After worker complaints, TD Bank lets more of its Auburn call center workers stay home, beefs up cleaning.
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 inHealth, Lewiston-Auburn
CMHC says it can’t provide COVID-19 tests to show people are healthy
Central Maine Healthcare says it faces a barrage of test requests from people seeking to show their bosses they don’t have the disease.
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Posted inElections, Maine, Politics
Maine’s campaigns turned upside down by coronavirus
Candidates emphasize online presence, avoid handshakes and struggle to get petition signatures amid virus fears.
Posted inLewiston-Auburn, Maine, News
Bates College to close its campus and send students home
Bates was the last NESCAC college to yield to the coronavirus.
Posted inLewiston-Auburn, Maine
Fake flyers at Bates showed ‘blatant disregard’ for efforts to inform community of COVID-19 dangers
College officials decried the hoax and urged students, faculty and staff to ignore the flyers, which carried a forged signature of Bates’ president.
Posted inMaine, Politics
Republicans, Democrats split on whether to back Question 1
Maine Republican candidates favor vaccine referendum, Democrats oppose it and independents vary on how to vote.
Posted inMaine
Maine charity working to preserve languages worldwide
Rockland activists, whose work is featured in new Netflix documentary airing Friday in Camden, seeks social justice by preserving, fostering rare languages.
Posted inLewiston-Auburn, Maine, Politics
Susan Collins complains about misleading campaign advertising
At Republican dinner Saturday in Lewiston that barred the press, Maine’s senior senator expresses hope for winning a fifth term this year.
Posted inElections, Maine, Politics
Abortion foe from Auburn to challenge Susan Collins
Linda Wooten, a former Republican state committee member, is entering the U.S. Senate race as “the only pro-life candidate.”
Posted inElections, Maine, Politics
Once wary, Eric Brakey has come to embrace Donald Trump
The Republican congressional hopeful once called him “a disaster,” but now, locked in a three-way primary, views Trump as “the best president in my lifetime.”