Rep. Laurie Osher

Rep. Laurie Osher is serving her third term in the Maine House of Representatives.

Osher serves on the Legislature’s Environment and Natural Resources Committee and previously served two terms on the Legislature's Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry Committee and one term on the Council of State Governments East's Agricultural and Rural Affairs Committee.  

She is the Legislature’s representative to the HIV Advisory Committee and also served on the Maine Climate Council Working Lands Working Group and the Secretary of State’s State Calendar Working Group. She is a member of the Legislature’s Progressive Women's Caucus, LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus, and Jewish Legislators Caucus. 

Osher's legislative agenda includes creating a state program that incentivizes land management practices that improve soil health and increase soil carbon sequestration, improving the Board of Pesticide Control's data collection and management, and creating statewide 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 the teaching of Wabanaki Studies in Maine schools. She supports raising the minimum wage and works to pass bills ensuring the civil rights of LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people and recognizing the sovereignty of the Wabanaki Nations.

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, the United States Agency for International Development in Peru, the USDA Soil Conservation Service in North Carolina and with an environmental consulting firm in Massachusetts. In 2009, she founded Osher Environment Systems, a consulting and general contracting company that assists clients in making their buildings more energy efficient and resilient to extreme weather events.

Outside of the Legislature, Osher is a community resilience specialist with Maine Community Resilience Associates. In this capacity, she assists communities in central and northern Maine to increase their energy efficiency and to be more resilient to extreme weather events and other impacts of climate change. She works 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.

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 bachelor’s degree in Agronomy and International Agricultural Development from Cornell University, an master’s degree in Soil Science and Geomorphology from North Carolina State University, and a PhD from UC Berkeley. She is the solo parent of adult twins, Noam and Zivi.