AUGUSTA — A new Maine Legislature is set to start work Wednesday. And the upcoming session is shaping up to be anything but business as usual.

Along with having to build and adopt a new two-year state budget, lawmakers will wrestle with the impacts of four major new laws passed by voters in November, from legalized marijuana to a new education tax.

Maine’s firebrand Republican Gov. Paul LePage, meanwhile, is intent on securing a legacy of tax cuts and welfare reform as he heads into his final two years in office.

The November election also shaped a Legislature that is almost evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, a new dynamic that sets the stage for close and less predictable votes.

Adding to the uncertainty are a new president and Congress promising to enact federal reforms that could have a range of impacts that Maine’s Legislature would have to react to.

In all of this, 186 individual lawmakers will also have the opportunity to change laws or create new ones. Bills already in the pipeline – and there could be more than 2,000 of them – range from proposals specific to local towns, such as those to modify or create new sewer and water districts, to bills that could affect the entire state or even the Legislature itself, such as one that would require a 72-hour review period before final votes on the state’s budget.

‘BREATHLESS SPECULATION’

Maine’s relationship with the federal government under a new Republican administration in Washington, D.C., could have reverberating effects on state policy and revenues.

Campaign promises by President-elect Donald Trump to repeal and replace Obamacare or otherwise reform Medicaid, the state and federally funded health care program for the poor, would affect Maine’s health care and anti-poverty policies. A change in the federal government’s stance on medical and recreational marijuana, or other changes on trade and environmental policy, under a more conservative president and Republican-controlled Congress also would impact policymaking in Maine over the next two years.

“Politics in America has changed, and there are going to be some things from D.C. that are going to be different,” said returning Maine Senate President Michael Thibodeau, R-Winterport.

LePage’s communications staff is for now downplaying the potential for the spillover effect of federal reforms, saying LePage is focused on crafting his next two-year budget proposal – a law that has to be put in place by June 30 to avoid a state government shutdown. The rest is “all breathless speculation at this point,” said Peter Steele, the governor’s director of communications.

And, so far, LePage has refrained from touting any new harmony with an incoming Trump administration, although the governor did support Trump’s campaign and appeared with him in Maine twice in 2016.

REACTIONS TO REFERENDUMS

Maine voters made history in November by passing four citizen-initiated referendum questions, creating the framework for major new laws that will require action by the Legislature and state agencies.

The votes legalized recreational marijuana, created a 3 percent tax surcharge on high earners to pay for public education, raised the minimum wage to $12 by 2020 and established ranked-choice voting in future elections.

The marijuana vote is set for a statewide recount, although it won with a margin of 4,000 votes and is not expected to be overturned.

LePage, who opposed all of the questions, has made overtures to incoming lawmakers, asking them to dull the impact of the voter-approved measures to raise taxes and the minimum wage.

LePage is required to formally certify the referendum results by Dec. 8, but<URL destination=”http://preprod.pressherald.com/2016/12/02/lepage-says-possibility-of-fraud-means-election-results-cant-be-guaranteed/”> last week questioned the integrity of Maine’s elections in a letter to lawmakers.

</URL> In a Nov. 23 letter, the governor urged lawmakers to “lessen the impact of two referendum questions approved by the voters that will cause significant economic harm to restaurant workers, small businesses, successful people and our elderly.”

What steps could legislators take to lessen the impact? They could lower the income tax by more than 3 percent, which would offset the voter-approved surcharge on the wealthy. They could also rework or repeal a portion of the minimum wage referendum that applies to tipped workers such as waitresses, who under the change would also see their minimum wage go to $12 an hour by 2024. LePage has argued restaurants and bars will eliminate tipping with a $12-an-hour minimum wage, which would ultimately be a pay cut for service sector workers, and at least one group has formed to petition lawmakers to exempt employees who earn tips from the minimum wage requirements.

LePage has also said the hike in the minimum wage will drive up the price of goods and services – hurting the lowest-income elderly, about 75,000 Mainers, the most – and said the organizers of the wage hike campaign were guilty of “attempted murder.”

But House Democratic leaders have said they are not interested in rejecting the will of the voters.

