Democrats controlling the Maine Legislature are securing key policy victories during the halting and chaotic close to the legislative session. However, they’ve also left questions about intraparty comity and whether they’ve sown the seeds for a minority Republican comeback in next year’s election.
For now, the electoral implications of the laws enacted by the 131st Legislature are speculative. So is the exact end date of a session that has careened well past its anticipated adjournment and won’t likely end until after the July 4 holiday. It was originally supposed to end in mid-June, but Democrats’ maneuver to enact the $10 billion, two-year budget in late March without Republican support — to neutralize the threat of a government shutdown on July 1 — has left the current “special session” open-ended. Doing so has exacerbated lawmakers’ tendency to leave big, contentious debates to the end of a session.
This week lawmakers in the House immediately pivoted from an impassioned debate over Gov. Janet Mills’abortion expansion bill to oneinvolving gender-affirming care for minors. At the same time, Democratic and Republican budget writers were attempting to craft a bipartisan spending plan to amend the two-year “baseline budget” rammed through in March.
While observers (and reporters) tend to overstate the importance and implications of the sausage making, there’s no doubt that the last few weeks have created tensions among Democratic leaders as they try to get the session over the finish line. There have been thinly veiled complaints about the pace of work in the House, where a logjam of bills left the Senate lurching between debates, recesses and days of no legislative work at all. Legislator absences — some strategic, others a hallmark of the citizen legislature — have factored into the outcome of key proposals, while others are still unresolved.
Below is a rundown of what we know about the high-profile bills and what’s hanging in the balance.
Abortion
The governor’s abortion bill was one of the proposals affected by legislator absences. It was also the subject of rumors about legislative horse trading — votes for one bill in exchange for votes on another.
However, the bill is now on a clear path to become law after House Democratsaverted a near disaster last week and Senate Democrats delivered comfortable margins this week. There’s still one more vote needed in the Senate before it goes to Mills, but there’s little doubt that it will end up on her desk and with her signature.
The long-term political ramifications of the bill, however, are unclear. Abortion opponents have been energized by the proposal, which allows the procedure later in a pregnancy if a doctor deems it medically necessary. They’ve alreadyfloated the prospect of a people’s veto if it becomes law.
While some legislative Democrats are wary of the bill, others are championing it as part of a dramatic expansion of abortion rights a year after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which has since led to widespread restrictions or outright bans in Republican controlled states. The proposal has also overshadowed an array of legislation that allows for MaineCare coverage of the procedure, the elimination of insurance co-pays and deductibles for abortion services, prohibiting municipalities from passing their own abortion rules and providing legal safeguards for providers who treat patients from states with the abortion bans.
Overall, the slate of legislation will leave Maine with some of the least restrictive abortion laws in the country.
Tribal bill veto looming
There’s little doubt that Mills will veto a bill that is a top priority for Wabanaki tribal leaders in Maine. The question is: Can House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross maintain the razor-thin margin needed to override a gubernatorial veto? Or will partisan tensions over other issues — most notably abortion — cost her with the Republicans she will need to get around the Democratic governor?
The bill, LD 2004, targets language in the 1980 settlement between the state and the tribes that allows the state law to preempt federal law when it comes to the four federally recognized tribes in Maine. How often that preemption has occurred over the past 43 years and why is hotly disputed, as is whether LD 2004 would improve or further destabilize relations between the tribes and the state.
Tribal leaders say that living under state regulation has held their communities back economically, especially when compared to the more than 500 other tribes nationwide that have much broader powers to self-govern. The Mills administration contends the bill is vague, poorly crafted and will only lead to more legal battles between the tribes, the state, municipalities and private entities operating on or near tribal lands.
As of Friday morning, the bill is sitting on Mills’ desk. However, a veto is likely. Earlier this week her chief legal counsel held a background briefing with reporters to outline the governor’s array of concerns with the proposal.
The measure passed the House last week on a vote of 100-47. It takes two-thirds votes in both the House and Senate to overturn a veto. So Talbot Ross, who is the bill’s lead sponsor and arguably the top advocate for tribal sovereignty in the Legislature, will need every one of those supporters to stick with her.
This past week’s intensely partisan and emotional fight over expanding access to later-term abortions in Maine has nothing to do with tribal rights, of course. But in the waning days of a legislative session, unrelated issues can sometimes become linked. And it will only take a handful of supporters to flip their votes, or not cast one at all, to derail the bill.
Mills has until Monday to veto the bill.
