AUGUSTA, Maine – Legislation designed to increase funding for the state’s Bureau of Veterans Services, along with a measure that provides free tuition to members of Maine’s National Guard, hit a political brick wall Wednesday at the State House.
After more than 90 minutes of debate in the Maine House of Representatives, the bill was tabled as lawmakers disagreed sharply over how to fund the legislation’s estimated $600,000 annual price tag.
Meant to modernize and expand the state agency tasked with helping Maine veterans obtain the benefits they are entitled to under state and federal law, the legislation expands by three a staff of seven veterans service officers. It also would provide funding to update the bureau’s antiquated paper-only recordkeeping system with a computerized case-management system.
It also would make the bureau the lead agency in providing services to homeless veterans in Maine.
The last time the bureau saw substantial funding increases from the Legislature was before the events of Sept. 11, 2001.
Among other things, the legislation looks to ensure that more of the state’s estimated 140,000 veterans are registered with the federal Veterans Administration with modernized marketing programs and a full-time outreach coordinator.
The legislation includes a combination of bills, all unanimously approved by the Legislature’s Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee and based, in part, on the recommendations of a special commission of veterans and lawmakers set up in 2015 to examine ways to improve the bureau.
Republicans and Democrats have come to loggerheads, however, over a proposal by Rep. Jared Golden, D-Lewiston, that would use a portion of the state’s annual profits from its sale of alcohol to pay for the bill.
In 2015, the state earned about $46 million in profits from selling alcohol at state-agency liquor stores under a contract with a company that provides for the warehousing, distribution and marketing of all hard alcohol in the state.
Under current law, a portion of that profit, about $15 million in 2015, is dedicated to servicing the debt on a large bond the state obtained in order to pay off $431 million of debt it owed the state’s 39 hospitals for Medicaid patients they have cared for.
Golden Wednesday also attempted to amend the legislation to include funding to cover the cost of tuition to University of Maine System schools and Maine Community College system for eligible members of the Maine National Guard system.
Under Golden’s proposal funding for both the tuition and the bureau expansion would be covered under state law until 2024, when the state’s total liquor sales profits are projected to exceed $24 million per year.
But Republicans, including those who say they support all the provisions in the underlying legislation, said they believed using profits from the state’s liquor business is not the right way to pay for the bill and doing so could jeopardize funding for the state’s Department of Transportation, which in 2015 received $603,000 from the liquor fund.
Republicans, however, also did not propose an alternative funding source for the legislation.
An effort by Rep. Ellie Espling, R-New Gloucester, the House assistant minority leader, to send the legislation back to the Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee for additional work also failed by just two votes Wednesday.
Lawmakers will now likely attempt to negotiate a way to bring the legislation back before the House for a vote before the Legislature’s final adjournment set for April 20.