Samantha Horn on MOCA’s Collaborative Approach to Strengthening Maine Communities
Sonja Heyck-Merlin interview with Samantha Horn
The Mitchell Center and the state of Maine have a deep history of cross-pollinating practical solutions to address our state’s sustainability challenges. The newly created Maine Office of Community Affairs (MOCA), led by Samantha Horn, which merges several state programs under one umbrella, aims to strengthen this type of connection. With historical ties to many of the programs that will fold into MOCA, the Mitchell Center hopes to further develop these relationships to build stronger and more resilient Maine communities.
At the end of 2024, Governor Janet Mills appointed Horn to lead MOCA. Horn brings three decades of experience in land use and natural resource policy across Maine. Her spectrum of public service has included roles at the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, the Maine Department of Marine Resources, the Maine Land Use Planning Commission, and The Nature Conservancy.
State programs that MOCA brings together include:
- Community Resilience Partnership (Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future)
- Maine Coastal Program (Dept. of Marine Resources)
- Maine Floodplain Program (Dept. of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry)
- Municipal Planning Assistance Program (Dept. of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry)
- Housing Opportunity Program (Dept. of Economic and Community Development)
- Maine Uniform Building and Energy Code/Code Enforcement (Office of State Fire Marshal)
- Volunteer Maine, an independent state office connected to the Dept. of Education that supports a stronger Maine through volunteerism
- State Resilience Office (newly established and supported by a $69 million National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration grant)
- Flood Ready Maine, to assist with flood resilience information, as a result of LD 1
In merging these programs, MOCA aims to provide the connective tissue local governments need to more efficiently approach challenges and pursue solutions for issues affecting Maine communities including climate adaptation, sustainable energy, housing, transportation, economic development, and funding.
I spoke with Horn in June of 2025 about MOCA’s development and Maine’s connections to the Mitchell Center. The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
What are some of MOCA’s goals?
With close to 500 municipalities in Maine and the Wabanaki Nations, state agencies have to find innovative ways to reach every community. In bringing these programs under one roof, MOCA aims to provide a backbone of technical assistance, grant funding, and policy guidance.
There are lots of other kinds of networks out there that are already providing really great services to communities. We don’t want to supplant that or replace it. We would like to all work together.
For example, we would like to make it easy to access technical assistance materials so that as providers like universities or non-governmental organizations go about their work in each community, there are materials that they’re all drawing from and can customize to the needs of each community. After the State Planning Office went away during the LePage administration, some of these functions have been somewhat scattered. We’re pulling them back together, and we’re looking at what the networks are for each of these programs and trying to understand how we can make things more efficient — bring the pieces together, so that it’s easy for providers and communities to get the service they need from us.
How’s it going at MOCA?
We’re definitely in startup mode. I’m doing everything from thinking about big picture policy to ordering staplers. Brian Ambrette was recently hired to be the State Resilience Office director, so right now, it’s Brian and myself in our space. Our building custodian Mary, who’s wonderful, says that we should throw away more trash! We also have a wonderful part-time project manager helping us get organized. But we expect that this time next year the office will be full which is great. We will have around 35 to 40 people depending on how some of our funding sources play out.
What are your days like?
I’ve been meeting regularly with the state program directors. I’m doing my best to learn about what they do, so we can see the opportunities to work across the different programs. I also have some longer term projects that I am working on. For right now, a lot of my work is responding to the legislature, taking care of the nuts and bolts of setting up the organization, or meeting with groups who are affected by what we do. It’s definitely a whirlwind, but I knew that when I took the job. It’s a really important public service role that doesn’t come along very often, so I am happy to live in the whirlwind for a couple of years.
Can you talk about previous work you have been involved in with the Mitchell Center?
I previously served as the director for science at The Nature Conservancy (TNC) of Maine. We were thinking about ways that we could support state government in advancing climate work, and we had an idea that we would develop a set of standardized metrics for communities to use to get a sense of their progress in reaching their climate goals.
The Nature Conservancy reached out to the Mitchell Center to lead the development of this project. Through the Mitchell Center’s work, we eventually got some feedback that a different product would be more helpful. People were really asking for a workbook that would provide collective dialogue about what resources were out there and what actions communities could take. For nearly two years, my TNC and state government colleagues and I worked with the Mitchell Center team* and GOPIF to create the Community Resilience Workbook.
