Maine Senate President Mattie Daughtry, D-Brunswick, and House Speaker Ryan Fecteau, D-Biddeford, are urging lawmakers to reject a slate of proposals that would either amend or repeal the state's nascent paid family and medical leave law.
Efforts to overhaul or outright repeal the law come before any benefits have been paid, but just a few months after payroll taxes kicked in to fund the program.
Those taxes and a benefit that will pay 90% of a worker's wages, depending on income level, for up to 12 weeks have raised concerns from employers about sustainability, private plan substitutes and potential workforce shortages for smaller and seasonal businesses.
But Daughtry, who led the effort to pass the 2023 law, contend that the program was built after years of painstaking analysis and lawmakers should only consider small, technical changes.
"To pull the rug out now, to repeal it, to make it voluntary or carve out broad exemptions without the back work, would be an enormous betrayal. It would undermine the commitment this legislature has made to the people of Maine," Daughtry said.
Republican-backed bills to repeal the law won't advance in the Democratic-controlled legislature. But at least one bill backed by business groups might get some traction. It has bipartisan backing and it would reduce the benefit to 65% of a worker's wages, while also allowing some smaller and seasonal employers to deny the benefit under the law's undue hardship provisions.
The Mills administration testified against the tax changes in that bill, not the overall proposal.
Maine is among more than a dozen states with a PFML law. Its backers argue that it's up to states to adopt such programs until Congress does and joins the U.S. with other industrialized countries offering paid family leave benefits.
