Which issues will legislators push off until next year?
Members of the Maine House of Representatives during the first session of 2024 in the State House in Augusta. (Jim Neuger/ Maine Morning Star)
As the Maine Legislature approaches its anticipated last month of work, lawmakers are deciding which issues to defer until next year.
Maine has a two-year legislative session, so it is routine for several bills to be carried over into the second regular session to afford lawmakers more time to deliberate, amend proposals and negotiate.
Carry-over requests from committees are due to the presiding officers on Friday, according to a memo the Legislature's presiding officers sent committee chairs on April 29, though realistically all deadlines are moving targets until the end of the first regular session. The presiding officers have the final say on what will be carried over.
The total number of bills committees can request to hold should not exceed 5% of their anticipated overall bill load, according to an earlier April 9 memo that advised chairs to begin identifying bills they'd like to be carried over.
For example, for the Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee, that 5% amounted to an estimated six bills as of Monday. That number is higher for the Judiciary Committee, about 11 bills out of the 216 total it had as of Tuesday morning.
More bills were referred to committees during session on Tuesday and will continue to be throughout the week, so these numbers are not final.
As committees decide which bills to request to carry over, votes already taken give a sense of some of the issues that will likely not be decided until 2026.
Lawmakers on the Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee on Monday decided they need more time to contemplate a proposal, LD 1851, to create parity between the Wabanaki Nations in how much revenue they get from the state's slot machine income.
While legislators said they agreed with the spirit of the bill, they did not support the means it proposed to do so, which would involve a tax increase for Hollywood Casino in Bangor.
'I also have really enjoyed the work that we've been doing in the past few years, in regards to tribal gaming and trying to create equity there,' said co-chair Laura Supica (D-Bangor). 'So, I would ask the committee to consider carrying this over.'
The committee voted unanimously to do so on Monday with four members absent, though the chairs said they will reevaluate all of its proposed carry over bills as the week goes on to make a holistic plan for its recommendations.
In the Environment and Natural Resources Committee on Monday, Sen. Rick Bennett (R-Oxford) requested the committee carry over one of his bills, LD 754, explaining that it had drafting errors and needed additional work.
His hope with the bill is to complement other legislation that the committee endorsed this session to address lithium ion battery waste, especially from electronic smoking devices, he said. However, Bennett thinks the work needed on the bill cannot be done in the limited time remaining for committee work.
The Judiciary Committee has voted to carry over one bill so far, LD 1788, which would prohibit an agency or official from charging a fee to cover the actual cost of searching for, retrieving and compiling a noncommercial request of a public record for the first two hours of staff time.
Co-chair Sen. Anne Carney (D-Cumberland) suggested on May 6 that the bill be carried over and the bill sponsor, Rep. Rachel Henderson (R-Rumford), agreed. The committee followed suit with a unanimous vote among those present, with four members absent.
While both Carney and Henderson noted that substantial work has been put into the bill so far, they said expertise from groups such as the Right to Know Advisory Committee is needed to work through outstanding logistics.
'I'm still looking at two pages worth of issues to consider,' Henderson said. 'There are legitimate questions.'
The Judiciary Committee will also be sending a letter to the Right to Know Advisory Committee asking them to take up the matter for consideration and to invite Henderson to present on it before the Legislature returns for the second regular session in 2026.
Committees are racing to wrap up their work as the bulk of the action shifts to the chambers of the House of Representatives and Senate, which are starting to have lengthier sessions with floor votes.
Debate on the two-year budget is also expected to pick back up soon as the Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee has been meeting every day to cast votes on what to include in the plan.
At the end of March, Democrats pushed through a two-year budget that continued government spending at the same level but also included additional funding to address emergency needs. The majority did so without GOP support after Senate Republicans refused to support an earlier change package for the current fiscal year to address the MaineCare funding deficit, and some other urgent needs, unless it included structural reform to the healthcare program.
That plan did not include any policy changes to address the sizable budget deficit the state faces over the next biennium. Gov. Janet Mills' proposals to close that gap — tax increases and program cuts — as well as the requests from the public and lawmakers are being considered in this next iteration of the budget plan.
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"It's extremely difficult to recruit and maintain staffing," Poirier said. "We need to restore the full COLAs in the budget." Copy the Story Link
