‘March majority madness': Legislative Democrats pass two-year budget over Republican objections

Yahoo

21-03-2025

Sen. Mark Lawrence (D-York) rises to express his intent to work across the aisle on the change package to come on the budget plan. (Emma Davis/ Maine Morning Star)
The Democratic majority of the Maine Legislature voted through a roughly $11.3 billion two-year budget Thursday night without Republican support, leaving funding for the urgent needs rolled into this plan tied up until late June.
Exactly a week prior, a smaller supplemental budget bill — seeking to fill the current year's funding gap for MaineCare, the state's Medicaid program — finally died in non-concurrence with all but two Senate Republicans opposed after bouncing back and forth between chambers for more than a month.
Democrats decided to pursue that funding in this two-year budget bill, which they've otherwise described as a continuing services budget to maintain funding for government services at the same level and will later consider policy changes in a separate budget. This is the approach the majority party in Augusta has taken the past few sessions, which Republicans have in the past and again on Thursday criticized as silencing them.
The Senate voted 18-17 to enact the budget around 10:40 p.m., after the House voted 76-66 to enact around 10 p.m. Those votes largely mirrored the initial votes on the bill in both chambers earlier Thursday. While largely party-line, Democratic Sens. Stacey Brenner of Cumberland and Craig Hickman of Kennebec joined Republicans in opposition in the upper chamber.
Without Republican support, the budget only secured a simple majority in both chambers, falling markedly short of the two-thirds support needed to make the funding available immediately.
Therefore, the Legislature took the procedurally necessary step to technically adjourn for the year shortly after midnight on Friday in order to start the clock to allow the budget to take effect in 90 days, which will be just before the start of the next fiscal year on July 1. All other bills will be carried over into the next regular or special session, which is expected to be called imminently.
The budget bill now heads to Gov. Janet Mills who can sign it, allow it to become law without her signature or veto the plan.
'The future of our national economy is uncertain,' Rep. Drew Gattine (D-Westbrook), co-chair of the Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee, which set the budget plan late Friday, said on the House floor.
'The impact of things like tariffs will have on our state economy are uncertain,' Gattine continued. 'The impact of actions by the executive in D.C. or the United States Congress create uncertainty, especially in programs like Medicaid. These are unstable and uncertain times, but this bill provides some stability.'
Appropriations Senate co-chair Peggy Rotundo echoed this sentiment in the upper chamber Thursday night.
'This baseline budget reassures Mainers their state government will not shut down over political disagreements,' Rotundo said.
The budget does not include any of the new taxes or program cuts Mills proposed in her plan for the next biennium, which had totaled $11.6 billion. Those policy changes will be considered in another two-year budget bill that the majority party says it plans to introduce next.
'I don't know how anyone can say an $11.4 billion budget is a 'Part 1,' 'Part 2' budget,' said Rep. Ken Fredette (R-Newport), a budget committee member. 'That leaves a lot of unanswered questions.'
Among those questions is how much additional spending will be proposed.
Republicans argued in floor speeches that the budget already surpasses the $11.2 billion in revenue the state is projected to see over the next biennium and should have included cuts.
Sen. Rick Bennett (R-Oxford) was a rare voice among Republicans in not objecting to the budget being a majority plan. 'We think about these things in partisan terms far too much,' he said. 'I object to this budget because it represents a dramatic failing of the Legislature to do its job.'
As he has before, Bennett critiqued the budget process for only offering public hearings on new policies and not allowing for the opportunity to re-evaluate baseline spending, which the budget plan passed Thursday continues.
Rep. Michael Soboleski (R-Phillips) said Maine needs a 'department of government efficiency,' referring to the federal agency headed by billionaire Elon Musk.
Others critiqued the plan as short-sighted. Assistant House Minority Leader Amy Bradstreet Arata (R-New Gloucester) argued the budget is largely funded using one-time sources of revenue, including the education stabilization fund.
In addition to $118 million to address the current MaineCare shortfall, the budget includes $1.3 billion for MaineCare in each year of the next biennium, in addition to what the state gets through federal match.
However, Republicans questioned why the budget doesn't account for a likely funding gap the program will see again in 2027.
Democrats defended the move as prudent in light of possible changes to Medicaid coming from the federal government and said their intention is to consider additional dollars when the state revenue forecast is updated in May.
Medicaid funding fix fails final votes in Senate with Republicans maintaining opposition
Gattine pointed to other proposed state-level changes that may be considered in the next biennium, including the governor's suggestion to change MaineCare's baseline funding and Republican proposals to limit who is eligible.
