Gov. Paul LePage apparently thought he had more time to veto more than a dozen bills this week, including a piece of legislation he opposed to allow asylum seekers to receive General Assistance benefits.
At best, he misunderstood the Maine Constitution or lost track of time. At worst, he’s again stretching the bounds of his authority by trying to rewrite the rules.
The Maine Constitution allows the governor 10 days (Sundays don’t count) to act on bills passed by the Legislature after he receives them. A publication called “ Maine’s Path of Legislation,” a guide from the clerk of the House and secretary of the Senate, explains the process in simple terms: “After final passage (enactment) the bill is sent to the Governor. The Governor has 10 days in which to sign or veto the bill. If the Governor does not sign the bill and the Legislature is still in session, the bill after 10 days becomes law as if the Governor signed it. If the Legislature has adjourned for the year the bill does not become law. This is called a ‘pocket veto.’”
The Legislature has not adjourned for the year. It left Augusta temporarily on June 30 with plans to reconvene on July 16 to consider bills that LePage has actually vetoed and finish up other legislative work before it adjourns. Lawmakers could be called into session before the year is over, and the same Legislature will resume for a four-month session in January 2016.
“Thanks to what appears to be a substantial screw-up, Gov. LePage has allowed a bill to become law that codifies the ability of asylum seekers to receive General Assistance,” read a Tuesday evening post on the conservative blog As Maine Goes. “Apparently the administration believed that you could ‘pocket veto’ this bill. They were wrong.”
“The constitution makes it clear — these bills are the law of the land now,” the blog, run by Republican consultant Lance Dutson, added.
Ironically, if the governor had vetoed the GA bill, LD 369, as amended by Sen. Amy Volk, R-Scarborough, lawmakers likely would have sustained his veto. Another 57 bills remain pending on the governor’s desk.
On Wednesday, the governor’s office appeared to be inventing explanations. The governor’s spokeswoman, Adrienne Bennett, argued that the Legislature had actually adjourned, although the Legislature clearly has not ended its session. “This is not a pocket veto,” she wrote. “As allowed by the Maine Constitution, the Governor will submit the vetoes when the Legislature meets again for three days.”
This isn’t the first time in recent weeks that the LePage administration has been wrong about either the Maine or U.S. Constitution and the extent of the governor’s powers. In his radio address for this week, LePage defends his threat to withhold funding from the nonprofit Good Will-Hinckley unless it rescinded its employment offer to House Speaker Mark Eves, which the group did.
His lawyer has cited the First Amendment as the governor’s defense. While the First Amendment certainly gives the governor the right to say all kinds of horrid things about Eves, it does not give him the right to interfere in the decisions of a nonprofit organization in the way he has. Threatening to withhold public funds as a means of punishing a member of the Legislature doesn’t appear to be protected by the First Amendment, University of Maine School of Law professor Jim Burke told Maine Public Broadcasting on Tuesday.
The governor’s office also cited the state Constitution to argue that the state’s Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability doesn’t have the authority to investigate the governor. The Legislature’s Government Oversight Committee unanimously disagreed and voted last week to have OPEGA investigate LePage’s interference with Eve’s hiring by Good Will-Hinckley.
Governors swear to uphold state laws and the Constitution. They aren’t free to interpret — or reinterpret — them at will to further their own agendas or cover for their mistakes.
