Speak Up with Laurel Libby

How fraud becomes your tax bill...What if the reason Augusta keeps asking you for more money is that no one stopped the money it already lost? Dr. OJ Oleka, CEO of the State Financial Officers Foundation, shows exactly...

Mike Miles took over Houston ISD (170,000 students, the largest district in Texas) in June 2023. The district was broken: 121 D and F schools, 1,900 chronically absent teachers, zero focus on instruction quality...

Owen McCarthy grew up in a trailer on his grandfather’s land in Patten, Maine, the son of a logger and a school lunch worker. He became the first in his family to finish college, co-founded the Maine health-tech company...

Maddy Curtis is in her early twenties, a homesteader in training from Washington County, and she came to politics through history, not headlines. In this conversation, we talk about why no single election decides...

Maine spends $1.4 billion a year on MaineCare, one of every four dollars the state spends. When a provider overbills, the state often calls it an "improper payment"... even if there is fraud involved... and lets the...

<p>What happens when a Maine mom who doesn't follow politics sits down with her state rep and just starts asking questions?<br>Libby Fotter, a homeschooling mom of four daughters from Auburn, joins Laurel for a...

<p>Government surveillance... creepy, intrusive, and unconstitutional! </p><p>Automated license plate readers are spreading quietly across Maine towns, scanning and logging every car that drives past, innocent travelers...

<p>Maine's June 9 primary will use Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV), and a lot of voters are still not sure how it works. Here's the solution!<br>We recorded our in studio Lead Maine event, "Ranked Choice Voting Decoded,"...

<p>The same week the Maine Legislature passed the data center moratorium (which would later be vetoed), American Energy Institute dropped a report showing $39 million in foreign funding behind the groups pushing for the...

<p>Rohen Brown was 18 years old, running the last race of her high school career, when she stepped onto the Western Conference Championship podium in second place. The athlete in first was a male who had been competing...

<p>What happens when a doctor has time to actually know their patients?<br></p><p>Dr. Zev Myerowitz has spent over a decade in Maine's healthcare policy debates. But his real argument is practical, built from years...

<p>I met Parker Brownrigg on a flight. He's 26, grew up in Lewiston, graduated Maine Maritime, and paid off over $100,000 in student loans before his 27th birthday. He also can't buy a house in Maine. We talked about...

<p>Mississippi policymakers prioritized science-based reading over the last decade and saw the nation's greatest gains in reading scores as measured by the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP), also known...

<p>Amy Sussman is a wife, mother, longtime Mainer, and aunt of Max Hathaway, a victim of the tragic October 2023 shooting in Lewiston. Max was 35 at the time, a father of two with another on the way, and that day...

<p>Laurel brings on Jason Snead to discuss the absurdities of Ranked-Choice Voting, how the national movement for RCV has stalled (thankfully!), and what Mainers can do to push back on this extreme form of election...