Incoming Speaker of the House Sara Gideon, D-Freeport, and Rep. Jared Golden, D-Lewiston, the incoming House assistant majority leader, said Democrats intend to enact the voter-approved ballot questions despite LePage’s request to delay or derail them.

“I think we’ve heard pretty clearly from the voters on the minimum wage and on funding for education,” Golden said. “We are definitely not overturning any of them; we are not going to simply ignore a majority of Maine voters on this stuff.”

Golden said those who say voters didn’t know what they were doing when they passed the ballot questions are wrong.

“I have a lot of respect for voters, for people in general. I don’t buy the argument that voters didn’t understand,” Golden said. “They knew what they were voting on and they approved it.”

GOVERNOR’S FOCUS ON INCOME TAX

LePage’s desire to nullify the impact of the voter-approved ballot question to tack a 3 percent surcharge on the income taxes paid by households earning more than $200,000 is expected to add fuel to his long-running push to lower the income tax.

The governor’s focus on the income tax is likely to shape a budget proposal that seeks cuts to government spending, workforce reductions and more public school consolidation. His budget proposal also could include another proposal to expand the state’s sales tax to a broader range of goods and services as a means of shifting more state costs to visiting tourists.

Already credited with pushing for some of the largest state income tax cuts in history – lowering the state’s top rate from 8.5 percent in 2010 to 7.15 percent in 2016 – LePage will be looking to solidify his legacy on tax cuts.

A LePage staff memo leaked this year suggested he will try to lower Maine’s top rate to 5.75 percent in 2017. The same memo also suggested he would look to reduce the number of full-time positions in the state budget by as much as 20 percent to help pay for that. LePage has said he is largely targeting open state jobs that have remained unfilled for years.

And while Democratic leaders said they will be interested to see LePage’s proposals, both Gideon and Golden said there is little interest in blindly cutting taxes.

The incoming Senate assistant minority leader, Nate Libby, D-Lewiston, who has served on the Legislature’s Taxation Committee, said Senate Democrats will be receptive to lowering the income tax again, as long as the proposals are “revenue-neutral” in that they do not seek to make dramatic cuts to state government or programs or shift the cost to property-tax payers as ways to cover the reductions. Libby was also a key member in a bipartisan group of lawmakers – known as the “Gang of 11” – who in 2013 tried to advance tax policy reforms that would have substantially broadened the sales tax while lowering both the income tax and property taxes in Maine.

Libby said while some Republicans, like LePage, seem focused on the income tax and the minimum wage increase because of its impact on low-income seniors, the older Mainers whom he represents are mostly concerned about increasing property taxes and ever-growing medical expenses.

LePage has also said, during recent appearances before chambers of commerce and Rotary clubs, that he may try to claw back for the state automobile excise taxes paid each year by motorists registering vehicles. The tax is currently distributed to local cities and towns, which largely collect it, and is meant for local street and road work. LePage has said some larger cities and towns use the money to shore up their general funds, and that the money more properly belongs in the Maine Department of Transportation’s Highway Fund, which has seen declining gas tax revenues as vehicles become more fuel-efficient.

While Democrats agree the state needs to pick up the pace on road and bridge upgrades, maintenance and repairs, they don’t believe taking revenue away from municipalities is the way to do that, said Golden, who also served on the Legislature’s Transportation Committee. He said even if that money were sent to the Highway Fund, the state would still be woefully lacking in the funding it needs to adequately upgrade and maintain its roads.

“We have a funding problem when it comes to transportation, there is no doubt about it,” Golden said.

He said the state falls short by about $168 million each year on road maintenance, but LePage and legislative Republicans have resisted raising the state’s gas tax to send more funding to transportation. Golden predicts there will likely be a bill to increase the gas tax in 2017.

“We are going to have to have a conversation about raising revenue, so I think we will see at least one bill to raise the gas tax.”

THE BALANCE OF POWER

The close balance of power in the new Legislature – with Republicans controlling the Senate by just one vote and Democrats controlling the House by just five votes – means a handful of lawmakers could decide the fate of any bill or issue, putting party discipline at a premium.

A heated presession dust-up last week between Republicans, LePage and Democrats over a new facility for the Riverview Psychiatric Center, the state’s forensic hospital for Maine’s most dangerous mentally ill patients, is a signal that resistance to LePage’s policies from Democrats will be aggressive.

