With the Maine Legislature at the start of the second session of the 128th Legislature, it is time to reflect on the amount of work ahead of us.
The Maine Legislature is broken into two separate sessions, one in each year of the two-year legislative calendar. The first regular session is considered the long session as we meet, statutorily, from the first Wednesday in January until, technically, the third Wednesday in June. The first session is where all the bills presented by legislators, and the governor, are supposed to be heard and acted upon. This first session is also dominated by the biennial state budget.
This past year the Legislature actually didn’t fully adjourn until Aug. 4, making it the longest legislative session in Maine history, which included, although very briefly but significantly, a state government shutdown over the budget.
Even though the Legislature extended its session well beyond the required time frame, we left some 300 plus bills unfinished. This is a markedly significant number of bills waiting to be heard in the second regular session which began Jan. 3. In past years, most second sessions have dealt with perhaps 120 to 150 bills, plus any supplemental budget issues. The second session, the short session, begins the first Wednesday of the New Year and is supposed to adjourn by the third Wednesday in April, which generally happens as many legislators begin their re-election campaigns. With the 300 plus bills carried over, and some 90 new bills allowed in by the Legislative Council, the second session of the 128th will most likely exceed its required deadline.
On top of all these bills, we need to deal with two very important matters which will no doubt dominate the next session: the Medicaid expansion vote passed by citizen’s referendum last November, and the Marijuana Adult Use Legalization still needing enactment. There is no doubt these two issues will take up a vast majority of our time this session.
I believe it is time for far more discipline on behalf of the elected legislators to curtail the number of bills being submitted. With well over 1,600 bills being submitted, less than a third of these bills ever make it through the committee and legislative process to enactment. While I have generally submitted on average seven bills in the two terms I have served, many others submit in excess of 20 or even 30 bills that require a significant amount of time, energy and expense to process, with little hope of ever making it through. If I am fortunate enough to get re-elected in 2018, I’ll be running for the State Senate District 34 seat, I am considering a bill limiting the number of bills each legislator can submit.
In Maine, every bill that gets submitted is required to go through the entire legislative process. This begins with the proposed subject of the bill being submitted by the elected legislator going to the Revisor’s Office where a staff of legal analysts will write up the language to support the intent of the bill. From there, the sponsor of the bill must get co-sponsors to sign on to the bill at which point it gets assigned to a committee of jurisdiction.
Once assigned to a committee, a public hearing is held and then at least one work session before a committee vote is taken. Depending on the outcome of that process, the bill then moves to either the House or Senate for votes. All this takes time and valuable resources away from the legislative process, which limits our work on more important matters. If each representative, of which there are 151, were held to submitting only five bills and each state senator, of which there are 35, were held to submitting only eight, we would still have to deal with some 1,035 bills. While that stills seems like a significant number it reduces the average number generally submitted by a third.
While my proposal may seem reasonable enough, there is no doubt it will be met with legislative scrutiny. I do appreciate that each legislator has constituents that they want to serve, and submitting bills on their behalf is part of that process. However, being prudent with the legislative process, and resources, I believe our constituents are all better served by requiring greater legislative constraint when it comes to submitting bills.
— State Rep. Robert Foley, R-Wells, represents House District 7, which includes part of Wells.
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