Paid family leave
Democrats made joining Maine with the roughly dozen states with paid family and medical leave programs a key priority this year. The votes to pass it were never in doubt.The question was whether Mills, who has long shown deference to the business community concerns, would sign it.
The governor made her intentions clear Thursday by announcing that she’ll endorse the leave bill even though business groups remain opposed to it.
“Is this bill perfect? No,” the governor wrote in an op-ed appearing in the Portland Press Herald. “But no compromise legislation ever is. With the changes adopted by the Legislature, however, I believe the bill strikes a balance that guarantees the benefits for working families in a way that is financially stable over the long term while avoiding significant hardship on the co-employees, employers, customers, and clients who depend on continuity and stability in our workforce and economy.”
Business groups have rejected the idea that the proposal is a compromise between them and Democratic lawmakers, but rather a deal between lawmakers and the progressive groups who were prepared to launch a referendum if the legislation failed.
Nevertheless, the proposal will soon become law and that means employees and employers will see a new payroll tax to fund the program. They’ll split the costs, but the state will have to kick in $25 million to get the program up and running. That funding is included in a bipartisan budget agreement that still needs votes in the House and Senate.
Spending deal
For weeks it seemed unlikely, but the Legislature’s budget-writing committee cranked out a bipartisan spending plan literally in the dead of night this week that achieves – at least partially – major Democratic and Republican objectives.
Democrats set aside $25 million in seed money for the new paid family and medical leave program. The funding dealforeshadowed Mills’ announcement Thursday that she’ll sign the bill.
Republicans, meanwhile, were able to secure an increase in the income tax deduction on pensions from $30,000 to $35,000. While that’s a far cry from the $200 million in tax relief they had been pushing for, it will save older Mainers tens of millions of dollars annually.
And there were plenty of bipartisan initiatives, including:
- $30 million to double the wage stipend for child care workers from $200 to $400 a month.
- Increasing eligibility for child care subsidies for families from 85% of the state’s median income to 125%.
- More than $30 million for emergency medical services, which are struggling with manpower and demand.
The Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee met sporadically and negotiated much of the deal behind closed doors, frustrating even veterans of the budgeting process. And this year’s process was clouded early on by Democrats’ March budget maneuver. But Democrats pledged to work with their Republican counterparts on the second, $800 million-$900 million budget. And that ultimately did happen.
“This has been probably one of the more challenging budgets that I’ve ever worked on,” said Rep. Sawin Millett, R-Waterford, who has spent decades helping to craft state budgets as both a legislator and as a top financial official in state government. “I’m happy that we’ve reached this point.”
The full House and Senate will have to approve the budget, likely next week. And the Appropriations Committee still must decide how to divide the remaining, small pot of unspent money on other legislation. Hundreds of bills that received initial approval by the full Legislature are awaiting funding. And the vast majority won’t get a penny, leaving a long list of bipartisan initiatives to wither and die on the budgetary vine.
The unresolved
The fate of several high-profile bills remains unclear, some dividing the Democratic controlled Senate and House.
Among them is a bill that would require background checks on private gun sales. The Housenarrowly approved it earlier this week, but the Senatemoved to spike it a day later. It’s likely the proposal will die between the two chambers whenever the Legislature adjourns. That means there will once again be little change to Maine’s gun laws outside of one proposal that creates a state ban on straw purchases, which is the buying of a gun on behalf of someone prohibited from owning one. (There’s already a federal ban on such purchases.)
Overhauling a ratepayer subsidy program for solar development is also unresolved, although lawmakers appear poised to pass some sort of change amid warnings from Public Advocate William Harwood that the program will soon bring significant costs to ratepayers. So far, the Senate has approved a bill, backed by solar developers, that will only narrowly trim the subsidies. The House this week advanced a bill that cuts those subsidies more significantly.
A final vote is also needed to determine whether the Legislature will enact a citizen-initiated bill for the first time in 16 years. The proposal bars some foreign-government owned entities from electioneering in ballot campaigns. It was spurred by Mills’ veto of a similar measure in 2020, yielding a referendum campaign that has already qualified for the November ballot. Supporters want the Legislature to enact the electioneering ban instead. The proposal has received affirmative votes in the House and Senate, but neither have been by a two-thirds margin that would be required to override Mills if she vetoes it.
Maine's Political Pulse was written this week by State House correspondent Kevin Miller and chief political correspondent Steve Mistler, and produced by digital editor Andrew Catalina. Read past editions or listen to the Political Pulse podcast at mainepublic.org/pulse.
