AUGUSTA, Maine — A compromise spending plan hashed out by legislative Democrats and Senate Republicans hit a wall Tuesday evening when it failed to garner enough support from House Republicans to pass as an emergency measure.
Supporters touted the spending package as funding for only essential services, including a number of initiatives proposed by Gov. Paul LePage.
But the governor and most House Republicans argued that none of the proposed spending — on bills that have already won passage but without funding — requires emergency action. They say that the next Legislature should set those priorities.
The proposal, an amended version of LD 1606, sailed through the Senate on Tuesday evening with an initial vote of 31-4, and it cleared the House with an 82-66 vote, with all but two Republican House members — Rep. Will Tuell of East Machias and Rep. Kevin Battle of South Portland — voting against the package. It did not achieve the two-thirds majority needed to pass as an emergency measure and take effect immediately.
Rep. Peggy Rotundo, House chairwoman of the budget-writing Appropriations Committee, then moved to strip the emergency tag from the bill, meaning that it would take effect 90 days after the Legislature adjourns. With that change, the bill needed just a simple majority to move to its next phase.
But failure to achieve a two-thirds majority in the House means it would not likely withstand a veto from LePage, who also has expressed opposition to the way the spending package has been assembled.
If enacted, the spending plan would provide:
— Raises for employees at two state-run mental health hospitals, Dorothea Dix and Riverview psychiatric centers.
— Increased reimbursement rates for home- and community-based health services for the elderly and adults with disabilities.
— Pay increases for state troopers and other state law enforcement officers to help with recruitment and retention.
— One-time funding to support county jails in the current fiscal year.
— A reimbursement system for medical service providers to correct a mistake made in last year’s biennial budget bill, which increased the service provider tax from 5 percent to 6 percent.
— Funding for education tax credits to help ease student debt.
The spending package totals about $11 million and proposes to send about $44.5 million of year-end surplus to the state’s budget stabilization fund, otherwise known as the rainy day fund. Republicans on the Appropriations Committee offered a competing measure that would have funneled the projected $55 million state revenue surplus into the rainy day fund.
Further procedural votes are required before the measure could go to LePage.