Something has been missing from the public hearings on a proposed plan to ease congestion on Congress Street: the public.

What will the end of the Afghanistan war look like? It’s important to articulate it now.

That $6.1 billion, two-year budget legislators passed last week wasn’t exactly what any of them wanted, but they sent it to the governor. It definitely wasn’t what the governor wanted, but he signed it. Was it what the people of Maine, who sent all these folks to Augusta to run state government, wanted?

There remains some confusion about just what voters had in mind last November when they chose Republican Paul LePage as governor and elected Republican majorities in both houses of the Legislature.

The governor and some Republicans are convinced that the election results amounted to a mandate to overhaul state government and reconfigure its priorities, with no quarter given to potential opponents. Others, including, it appears, two-thirds of the state’s lawmakers, believe the voters were demanding a more bipartisan and realistic approach to dealing with the state’s problems.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan knows how to throw his weight around. Two years ago, he leveraged $4 billion in federal stimulus money into a competitive grant program called “Race to the Top.”

States like Maine changed their laws to add more flexibility and accountability to their educational policy in hope of getting some more federal support.

Most states ended up like Maine – out of the money . . .

Some place will be the home base of a new energy industry and Maine could be it.

Or it will, if Gov. LePage swallows cuts to some of his priorities for the sake of harmony.