The Maine Legislature has approved an $800 million spending plan that will be folded into the state's two-year budget. The sweeping proposal contains a wide array of initiatives, including start money for a new paid family and medical leave program and an income tax cut for pensioners. But the proposal failed to garner the margin of votes needed to allow it to go into effect immediately.
Overall, the spending package raises the state's biennial budget to roughly $10.6 billion by tapping a projected revenue surplus over the next two years.
And the revenues gave new life to an old partisan debate that pits the social value of spending on government programs against the fiscal prudence tax cuts.
Republicans repeatedly pushed for cuts, and Democrats, who control the House and Senate, brought forth a slew of their own priorities, including $25 million for the new family leave program and $36 million to expand child care subsidies and increase stipends for workers in the industry.
In Thursday's debate over the bill, Democratic Rep. Melanie Sachs of Freeport, cited many of those initiatives, but also highlighted a key concession to the Republican minority: increasing the income tax exemption for pensioners from $30,000 to $35,000 a year.
"Responsible, targeted tax relief is something both parties can support, and do support. And we do so in this budget," she said.
"There are other good things in this budget. I'm not going to say there aren't," said Rep. Billy Bob Faulkingham, the Republican minority leader from Winter Harbor.
Faulkingham had pressed for the pensioner exemption, which helped yield a bipartisan vote on the spending plan last week by the budget committee.
But ultimately, Faulkingham's GOP caucus balked when it came time to vote.
Republicans criticized the funding for the paid family leave program, which includes a payroll tax evenly split between workers and businesses. And they also blasted the elimination of a new, but popular property tax program for seniors that will be replaced by two existing programs that are beefed up in the spending bill.
Overall, Republicans were miffed because they felt they were steam-rolled by Democrats in negotiations.
Faulkingham argued that his party had attempted to bargain in good faith.
"But at the end of the day it felt less like a majority party trying to negotiate and cooperate with us, than a majority party seeing how little we would accept," he said.
Democrats countered that most of the budget had bipartisan support in committee and contained spending that Republicans support.
But just three Republicans voted for the spending bill, well short of a supermajority.
And that means the bill won't go into effect until 90 days after Gov. Janet Mills signs it, which she's expected to do sometime next week.
