder and board president of Youth Journalism International, a charity that teaches students around the globe about news writing, media literacy and issues of the day. His wife, Jackie Majerus, serves as its executive director. Born in Massachusetts, he grew up in a military family that took him to Norway, Ohio and Virginia, where he earned a degree in history from the University of Virginia. He and Jackie live in Auburn. They have two adult children, two collies and not enough time.
Posted inLewiston-Auburn, Maine
Bates College shelled out more than $6 million for pandemic-related costs
Savings on wages, travel and more has college convinced it will end fiscal year in June in decent shape financially.
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Posted inLewiston-Auburn, Schools and Education
Bates students support Palestinians, denounce college
Bates College student government and others decry decision to call police over anti-Israel graffiti as ‘a censure of student voices.’
Posted inMaine, News, Schools and Education
Bates is latest Maine college to mandate vaccination for all students
The college said Tuesday it won’t allow students to return in the fall unless they are vaccinated.
Posted inMaine, News, Schools and Education
Anti-Israel graffiti at Bates College sparks state investigation
Slogans were written in chalk on the side of at least one building on the Lewiston campus.
Posted inNation & World
Minot native faces federal charges in connection with U.S. Capitol siege
Mitch Simon, 30, charged with joining the insurgents who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 in bid to stop Joe Biden’s succession to the presidency.
Posted inMaine, News, Schools and Education
Bates students seek ‘to defund and disarm’ campus security officers
A Friday rally aims to push college administrators to go further than this week’s decision to take away the batons carried by otherwise unarmed security personnel.
Posted inLewiston-Auburn, Maine
Upgrading the Androscoggin River under a new bill sparks debate, pushback from businesses
The bill would upgrade some sections of the Androscoggin River to a Class B, adding additional water protections for what was once one of the most polluted rivers in America. Environmentalists and recreationalists support the idea. Businesses that use it as a way to get rid of waste do not.
Posted inMaine
Come up with new safety rules, legislators tell funeral home regulators
Lawmakers said they want rules that would keep drivers safe when they are transporting bodies in Maine.
Posted inMaine, News, Schools and Education
Bates College fires a top campus safety officer for violating use-of-force policies
Lead Campus Safety Officer Dennis Skinner, who was fired for an incident in which he tackled a student, said he didn’t try to restrain that student until he pushed him.