Against that backdrop, LePage held numerous town hall-style meetings across the state over the past year to promote his agenda and urge voters to support like-minded political candidates. He also voiced opposition to the ballot questions, especially those that increased taxes and hiked the minimum wage.

Proposals around voter identification, energy policy and education funding are also expected to emerge from LePage’s office in 2017.

Democrats, whose edge in the new House of Representatives will be 77 seats to the Republicans’ 72, are already pushing back against LePage and his Republican allies. Last week they blocked the governor’s bid to build a new facility to house court-ordered mental health patients in Augusta.

And minority Democrats in the Senate say they intend to oppose LePage’s agenda when they deem it will hurt the state’s middle class and working poor. Democrats will hold 17 of the Senate’s 35 seats, up two seats from the previous legislative session.

Libby said the near-evenly divided Senate will become an even bigger check on LePage’s executive power. “The last time around we needed three Senate Republicans to join us (to win a vote); this time around we only need one.”

But Thibodeau counters that Democrats will need far more than that to reach the two-thirds margin required to overturn a LePage veto. “I think if we see bills that don’t include strong Republican values in them, we are not going to allow them to go into law,” Thibodeau said.

Thibodeau and Libby said they believe lawmakers from both parties do have points of significant agreement. Libby said one of those areas includes helping lower the student debt burden for younger Maine workers. One bill he intends to submit will look to use the state’s borrowing power to help create affordable student-debt repayment programs for more Mainers.

Libby also said Democrats will focus on creating workforce development programs aimed at “new Mainers,” or immigrants, as a means to help alleviate the state’s workforce shortages. He said programs that teach immigrants English as well as cultural “soft skills” to smooth workforce integration will surface in the form of legislation in 2017 as well.

“We have heard over and over again for the last several years that we have a serious workforce shortage on the horizon, and that is really now starting to bubble up,” Libby said.

He said solving that means attracting workers from not only other parts of the U.S. but other parts of the world, something that Maine cities, including Lewiston and Portland, were already doing.

Gideon said the state has to do all it can to grow its workforce and population, including finding ways to attract people here from other states and even other countries.

“I think our view as Democrats is to be welcoming and understand the important role immigration plays in building our economy,” Gideon said.

THE LEPAGE FACTOR

Gideon said that while the relationship between LePage and many Democratic lawmakers has been strained, she intends to be professional in her dealings and personally has enjoyed a respectful relationship with the governor. But she also didn’t hesitate to say LePage’s past statements and actions, including a threatening and obscenity-laced voice message he left for Rep. Drew Gattine, D-Westbrook, in August, have made it difficult for Democrats to trust the governor.

“Anybody who has lived in this state and has witnessed the behavior that has happened from our governor should understand that not one of us is outside of his ring of fire,” Gideon said.

But Rep. Ellie Espling, R-New Gloucester, the returning assistant minority leader in the House, said Democrats should be more open to considering LePage’s ideas and not get caught up in his personality so frequently. “You know the governor is a fighter, and he’s going to fight for what he believes in, as we all do up here,” Espling said.

Espling said the pattern of Democrats “being the party of no” is already emerging and that may make for a difficult session in some areas.

House Minority Leader Ken Fredette, R-Newport, also promised political antics are not going to distract Republicans.

“I don’t envision this session being much different than the previous session,” Fredette said. “We’re not going to get caught up in the drama; we’re just going to do our job.”

Republican and Democratic leaders said they will have a lot of agreement on many bills that will be periodically disrupted by moments of deep disagreement, but that doesn’t lessen their intent to proceed in a respectful and civil manner.

“Our lawmakers, on both sides of the aisle, will be diligent, they will do the work that they believe is important to them and to the people they represent,” Espling said.

Gideon said that finding common ground will be the place where lawmakers will do their most productive work. “Because that really is where our opportunity is when our numbers are so close,” Gideon said.

Thibodeau said while Republicans will likely sustain LePage vetoes at times, they will also support bipartisan bills they believe in.

“If there are bills that are passed and they are good public policy, we will try hard to make sure they become common law,” Thibodeau said. Like Gideon, he said focusing on common ground will be key.

“Most of the stuff that is coming up, if we work hard to look for that common ground, our state is going to be better served,” Thibodeau said.

 

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