Concluding that Maine's Clean Elections program "appears to be settling itself into the political landscape," a state ethics commission has released its report highlighting the strengths of the program, and offering a few suggestions to improve it. Maine passed its Clean Elections Act by ballot initiative in 1996 and the system has been in use for state legislative candidates and gubernatorial candidates for four cycles. The commission feels the program has been a good option for legislative candidates, but wants a higher threshold for qualifying contributions for gubernatorial candidates to receive public funds, and is looking at ways to address the rising influence of political action committees and independent groups and how that influence might be regulated.Here's a link to the full report (pdf) for a full list of findings and recommendations.