AUGUSTA, Maine - Before beginning a six-day recess early Wednesday morning, Maine lawmakers enacted LD 369, a controversial bill that would provide limited General Assistance funds for about 1,000 asylum seekers in Maine, most of whom reside in the greater Portland area.The Maine House and Senate provided final approval without a recorded vote on the measure that faces a promised veto from Gov. Paul LePage. Supporters of the bill are now preparing for a GA showdown between the governor and the Legislature.
It costs the state of Maine a little more than $3 million a year to reimburse municipalities taht provide General Assistance to asylum seekers. That money for housing and food represents a little less than 1 percent of the state's $6.7 billion two-year budget.
But it's not really the dollar figure that's triggered Gov. Paul LePage's objections to the program. For him, it's a matter of principal - and, to some extent, legislative process. And that's why he plans to veto a bill that would provide up to 24 months of General Assistance benefits for asylum seekers - the people he calls illegal aliens.
"The people of Maine have been disenfranchised, and I expect that we've got to get as many people to at least look at the bills as possible if you're going to be run by a minority," LePage said.
LD 369 was originally crafted to deny benefits to asylum seekers who are lawfully present in Maine, but who have not yet been declared refugees. A recent court ruling bolstered the state's position that it does not have to reimburse cities and towns for the costs of General Assistance for asylum seekers, so long as there is not declarative Maine statute for that purpose.
So then, the bill was amended to address that requirement. It would now provide up to 24 months of GA benefits to lawfully present immigrants who can demonstrate that they are trying to obtain asylum.
A majority of all four caucuses in the Senate and House signed on to the revision, with the exception of one: the House Republicans, who have the votes to sustain LePage's veto of the bill. Ken Fredette is the House Republican leader. "I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that that bill will be sustained," he said.
A sustained veto carries a $2.5 million price tag for the city of Portland if it chooses, on its own, to continue providing assistance to nearly 1,000 asylum seekers who live in the area. Portland Mayor Michael Breenan says he will meet with the City Council tonight to discuss how the city should proceed. "I always am hopeful that there's a legislative miracle," he says.
Demonstrators from the city's immigrant community plan to make their feelings known on the issue outside City Hall. Many of them are grateful for the amendment by GOP Sen. Amy Volk, of Scarborough, that would permit the capped GA benefits for asylum seekers, whom she says she has come to know as good citizens and hard workers.
And Volk said last week that's something Maine needs more of. "Between 2006 and 2010, there were over 2,700 new immigrant owned businesses," Volk said. "Maine's immigrant-owned businesses brought in $120 million in net income in 2014."
Those kinds of arguments produced a 29-5 vote in favor of the amendment in the Senate last week. But opponents, such as Sen. Eric Brakey, an Auburn Republican who sponsored the original anti-GA bill, says Volk's policy makes Maine an outlier.
"We're only one of four states that provides these sorts of benefits," Brakey said. "As a poor, mostly rural state, our taxpayers cannot afford welfare to everyone from everywhere."
Those Republican arguments, along with others that maintain the GA money spent on asylum seekers should be redirected to Mainers who are elderly, the infirmed or mentally ill, fail to sway supporters who say denying help to those from foreign lands seeking a better life in Maine is downright un-American.
In fact, Rep. Peter Stuckey, a Portland Democrat, told his seatmates last week that's it's even worse than that. "It leaves me speechless, Mr. Speaker," Stuckey said, "speechless because it's more than that - it's a thinly-veiled excuse for not standing up to our responsibilities to each other as human beings."
LD 369 is now sitting on the governor's desk awaiting his promised veto pen.