Pat Flood wants you to know something: Most people in and around the Legislature, believe it or not, are good people who want to get things done.
The Republican from Winthrop, who left the Maine Senate last month after a decade of service in Augusta, said that during his time there, “the legislative process was just as the writers as of the Constitution intended it to work.”
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“I never received any inappropriate discussion from lobbyists or people working at the State House, never,” said Flood, 63. “It was always very refreshing and rewarding to me that everyone there was straight-up.”
For his service, the Kennebec Valley Chamber of Commerce will give Flood one of two Special Service awards at its annual ceremony on Jan. 23 at the Augusta Civic Center. The Kennebec Journal is a member of the chamber and a sponsor of the event.
Since Flood entered the Legislature in 2004 after a career with International Paper, he has had a reputation as a moderate, detail-oriented public servant respected by Democrats and Republicans. He also has served on the boards of local nonprofits, including the Family Violence Project and the Winthrop-area YMCA and the chamber of commerce.
Flood has been “a real gentleman and somebody who can get things done in the community,” said Peter Thompson, the chamber’s executive director.
From 2010 to 2012, Flood was co-chairman of the Legislature’s budget-writing committee, on which he served for eight years. Earlier this year, he was crucial in crafting a compromise deal that provided $5 million to reduce or eliminate waiting lists for hundreds of developmentally disabled adults needing home or community-based care.
“Finding agreement in areas that were ripe for disagreement was a very challenging and very rewarding kind of work,” Flood said.
He has also been willing, at times, to buck his party: In 2012, he and Sen. Roger Katz, an Augusta Republican, criticized Gov. Paul LePage for calling certain state employees “corrupt.”
This year, Flood endorsed independent Eliot Cutler in his unsuccessful campaign against LePage, who won a second term. He also backed Democrat Emily Cain over Republican Bruce Poliquin in the race for Maine’s 2nd Congressional District seat. Flood spent six years on the budget writing committee with Cain, who lost to Poliquin.
Sharon Treat, a Democrat from Hallowell who also left the Legislature in December, worked with Flood on many local issues, as diverse as the future of Hallowell’s Stevens School complex and a controversy last year that stemmed from a state crackdown at Hallowell bars lacking dancing licenses.
She said Flood was well-respected for his attention to constituent concerns, calling him a good “convener of the parties” in government, often working to get solutions that were “the best you can get under the circumstances.”
“I think that in the Legislature, people can have different points of view on the issues,” she said, “but it’s important to be someone who stands by his word and has an ethical center, and Pat has that.”
Michael Shepherd — 370-7652
Twitter: @mikeshepherdme
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