By Michael Shepherd - Feb. 7, 2023
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📷 The Maine State House glows in an evening fog in Augusta on Dec. 7, 2022. (BDN photo by Troy R. Bennett)

Good morning from Augusta. The Legislature is in today. Here are the House and Senate calendars. The budget panel gets an orientation on the two-year budget at 1 p.m. and continues voting on a short-term budget later. Watch it.

What we're watching today

Those on both sides of a paid leave initiative hope the Legislature can make a deal. Advocates for a sweeping paid family and medical leave program in Maine are coming to the State House on Tuesday to rally supporters and brief lawmakers on the two proposals that are prompting action on the subject.
It is the symbolic kickoff of policy talks that are expected to be complicated.

For one, the supporters have a potential trump card in a referendum they are trying to get on the 2023 ballot. If their effort qualifies and they are not satisfied with the Legislature's action on the subject, Mainers will vote on a plan from by progressive groups including the Maine People's Alliance and the Maine Women's Lobby. But a legislative commission has come up with a similar and potentially more progressive proposal that it outlined in a Tuesday report.

These advocates think they have a political winner. Polling conducted for them in October from Pan Atlantic Research found 70 percent support across Maine's electorate for such a program, including 57 percent of those planning to vote for former Gov. Paul LePage, the Republican who lost to Gov. Janet Mills in November. A majority wanted the plan mostly funded by employers.

Only 11 states offer these kinds of insurance programs, including Massachusetts. The kind of program we are talking about would be a big one. Cost estimates prepared for the legislative commission last year suggest both iterations would cost more than $400 million per year. The referendum version would be funded by new payroll taxes with businesses with more than 15 employees and their workers evenly splitting a 0.86 percent tax.

Mills opened her tenure by negotiating a grand bargain on paid leave that united progressives and business interests by requiring employers with more than 10 workers to provide at least 40 hours of leave per year. Many expect the Democratic governor to be heavily involved in these talks as well, though she does not appear to be yet. She has pledged to not raise taxes, although not engaging on the topic could simply leave it voters to do so.

Possible political inevitabilities are spinning the business lobby into action. On at least one thing, they agree with Destie Hohman Sprague, the executive director of the Maine Women's Lobby, who said Monday that she would prefer a legislative solution on the issue.

"If we can get a bipartisan solution out of the Legislature, that's something we can all feel really good about," she said.

When asked how the business lobby could keep negotiations on track in the Legislature, Peter Gore, a lobbyist aligned with the Maine State Chamber of Commerce, said if he knew, he would be "the smartest guy in Augusta."

But he said it was important for his side to stay engaged on it, calling it the marquee policy conversation in the State House this year. In the end, he nodded to the fact that the paid leave advocates would have to be satisfied with any solution.

"The question is: Does it pass muster with the people who want to who are proposing the ballot initiative?'" he said of a potential compromise. "It's complicated, because the Legislature could pass something and somebody could say, 'Well, that's not enough.'"

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News and notes

📷 President Joe Biden delivers his first State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol on March 1, 2022, in Washington. (Pool photo by Jim Lo Scalzo via AP)

🎤 Maine's departing health official will hear the president speak tonight.

◉ President Joe Biden's State of the Union address comes Tuesday night in Washington and the Maine guests are headlined by Nirav Shah, the outgoing head of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, who is getting his ticket from Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Democrat from Maine's 1st District.

◉ Shah will be spending much more time in Washington soon, as he is set to depart Maine in March to become the No. 2 official at the U.S. CDC.

◉ Sen. Susan Collins' guest will be former intern Jillian Haggerty of Houlton. Other members of the delegation had not released their guests as of Tuesday morning.

🔑 Portland landlords want the ability to reset rents when tenants leave.

◉ A landlord group is gathering signatures to change rent control rules in Maine's largest city, eliminating a 5 percent cap on rent hikes when a tenant voluntarily leaves a unit. Read the text.

◉ The effort is being proposed by the Rental Housing Alliance of Southern Maine, led by broker and developer Brit Vitalius. His group has a tight Feb. 17 deadline to submit the 1,500 signatures needed to qualify for the June ballot.

◉ “It’s not the way we wanted to do this, but we realized this is a simple and obvious fix,” Vitalius told the Portland Press Herald.

◉ “This is exactly the opposite direction we want to go in,” former Mayor Ethan Strimling, a leading progressive voice, told the newspaper. “Our city right now is becoming more and more economically stratified."

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What we're reading

🎈Collins will examine the U.S. response to China's spy balloon at a hearing.

🌅 Acadia National Park wants to raise entry fees this summer.

🆔 A debate over voter ID returned to the State House, Maine Public reports.

⚖️ The grandmother of slain 3-year-old Maddox Williams pleaded guilty to helping her daughter evade police.

📝 Maine could be the first state to have detailed data on its homeless population.

📛 These Maine towns used to have different names.

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