Republicans had wanted the supplemental budget to include a temporary freeze on enrollment for able-bodied, childless adults and to eventually create a permanent program cap, as well as adding work requirements for that group.
'When it came to this particular item, it just made sense to me that we would make sure there was funding for the MaineCare program on July 1,' Gattine said Friday night, referring to the next fiscal year, 'and then defer the other conversations about what we're going to do with the rest of the spending in the next bill that will all do together.'
Republican budget lead Rep. Jack Ducharme of Madison said on the floor Thursday that he is not opposed to much of what the budget includes — meeting the state's voter-mandated 55% share of public K-12 education costs and 5% of revenue sharing, as well as filling the $118 million MaineCare funding gap and providing $2 million to treat a growing outbreak of spruce budworm, a destructive insect that threatens Maine's northern forests.
'However, it appears that they don't believe that we have a chance of coming together for a two-thirds budget,' Ducharme said, pointing to Mills' request for a consensus budget during her State of the Budget address in January. 'The problem is we haven't tried.'
Later in the Senate, Minority Leader Trey Stewart (R-Aroostook) said, 'The only commitment that's being made tonight by the majority party is to completely ignore the minority.'
Sen. Jeff Timberlake (R-Androscoggin) put it another way. 'This is March majority madness,' he said, calling back to past years when majority budgets have similarly been pursued.
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While Sen. Joe Baldacci (D-Penobscot) said he understands the need for deliberations, at some point a decision has to be made.
'Priorities have to be set. People have to be paid. Services have to be provided,' Baldacci said. 'This can't be an interminable discussion.'
Sen. Rachel Talbot Ross (D-Cumberland), former Speaker of the House, said it felt like the Senate was playing a game.
'If we do not pass this budget, and that's the collective we, Maine people lose,' Talbot Ross said. 'That's all of Maine people.'
Sen. Anne Carney (D-Cumberland) urged her colleagues to focus not on 'perceived slights from each other' but to instead think about what a vote on the budget means.
The simple majority outcome leaves the allocations tied up until late June, which presents clear complications for the urgent needs rolled into this biennial budget bill.
The state already started withholding some payments to health care providers that rely on MaineCare, while representatives of the forest industry have cautioned that there is a narrow treatment window this spring.
The budget also includes cost-of-living adjustments for certain essential support workers that the Mills administration started withholding in January, a move lawmakers and the public have argued is illegal.
Procedural tussles ran a throughline in both chambers before the decisive votes came down late Thursday.
In the House, consideration of amendments was interrupted by a failed attempt to suspend the chamber rules to allow Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn) to speak about her proposals.
Libby has been unable to vote or speak on the floor since Feb. 25, when the House voted to censure her for posting personal information about a transgender minor on her legislative Facebook page. Under the House rules, an apology to the body is required for a censured lawmaker to regain those abilities and Libby has declined to do so.
Faulkingham again brought up Libby's censure before floor votes on the full budget bill and called into question the validity of the vote.
'This is a power trip that's happening,' Faulkingham said.
House rejects effort to end censure of Auburn lawmaker who posted about trans minor
Objections continued Thursday evening when House Speaker Ryan Fecteau (D-Biddeford) suspended the House rule that business cannot be conducted after 9 p.m. and a majority of the House later voted to sustain the suspension, but Republicans pointed back to the rules, which state a two-thirds majority of members present is needed to dispense a rule.
In the Senate, Stewart requested a series of roll calls on routine readings of the bill, to which Sen. Rick Bennett (R-Oxford) raised a point of order objection.
House Republicans attempted to add initiatives to the budget bill on Thursday by introducing 17 floor amendments, many of which had also been proposed for the supplemental budget bill. All amendments failed.
One of those amendments, proposed by Rep. Quentin Chapman (R-Auburn), would have limited General Assistance to no more than three months over two years, unless the person is employed, attending school or engaged in volunteer work.
Mills initially proposed limiting housing assistance under the program and the supplemental budget had been amended to include some limits, but those were not included in the two-year budget.
Republican amendments underscored the issues the minority party will be pushing through other legislation, such as repealing Net Energy Billing, a utility program designed to encourage customers to participate in small-scale renewable energy projects like solar panels by offering credits to offset their electricity bills. There are several individual bills aimed at amending or doing away with this program.
One of Libby's amendments sought to prohibit institutions that allow transgender girls to participate in women's sports or use female locker rooms or restrooms from receiving state funding, restrictions also being considered in separate bills.
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