AUGUSTA, Maine — The Legislature is set to reconvene Tuesday to take up a veto of the state’s next two-year budget issued by Gov. Paul LePage on Monday afternoon.
The veto follows LePage’s failed attempt to make about $60 million in cuts by using his executive authority to veto 64 single lines in the budget proposed by lawmakers.
But over a two-day period, lawmakers quickly overturned each of those vetoes with sweeping majorities in both the House and the Senate.
If all members of the House are present Tuesday, they will need 101 votes to overturn LePage’s veto. The state Senate, if all 35 members are present, will need 24 votes.
The Republican governor issued his veto message in an unusual package that included color photos of drug trafficking suspects, elderly people, an infant and adults with developmental disabilities.
LePage’s point? The budget did not include enough funding to combat the state’s growing drug problems and doesn’t go far enough to eliminate waitlists for Department of Health and Human Service programs aimed at helping the disabled.
“Clearly, the health and public safety of Mainers is not a priority of the 127th Legislature,” LePage wrote in his veto message. “Instead Augusta politicians snuck in a $4 million ‘Christmas tree’ adorned with piggy projects for legislators such as buying federal land in Kittery, buying an unneeded ‘Francis Perkins Homestead,’ paying for a commission disguised as initiative to end hunger and creating entirely new projects.”
LePage also said the Legislature failed to include adequate funding to fight Maine’s growing drug problems in the $6.7 billion budget it approved.
Democrats and Republicans who crafted the budget bill noted the package includes funding for four new Maine Drug Enforcement Agency officers and also allows the agency to use up to $200,000 in federal funds for staff or other projects, which could provide for as many as six new officers. LePage’s original budget request was for seven.
The budget as approved by the Legislature reduces the state’s income tax while maintaining a 0.5 percent increase in the sales tax, keeping that tax at 5.5 percent, which was enacted as temporary measure in 2014.
That shift partially pays for a reduction in the state’s top marginal income tax rate from 7.95 percent to 7.15 percent.
The budget, which must be enacted by Wednesday for lawmakers to avoid a government shutdown, is the result of months of negotiations, some behind closed doors, which saw Republicans in the state Senate ultimately split with LePage on his proposal to increase and broaden the sales tax in order to reduce the state’s income tax and eliminate its estate tax.
Legislative Democrats, who control the House of Representatives by 10 votes, stuck to their position that any income tax breaks be focused on the middle class. They also insisted that the state’s homestead exemption, a property tax relief program, be increased and kept in place for all homeowners.
Under the current program, the first $10,000 of a primary home’s taxable value can be exempted from property taxes.
LePage wanted to double the amount of the exemption from $10,000 to $20,000 and limit eligibility to households with at least one resident who was 65 or older. The Democratic proposal increases the exemption amount to $20,000 but allows it for all households currently eligible.
Both Speaker of the House Mark Eves, D-North Berwick, and Senate President Mike Thibodeau, R-Winterport, said they were urging lawmakers in their chambers to stick to the compromise deal they had agreed upon.
“I anticipate, that while the governor points out a bunch of places where he would have preferred to spend more money, our caucus has made difficult choices about not adding additional costs above and beyond what has already been put out as a budget,” Thibodeau said. He said LePage’s veto message read to him like a request for “a lot of additional spending.”
Eves said he couldn’t predict whether a House coalition of Republicans and Democrats that included 105 lawmakers would hold but said he believed the budget on the table was a better option than the alternative — a state government shutdown.
“We are urging members of the Legislature to stick to their votes and override the veto tomorrow, so we can avoid a state shutdown,” Eves said. “The bipartisan budget is a win for working families. It delivers a middle class tax cut, property tax relief, and invests in our students and workers. It grows our economy from the middle out not the top down.”
Both Thibodeau and Eves said they were concerned with doing more to combat Maine’s illegal drug problem and agreed the budget they approved adds significant resources to that end.
Eves said the bulk of the Legislature wouldn’t be swayed by LePage’s illustrated veto message.
“I think people understood what they were voting for when they did vote for it,” Eves said. “They knew what was in the budget and I assume they will continue to support the budget so we don’t have to face a state government shutdown.”
At least one of a handful of Republican lawmakers who voted against the bipartisan budget plan said he was sticking to his guns and would vote to sustain LePage’s veto.
“But not because of what the governor put in his veto message but for the same reason I voted no on it the first time,” said state Rep. Jeff Timberlake, R-Turner. “I was very much in support of more welfare reform and I stand strong on that.”
Key provisions in the new state budget
— An $80 million increase in the amount the state sends to K-12 public schools under its General Purpose Aid formula.
— A $10 million increase in a scholarship fund aimed at helping Maine students and workers pay for college through the Maine State Grant program.
— A $28 million increase for the Maine Community College System and University of Maine.
— An $11 million increase in funding for the community college system for job training programs for Maine workers.
— An elimination of the “welfare cliff” by allowing those receiving state welfare benefits to have their benefits gradually reduced as they gain income and employment, instead of a system that ends benefits as soon as a recipient earns $1 more than the income guidelines that make them eligible for assistance.
— About $62.5 million per year in state revenue sharing to Maine cities and towns.
— About $48 million for the state’s Drugs for the Elderly and Medicaid Savings programs, which help low-income seniors pay for prescription drugs.
— A $16 million increase in state funding for nursing homes, bringing the state’s total to $216 million over the two-year budget cycle.
— A $16.2 million increase in funds to help clear Department of Health and Human Services waitlists for people with intellectual disabilities and brain injuries.
— The elimination of the state income tax on military pensions.
— Funding for four new agents for the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency. The budget also allows $200,000 in federal grant money to be used at the MDEA’s discretion for hiring additional staff or for investment in other anti-drug efforts.
— Increases to the state’s sales taxes on hotel and motel lodging and restaurant meals. The lodging tax increases to 9 percent by the end of 2017 and the tax on restaurant meals will remain 8 percent — the meals tax was scheduled to return to 7 percent on July 1.