Central Maine News: LePage’s Administration Says More than 9,000 Mainers Removed from Food Stamps since Enforcing Work Requirements

These are some of the stories central Maine is talking about today.

Madison is struggling with a loss of tax revenue and some are proposing to save money by dissolving the local police department. If that were to happen law enforcement duties would move to the Somerset County Sheriff's Department. The town plans to hold a public hearing on the plan. The lowered assessment of the Madison Paper Industries mill hit the town hard and left local leaders looking for ways to reduce municipal costs. Madison would save about $130,000 annually by contracting with the sheriff's department. (AP)

Gov. LePage's administration says more than 9,000 Maine residents have been removed from the food stamps program since it began enforcing work requirements last year. The number of people dropped from the program exceeded the administration's expectations. Advocates say they fear it's forcing more residents to rely on food pantries. Under the change, adults who are not disabled and do not have dependents cannot receive food stamps for longer than three months unless they work at least 20 hours a week, participate in a work-training program or meet volunteering requirements. DHHS had said 12,000 nondisabled adults were in the program before Jan. 1. That number has dropped to 2,680. (AP)

Gov. LePage has postponed a meeting with reporters to discuss additional law enforcement positions to address the state's drug problem. That decision came moments before the governor announced that he had fired Brig. General James Campbell of the Maine National Guard.

LePage said in a statement that he lost faith in the ability of the former Army Ranger and regular Army and National Guard officer to lead Maine soldiers and airmen following an internal review. The governor's announcement was made at the same time Campbell was to address the Legislature. The joint session was cancelled, and Campbell didn't immediately return a message left at his office. Brig. Gen. Gerard F. Bolduc will serve as acting adjutant general. (AP)

Maine residents who are campaigning for the state to legalize marijuana say they are ready to file their proposal for a ballot initiative. The group calls itself The Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol and it's an effort of the Washington, D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project.

The initiative says adults age 21 and older would be allowed to possess up to one ounce of marijuana and grow up to six marijuana plants at home. It also creates a "tightly regulated" retail and cultivation system. The Maine Secretary of State will review the initiative. If it approved, the group needs to collect 61,123 signatures to get on the 2016 ballot. (AP)

A girl from Sanford turns to President Obama for help making friends. Katie Osmer wrote the President a letter asking if he had advice on how the shy 9-year-old could meet people. Katie sent her letter more than a year ago. Months later, President Obama sent a handwritten letter back. "He said the best way to make new friends is to join groups and clubs," said Katie.Then another surprise She received a call inviting her to the White House for the Annual Easter Egg Roll. Katie is raising money to get to Washington for the Egg Roll. (WGME)

For the second day in a row, an apparent cyberattack took down the state of Maine's website. Service to Maine.gov was restored by 9:45 a.m.  The outages lasted about 2 1/2 hours. According to WMTW, Monday, the same person took credit for knocking out Maine.gov for three hours. Officials said a denial of service attack overwhelmed the state's servers, causing the website to go down. There was no breach of data and denials of service attacks are a tactic used by hackers to overload servers with thousands of requests. State officials are working with local and federal law enforcement to track down the source of the cyberattack. (WMTW)

Waterville expects to generate $430,000 a year with the pay-as-you-throw trash collection system it launched in September through trash bag sales revenue and reduced tipping fees, according to City Manager Michael Roy. According to the KJ, he was discussing city revenue Tuesday night at a budget workshop with city councilors and some department heads. The city had estimated it would reduce its trash tonnage by 40 percent with pay-as-you-throw, but it actually decreased by 55 percent. Not everyone is happy with the new system; in fact, voters at a referendum scheduled for June 9 decide to repeal pay-as-you-throw.  It will be important for voters to know all the facts around the issue. (centralmaine.com)