A compromise bill to plug the state's budget gap and avoid reduced MaineCare payments to health care providers stalled again in the Maine Legislature Tuesday after most Senate Republicans reversed their previous support of the measure on enactment.
The fate of the $121 million bill was in limbo Tuesday evening.
The proposal is designed to resolve a weekslong stalemate between Republicans and Democrats and seemed poised to pass with the two-thirds margin needed to pass as an emergency. However, all but two of the Senate Republicans who supported it during initial votes did so on enactment.
The Senate initially voted 31-2 to advance the amended spending bill which balances Maine's budget for the next four months. The House then vote to enact the bill, 113-27. But when the proposal bounced back to the Senate, nine Republicans flipped and voted against it, thereby denying the supermajority needed to enact the proposal as an emergency.
To gain Republican votes, Democrats agreed to limit housing vouchers within the state's general assistance program to 12 months within a three-year period. That provision isn't as stringent as Gov. Janet Mills had proposed and Republicans called for, but Democrats saw it as a compromise that would give people using the vouchers more time before losing housing assistance.
The proposal also includes cost of living increases for direct care workers.
The vote on the compromise occurred just hours before curtailed payments to providers were set to go into effect Tuesday at midnight.
