Maine Legislature at stalemate over budget addition

Yahoo

8 hours ago

Budget committee co-chair Sen. Peggy Rotundo (left) and Assistant Majority Leader Jill Duson (right) listen to debate on the budget on March 20, 2025. (Photo by Emma Davis/ Maine Morning Star)
This story will be updated.
The chambers of the Maine Legislature are in disagreement over a roughly $320 million budget addition to the $11.3 billion biennial budget passed in March.
With some Democrats joining Republicans in opposition, the Maine House of Representatives failed to advance the plan Wednesday morning, while the Senate cast a party-line vote in favor.
The initial conflicting votes come after the Democratic majority on the Legislature's Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee set the budget proposal early Saturday morning without Republican support.
While added appropriations in the plan total about $320 million, the bill has a lower fiscal note — $117 million — due to a range of cost cutting measures — taxes, some cuts, and transferring unexpected surpluses. The net cost is also lower than the roughly $127 million that remained after the initial budget passed in March.
The plan rejects some of Gov. Janet Mills' proposed cuts, such as to childcare programs and low-income food assistance, as well as proposed taxes on ambulances and pharmacies. However, the plan includes Mills' proposed tax additions on streaming services, cannabis, pensions and cigarettes — the latter at an even higher amount than the governor requested.
'Republicans had started from a position of no new taxes and we remain in that posture,' Republican budget lead Rep. Jack Ducharme of Madison said on the House floor.
On the Senate floor, Minority Leader Trey Stewart (R-Aroostook) also criticized the majority party for not taking 'a serious look back about our state's financial disrepair,' nodding to the state budget audit he called for before session began.
Committee sets budget plan with party-line vote
But Republicans were not the only members of the House to have objections, as the budget bill failed 71-77 on the first vote before the chamber then voted against its passage without a roll call. Following the Senate's vote 19-15 in favor, the bill now heads back to see if the House will change its stance.
Through tears, Rep. Nina Milliken (D-Blue Hill), who voted against the budget, urged her colleagues to reject regressive taxes, which have a greater impact on people with lower incomes, and instead push for a model that taxes the wealthy more — even if the governor, who has opposed any income-based tax reform, ultimately vetoes it.
'Democrats across this country right now are calling for Republican members of Congress to stand up to the executive branch, because they are a separate co-equal branch of government and they should be asserting their power as such,' Milliken said, referring to push back against President Donald Trump.
'We are a separate co-equal branch of government,' she added. 'We owe it to our constituents to do better, to tax people who are super wealthy, so that the poorest people in our communities see some relief.'
After both chambers narrowly rejected a 'millionaire's tax' in initial votes, the Senate reversed its stance Monday night, sending the measure back to the House to reconsider. The proposal would place a tax surcharge of 2% on the portion of a resident's taxable income beyond $1 million for single filers to be used to fund public K-12 education.
As the Legislature continues to debate the budget bill Wednesday, lawmakers are expected to propose a number of floor amendments. One proposal, filed by Rep. Sally Cluchey (D-Bowdoinham), would tack on this 'millionaire's tax.'
The budget plan being considered also effectively stops the state's free community college program for future graduating classes, against the governor's request to make it permanent. Several bills currently pending were also worked into the budget plan, including proposals to alter the child tax credit and real estate transfer tax. Read about more of the details of the plan here.
Sen. Cameron Reny (D-Lincoln), an appropriations committee member, said in a floor speech that the budget is as much about avoiding harm as it is about providing for Mainers, a sentiment both of the committee chairs also shared.
'This is not a flashy budget,' co-chair Sen. Peggy Rotundo (D-Androscoggin) said. 'It's a workhorse — steady, thoughtful and grounded in real need.'
Rotundo asked her colleagues to vote for the budget 'not because it gives everyone everything they want' but because 'it reflects who we are, a state that cares deeply, spends responsibly and plans wisely for the future.'
Rep. Drew Gattine (D-Westbrook) made a similar plea in the House earlier Wednesday.
'This budget meets the moment,' Gattine said. 'It addresses the biggest issues that Maine people are facing, and protects critical investments that we've made in the past in health care, food security, education, housing and child care.'
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Meanwhile, Rep. Amy Bradstreet Arata (R-New Gloucester), another member of the appropriations committee, argued the budget plan was built on a 'house of cards,' pointing out that it was balanced, in part, by an unexpected $24 million estate tax after two recent deaths and that it doesn't provide the full expected cost-of-living increase for direct care workers.
Also, projections for the following biennium present an approximately $246 million increase based on the ongoing spending in the budget plan.
Republicans have filed several floor amendments to the budget, including to increase MaineCare funding for veterans homes, hire more state troopers, remove the proposed increase to the cigarette tax and ensure timely payments to service providers.
Arata and Rep. Ken Fredette (R-Newport), who is also on the committee, argued that the state's budgetary needs for the next fiscal year have already been met.
'This is a tax and spend supplemental budget,' Fredette said.
In March, the Democratic majority pushed through a two-year budget plan without Republican support and formally adjourned in order to start the clock for those funds to become available in 90 days, which will be on Friday.
Senate Republicans refused to back an alternative short-term plan that would have immediately filled the current deficit for MaineCare, the state's Medicaid program, because it did not include structural reform to the program.
That budget continued funding for state services at the same level while also providing one-time funding for MaineCare and other urgent needs. But it didn't include any of the policy changes Mills proposed to address the deficit and flattening revenues.
Some Republican legislators tried to collect signatures to allow Maine voters to overturn the budget passed in March but failed to reach the needed threshold, the leader of the people's veto effort, Rep. Gary Drinkwater of Milford, announced on Tuesday.
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