Representative Laurie Osher is serving her second term in the Maine House of Representatives.

Osher serves on the Legislature’s Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry Committee. She is the Legislature’s representative to the HIV Advisory Committee and also serves on the Secretary of State’s State Calendar Working Group. She is the leader of the Legislature’s Progressive Women's Caucus, LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus and the Jewish Legislator’s Caucus. She is also a member of the Council of State Governments East's Agricultural and Rural Affairs Committee, a coalition of neighboring states and provinces working together to address regional issues in agriculture and its impacts on the rural economy.

Osher moved to Maine in 1999 to be a research and teaching faculty member at the University of Maine in Orono after earning a PhD in Soil Science at the University of California, Berkeley and working as a Research Associate with the Environmental Protection Agency. Prior to attending UC Berkeley, she worked for the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service in Alaska, Colorado and California, United States Agency for International Development in Peru, the USDA Soil Conservation Service in North Carolina and with an environmental consulting firm in Massachusetts.

Outside of the Legislature, Osher is the community resilience specialist at Eastern Maine Development Corporation. In this capacity, she assists communities in Penobscot, Aroostook and Piscataquis Counties to be more resilient to extreme weather events. She draws on her expertise in soil science, watershed management, land use planning, building energy use efficiency, community organizing, project planning, grant writing and grant administration to work with town managers, select board members, town counselors and community volunteers to identify issues of concern, propose solutions, plan projects and write grants to fund them.

In the Legislature, Osher is dedicated to creating a state program that incentivizes land management practices that improve soil health and increase soil carbon sequestration and also to implementing guidelines for outdoor lighting that increase safety while also reducing nighttime glare and preserving Maine’s dark skies. She has introduced legislation to revise the tax system to make it fairer, to fully fund services for adults with disabilities, to create harm reduction health care centers as a tool to save lives, to expand gender-affirming care in Maine and to improve Wabanaki Studies in Maine schools.  She supports raising the minimum wage, works to pass bills ensuring the civil rights of LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people and recognizing the sovereignty of Maine’s indigenous nations.

Osher serves on the boards of the Maine Jewish Film Festival and A Wider Bridge. She served on the Orono Town Council from 2017 to 2022.

Osher holds a BS from Cornell University, an MS from North Carolina State University and a PhD from UC Berkeley. She is the solo parent of adult twins, Noam and Zivi.

To view a high resolution photo of Rep. Osher click here.

My Latest News

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Committee

Rep. Osher is a member of the Joint Standing Committee on Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry.

Brief description of the subject matter handled by the committee: Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry; agricultural fairs, products and marketing; animal control and welfare; food safety, inspection and labeling; dairy industry; pesticides regulation; nutrient management; farmland preservation; state parks, historic sites, public lands, submerged lands and coastal islands registry; Maine Land Use Planning Commission (LUPC); geological surveying and mapping; forest management, marketing, utilization, health and fire control; the Land for Maine's Future Program; and Baxter State Park.

For more information about the schedule of committee hearings or to sign up for advance notice of public hearings click here.

Legislation

Click on the button below to see all bills, joint resolutions and orders I sponsored or cosponsored this session, as well as legislative sentiments that honor and recognize people from our district and throughout the state.

To do a general bill search, click here.

Contact Me

Thank you for taking time to contact me. You may use the online contact form to reach me.

You can also contact me at my home:

13 Mayo Street
Orono, ME 04473
Laurie.Osher@legislature.maine.gov

When the Legislature is in session, you can leave a message for me by calling the State House Message Phone: (800) 423-2900 or the State House TDD Line: Relay 711.