On its final day before recessing, the Legislature repealed the tax on business equipment and raised minimum teacher salaries in two steps – to $27,000 this coming year and $30,000 the next. It also kept alive 17 bills currently in play between the House and Senate that will be taken up when legislators return to Augusta on May 22.
Among those bills is a $60 million highway bond and two proposals dealing with the Dirigo Health subsidized insurance program. One would cut in half the assessment or so called Dirigo tax that would be levied against private insurers to pay for the program. The other would allow the state to run the program itself as a self-insured plan, instead of contracting with Anthem.
A wild card bill that would require the governor to cut $1 million by eliminating eight or nine political appointees passed both the House and Senate before legislators left town, but likely will be reconsidered when they come back.
-Victoria Wallack, Statehouse News Service
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