AUGUSTA, Maine — Municipal officials, struggling with uncertainty over the costs of providing General Assistance benefits to legal nonresidents, have received letters from the state confirming that cash reimbursement is on its way.
The state Department of Health and Human Services is notifying communities that the agency will reimburse 70 percent of the welfare costs to cover the needs of more than a thousand asylum seekers in Maine who are waiting to have their federal work permits approved. The department is also drafting rules to define their eligibility.
Even as the letter from DHHS arrived in the mail, Portland city officials were debating how they would cover the costs of food, housing and other essentials to people applying for asylum. Most live in Portland, where the city council had set up a $2.6 million dollar community support fund for that purpose.
The money was set aside after Gov. Paul LePage adamantly opposed reimbursing the city for General Assistance, as specified under a new state law.
Jessica Grondin, communications director for the city, says the last several weeks provided some anxious moments.
"We weren't sure what DHHS was going to do," Grondin says, "so that's why the council passed the community support program, and so we are going to continue to fund that for September and October until the new law goes into effect on the 15th [of October]."
LePage missed his chance to veto the bill after he misread the Maine Constitution's timetable for issuing vetoes.
LePage asked the state Supreme Court to weigh in and the high court ruled against him. That decision, coupled with the apparent fizzling of a People's Veto movement to overturn the law, have combined to take the pressure off Portland and other communities.
Grondin says there is at least one loose end to tie up.
"We're still in a little bit of a waiting pattern until we find out who is eligible," she says. "The community support fund might morph into something that is used for those who are not eligible, but that's something that will have to be decided by the Council and by the community leaders that we've been working with."
Health and Human Services officials have notified municipalities that they are developing rules to define how asylum seekers can satisfy eligibility requirements for government assistance. And while that may cause some anxiety for applicants, State Rep. Drew Gattine of Westbrook says the process will likely be a lot less restrictive than some imagine.
"It is a positive that they're going to do the rulemaking, we need to keep an eye on it," says Gattine, House chair of the Legislature's Health and Human Services Committee. "The good thing about a rulemaking is that it follows a very well-defined process and people get a voice in determining what the rules are actually going to say at the end of the day."
Robyn Merrill, the executive director of Maine Equal Justice Partners — a low-income advocacy group — agrees that whatever rule the department comes up with, it will have comply with the new law.
"Presumably the rule will provide coverage that is exactly what the law states, which is people who are lawfully present or people who are pursuing a lawful process to apply for immigration relief," Merrill says.
At DHHS, spokesman David Sorensen said that while the department is complying with the law, poor and elderly Mainers will now have to fend for themselves while the state pays out millions to people he calls nonqualified aliens.
"Well this is just another unfortunate reminder that the Legislature decided to go against Gov. Paul LePage and the will of Maine people — it's just not right," Sorensen says.
The bill officially becomes law Oct. 15.