From lowering the cost of health care and health insurance to addressing our workforce shortage, there are many challenges facing our state – but with these challenges also comes the opportunity to chart a new and better course.

In the last several weeks, I have nominated 15 people for cabinet positions, and those 15 people have now been confirmed by the committees and by the State Senate. I presented those cabinet nominees only after a long search and review of nearly 1,000 resumes by a strongly bipartisan committee put together by my team back in November. I am very pleased with the results.

The new 15-member cabinet includes eight women and seven men; one Air Force, one Marine, and one Army veteran; and four commissioners who have resumed their former cabinet positions. This cabinet is the most gender-diverse in Maine history. They are experienced individuals who, together, will help usher in an era of new leadership in Maine.

Judy Camuso, Amanda Beal, and Jerry Reid will marshal a team of committed public servants who have a lot of common sense and a little bit of dirt under their nails to defend Maine’s natural resources at the Departments of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, and Environmental Protection.

Distinguished veterans Michael Sauschuck, Randy Liberty, and Major General Douglas Farnham have served their country well and will continue to serve our state as leaders of the Department of Public Safety, the Department of Corrections, and the Department of Veterans and Emergency Management.

Well-respected and experienced individuals like Laura Fortman, Anne Head, and Patrick Keliher have served under previous administrations and now resume their cabinet positions.

Jeanne Lambrew, Pender Makin, Heather Johnson, Bruce Van Note, John Rohde, and Kirsten Figueroa are experts in their fields who will lead Maine in addressing the top challenges facing our state in the areas of health care, education, and transportation, among other issues.

The people of Maine will be well served by the diverse experience of this new cabinet, with its wealth of knowledge and its commitment to our state.

And, these cabinet members will be freely sharing information with the people you elected to come to the State Capitol to serve in the Legislature and develop good public policy together.

So, with that cabinet in place, I look forward to working with them on behalf of you, the people of Maine.

Thank you.

Janet Mills

Governor