Gov. Paul LePage last week reiterated his pledge to bring the Legislature back this summer for a special session. The governor has issued the same threat three times before, but he has never actually called a special session.
As with the times before, the governor’s quibbles with the Legislature are not serious enough to warrant a special session, which under the Maine Constitution are justified under “ extraordinary occasions.” A dispute over how to pay for hospital staff raises and jail operations doesn’t constitute such an extraordinary occasion.
Much of the problem stems from the governor’s disengagement from the Legislature. Unlike previous governors, LePage and his staff have worked infrequently with lawmakers to craft, amend and improve legislation. Instead, the governor’s approach is commonly to veto bills and raise questions about the legislation — often about funding — in his veto letters. By then, it is too late to make substantive changes to bills that have been through public hearings followed by work sessions held in public during which lawmakers, commonly with outside input, often amend their proposals.
That’s the process through which the four bills LePage has complained about at recent town hall meetings were vetted. The governor complained that lawmakers didn’t give him the money to carry out the legislation they passed.
The governor’s first complaint is that lawmakers approved raises for the workers at the Riverview Psychiatric Recovery Center in Augusta and the Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center in Bangor but “didn’t give me the money.” Lawmakers passed a bill — and overrode LePage’s veto — to allocate $944,000 for the pay increases. Lawmakers and others agreed the pay increases were critical to attract and retain personnel needed to fill staff vacancies that were imperilling the safety and operation of Riverview. The vacancies also risked impeding the psychiatric center’s ability to comply with a state consent decree for treatment of those with mental illness.
Lawmakers didn’t “give” LePage the money, walking into his office with bags of bills and coins. But they did specify a funding source for the raises, following legislative protocol. The money, according to an amendment to the bill, would come from a salary account within the Department of Administrative and Financial Service that contains nearly $28 million. This is the same account LePage tapped to raise salaries for law enforcement officials.
LePage also blasted lawmakers for increasing jail funding by nearly $2.5 million. County jail administrators said the funding was necessary to keep their facilities functional. County jail operations, after all, have been in crisis since LePage refused to appoint members to the State Board of Corrections, which was charged with overseeing a coordinated system of state and county correctional facilities, leading to its demise.
The additional jail money is to come from an increase in federal matching funds for health and human services. Yes, the money could be used for other services, as the LePage administration argues, but lawmakers, at the behest of county officials, decided this was a priority. LePage objected through a veto letter, but lawmakers overrode his veto.
LePage’s third complaint was that lawmakers took money away from “a drug exchange program.” He’s right on this one, but a dispute over $75,000 doesn’t rise to the level of an “extraordinary occasion.”
Lawmakers enacted a bill, over the governor’s veto, requiring the Maine Center for Disease Control to fund needle exchange programs, in hopes of reducing deaths and illnesses from injected drugs. The original bill contained $75,000 in funding, which was later stripped from the bill.
LePage also complained about a “wage study,” again without funding. No such study requirement was found by the BDN. The governor’s office pointed to a bill, which the governor vetoed, directing the Department of Health and Human Service to study ambulance rates paid by MaineCare, the state’s Medicaid program. Lawmakers also overrode this LePage veto. The bill didn’t specify a funding source, but the Legislature’s Office of Fiscal and Program Review noted that DHHS has already set aside funding to conduct various rate studies.
Instead of making threats long after the Legislature has adjourned — and frequently insulting and demeaning its members — LePage would do better to work with lawmakers to further his agenda on the front end and to ensure he knows how things are paid for or not.
