The Jan. 16 Portland Press Herald provided four examples of the LePage administration’s incompetence and wrong-headedness:

• Budget chief Richard Rosen says it is too soon to tell if small towns without substantial nonprofits will suffer most from the new tax plan. Would Marden’s make a budget plan without having a better idea of its overall impact? But then a business like Marden’s is not driven primarily by ideology.

• The Department of Environmental Protection rules that phthalates harmful to fetuses shouldn’t be used by children but are okay for adults, including pregnant women. This makes no sense, unless DEP Commissioner Patricia Aho still does not realize that she works for the people of the state, and not for the chemical industries she used to represent.

• The governor proposes a $2 million contingency fund to cover potential lawsuits that Attorney General Janet Mills declines to pursue. Up to now the attorney general turned down only two cases because they would have been a waste of state money. The administration spent $53,000 on private counsel for the first; the second is ongoing.

Apparently the governor expects to find many more ways to expend state resources tilting at legal windmills.

• The governor has decided not to nominate anyone to the Board of Corrections, leaving it without enough members for a quorum so it could meet and create a budget.

He says this structure is unwieldy, and that may be understandable. But rather than work with county officials and legislators to resolve the issues, he freezes the board and leaves the situation in limbo.

In the Jan. 15 Press Herald, we read about how Maine Community College System President John Fitzsimmons got bullied into resigning. What will the next days bring?

Neil Gallagher

Brunswick