Citizen drive to block Cape housing project moves forward

“I drafted the petition and enlisted a group of 25 volunteers to circulate it,” said Cynthia Dill, a Portland lawyer, politician and a Cape Elizabeth resident since 2003. Volunteers included former Cumberland Country District Attorney Stephanie Anderson, a 19-year Cape resident, and Councilor-elect Tim Reiniger, who faced a vote recount this week, after the Forecaster’s deadline.

“I initially tried to convince the Town Council, through advocacy, that approving these housing amendments was a grave mistake,” Dill said in an interview this week. But many members of the council “signaled at every step of the way that they were going to just plow this thing right through,” she said.

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Cynthia Dill
Affordable housing proposal in Cape Elizabeth evolves amid scrutiny

“Cape Elizabeth does not have a housing crisis,” said Cynthia Dill, a prominent Democrat who is a lawyer and former state senator. Dill lives in the town center neighborhood, just around the corner from the project site. Her home has an estimated market value of about $882,000 across real estate websites.

“We’re a high-income town and should not be subsidizing a for-profit, low-income housing project because it doesn’t address our affordable housing needs,” Dill said.

The project would only “maximize profits” for the developers and requires “special rules” that would discriminate against other property owners in the town center zone, Dill said.

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Federal judge holds first hearing in lawsuit against secretive police unit

The Maine Attorney General's Office asked the judge to dismiss most claims in a whistleblower lawsuit that says a state trooper was retaliated against for objecting to police surveillance practices. “This would be the case that says, look, if you’re going to take this money and you’re going to do this job to collect this data, you have to abide by the Privacy Act,” attorney Cynthia Dill said. “How much more notice do these people need that they are in fact obligated to comply with the Privacy Act?”

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Cynthia Dill
Law enforcement officials promise greater transparency of controversial Maine Information Analysis Center

"Based on his observation of the MIAC, he believed that this activity was happening and of course the litigation will test the evidence and the legal question to be resolved by a jury or court in my case is whether or not my client was retaliated against for bringing what he reasonably believed was unlawful activity to the attention of his superiors," the former trooper's attorney Cynthia Dill told NEWS CENTER Maine.

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WCSH6Cynthia Dill