By Michael Shepherd - April 14, 2022 Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up.
Good morning from Augusta. There are six days until the Maine Legislature is set to leave the State House for the year.
What we're watching today
The process of finalizing a huge spending proposal has been oddly quiet. Republicans hold the key to closing it. Entering the final week of the 2022 legislative session, the chatter around the biggest thing lawmakers are working on has been oddly sparse. The budget committee is making steady progress on finalizing a version of Gov. Janet Mills' $1.2 billion spending proposal. There have been no weekend sessions of the type usually seen in the waning days, making things look quite functional compared to past years.
The Democratic governor boxed in just about everyone in the State House with her election-year document. The $850 relief checks that would go to 800,000 Mainers as part of her proposal were cribbed from a Republican demand made late last year. Mills left only a small part of the budget unallocated for the Democratic-led Legislature to spend on dozens of measures that have been lingering without funding, frustrating more progressive members.
All of this has worked to make the budget less controversial than it could have been in an election year. The powerful budget committee only saw its first set of divided votes on Tuesday, when two Republicans, Rep. Amy Arata of New Gloucester and Patrick Corey of Windham, opposed scores of new government positions in the document. The panel has nonetheless whittled down Mills' initial request of more than 200 extra positions to fewer than 160.
Republican leaders, most notably House Minority Leader Kathleen Dillingham of Oxford, are now trying to figure out what the rank-and-file members want in any eventual deal. House Republicans are more unpredictable than their Senate colleagues. About two dozen of them likely need to vote for the package for it to win the requisite two-thirds approval in both chambers to take effect immediately.
Legislative Republicans have been putting forward evolving sets of demands throughout the budget process. In late March, they suggested expanding the $850 payments to all taxpayers, even those at the top of the income scale, which would mean 120,000 more checks and $100 million more devoted to them. They also want the payments direct deposited when possible. Former Gov. Paul LePage, who is running against Mills in November, has also been talking about tax relief for retirees and legislative Republicans have suggested exempting pensions and retirement income from taxes.
They are not likely to win these changes this late in the process in the Democratic-led Legislature. While the ideas may be governing principles for a Republican majority in Augusta, they largely amount to attempts to create election-year contrast around a budget document that has not been all that controversial. The question now is whether any of this is an impediment to closing the budget altogether.
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What we're reading
— Sen. Joe Baldacci, D-Bangor, is part of a late effort to allow casinos into a new mobile sports betting market. The late bid could imperil Mills' deal with tribes to give them sole control of that market while saving in-person betting for casinos and off-track betting parlors. Penobscot Nation Chief Kirk Francis took a dim view of the attempt, saying passing the Mills measure is a top priority.
— A measure giving the Passamaquoddy Tribe at Sipayik more control over their long-fraught water supply cleared the Maine Senate on Wednesday by a margin suggesting lawmakers have the votes to override a potential Mills veto.Â
— Maine wants you to kill more female deer. Due to overpopulation in some areas, a proposed rule change would allow hunters to harvest a buck and then at least one antlerless deer if chosen in an antlerless deer lottery.
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10:30 a.m. House Speaker Ryan Fecteau, D-Biddeford, will lead a 9:45 a.m. State House news conference on more changes to his housing reform bill.Â
12 p.m. Mills will speak at the Governor’s Conference on Tourism at the The Westin Portland Harborview. The annual event is where key tourism figures for the previous year are released and the upcoming peak season is previewed.
📷  Lead photo: Maine House Minority Leader Kathleen Dillingham, R-Oxford, asks for a roll call vote on a bond proposal on Aug. 26, 2019, in Augusta. (BDN photo from Troy R. Bennett)