*This team was led by Bridie McGreavy and Adam Daigneault, master’s student Joey Alexander, as well as Linda Silka and David Hart.
The Community Resilience Workbook is being updated. How will it differ from the original version?
A really strong multidisciplinary team has been collaborating with university folks to put the workbook into an online portal format to make it more accessible. The idea is that there will be a way for communities to ask questions of the portal to learn where the resources are without having to be an expert. The portal will have options for simple and then more sophisticated queries. For example, if a community wants to know more about living shorelines, the portal will provide easily searchable information plus links. It’s very content based.
It’s intended to live side-by-side with a funding portal that we’re working on. GOPIF is leading on that one, and it will live in MOCA. Between the workbook and the funding portal, communities will have a lot of information at their fingertips.
How do you see the ongoing relationship between MOCA and the Mitchell Center evolving to build sustainable, thriving communities?
The Mitchell Center is a good place to go when we have issues that could really benefit from an interdisciplinary perspective — either from a research basis or just from the expertise of the faculty. It’s a good touch point to get that coordinated feedback and to get pointed in the right direction. As we identify issues we really want to dig into, it’s nice to have the Mitchell Center there as a partner to coordinate an interdisciplinary faculty effort.
It’s not clear yet which of the things that we’re charged with are going to shake out as needing university-level attention. We’re still in the phase of understanding what’s going to come out of this legislative session and what all of our priorities will be. As that starts to become clear and we start to do more work on the ground, it’s really good to know that the Mitchell Center is there to consult with.
How does the MOCA approach to building collaborative networks differ from the Mitchell Center?
MOCA is focused more on providing the backbone function of policy guidance, funding, and providing technical assistance materials. The Mitchell Center, on the other hand, is bringing together lots of practitioners and researchers to talk about what those materials should say.
The Maine community-led Energy & Climate Action Network (MAINECAN) supports and connects community groups that are interested in implementing projects to help make their communities more resilient to a changing climate and access the benefits of a sustainable energy transition. Early on, the Mitchell Center recognized the value of this network and continues to provide administrative, financial, and advisory support. How do you see MOCA interacting with MAINECAN?
As MOCA has priorities that relate to topics MAINECAN addresses, MAINECAN is a wonderful collaboration to go straight to the source and talk to people. And similarly, as MAINECAN surfaces things that MOCA should be considering, they can advise us on what they think we should take up as a priority or what some real opportunities are for better serving communities.
I could see us working closely with MAINECAN at times, and then less so at other times as both organizations react to priority topics and as our collective availability and funding rises and falls over time. Because there’s this big network in Maine, we can do dynamic adjustments where sometimes we’re collaborating really closely and then other times we hold on more loosely as people’s energy is directed elsewhere. I think it’s great that we can be flexible like that. So as MAINECAN ramps up for a particular project, if there’s a MOCA interface, we’d be really happy to work closely.
How can UMaine and the Mitchell Center help grow the next generation of leaders and problem solvers?
I think more and more we’re seeing in Maine, in particular, that solutions are coming from the local level. I think it would be great if UMaine and the Mitchell Center can emphasize that there are important roles at all levels of government and in public service more broadly. Sometimes it can be really appealing to work in a policy role that gets statewide attention, but a lot of what happens that affects people day to day happens at the municipal level. I think preparing students and making it attractive to go into public service at all levels would be a real benefit to the state.
I don’t think people grow up thinking, “I’m going to be a town manager.” But, there are a lot of really important things that town and city managers do, and the same could be said for many roles in local government. If we can strengthen the quality of the pool for towns to choose from when they hire a local leader, I think it’s going to make a difference because everything we try to accomplish as a state ultimately rolls up from local communities.
We need to introduce students to the idea that they could have a meaningful role at the local government level or in a local nongovernmental role, like land trusts or economic development organizations. That’s another reason I’m so grateful for the Mitchell Center’s work. When students first enter the Mitchell Center, they see a wonderful quote from Senator Mitchell that begins: “The ethos of the Mitchell Center’s work reflects one of my deepest beliefs: the importance of public service.” Whether through internships, graduate research projects, service learning classes, or other programs, the Mitchell Center is creating unique opportunities for students to experience the opportunities and rewards of helping address local challenges in Maine.
For additional insight into MOCA, listen to Horn’s keynote address at the 2025 Maine Sustainability & Water conference, titled “Finding Each Other: Networks as a Source of Strength in Uncertain Times.”