When Gov. Paul LePage missed deadlines last year to veto dozens of bills, the administration vehemently argued it had more time to reject the bills because the Legislature had adjourned. Documents released last week show that staff in the governor’s office knew exactly when the vetoes were due, but simply chose to ignore the July 2015 deadlines in favor of its own flawed timeline that didn’t withstand legal scrutiny.
This is an outrageous waste and abuse of public resources.
A year ago, supporters of numerous bills that were sitting on the governor’s desk held their breath as the deadlines to veto the bills came and went. Did the governor intend to pocket veto legislation he didn’t like, including a bill to ensure asylum seekers and refugees are eligible for General Assistance? Were his advisers counting wrong?
Without vetoes, the Legislature’s Revisor of Statutes began cataloging the bills as law.
Per the Maine Constitution, during a legislative session, a governor has 10 days — excluding Sundays — to sign enacted bills into law or return them, vetoed, to the Legislature. If neither occurs, the bills automatically become law without the governor’s signature. But, if the Legislature adjourns during this 10-day window, the rules change. In that case, a governor can hold those bills until lawmakers return to session for a minimum of three days, at which point he can send them to the House and Senate as vetoed. If lawmakers do not return, the bills simply die — that’s what is known as the “pocket veto.”
The dispute centered on whether the Legislature adjourned on June 30, 2015, preventing the governor from returning vetoed bills, or simply took a recess with the intent of returning for a day to consider bills vetoed by the governor. When lawmakers left Augusta on June 30, 2015, legislative leaders had directed them to return to the State House on July 16 to reconsider vetoed bills. Still, the governor’s office argued that the Legislature had adjourned and that he could not return the vetoed bills until lawmakers returned to their chambers.
On July 16, the governor issued a stack of 65 vetoes. The vetoes were meaningless, the Senate President and House Speaker and the state attorney general said.
The governor had insisted he was right. The rule “is very, very clear,” LePage told reporters last July. “Even I can understand it, and I’m French,” he said.
Except that he didn’t understand it. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court unanimously ruled in August that his timeline was wrong and that the 65 bills had in fact become law without his signature.
Now, documents obtained by WMTW, which filed a request last year for documents related to the veto fight, indicate that several people in the governor’s office knew the veto deadlines for the bills. Footage from the TV station shows bills with due dates, such as “7/1,” “7/3” and “7/4,” clearly written on them. Four documents had notes about putting off vetoes until January.
Emails obtained by WMTW also show that two of the governor’s policy advisers knew that vetoes were due in early July. As the deadlines approached, these advisers expressed urgency about taking action. However, the governor’s office was still drafting veto letters in mid-July, WMTW reported.
LePage spokeswoman Adrienne Bennett explained the decision making in the governor’s office this way to the television station: “There was more than one theory discussed as staff examined options and staff were prepared to react to all theories in a timely manner. Ultimately, the Administration’s position was that action was not required by July 3rd.”
The Associated Press reported Thursday that documents it obtained showed the governor’s then-chief legal counsel, Cynthia Montgomery, who is now a state court judge, advised LePage had more time to veto the bills.
That was a huge gamble that failed miserably when the Supreme Court affirmed what the attorney general and legislative leaders had contended all along: The vetoes were due in 10 days.
LePage’s defense of his erroneous position was a complete waste — a waste of state employees’ time, a waste of time for the Maine Supreme Judicial Court and a waste of taxpayer dollars on a meaningless legal battle.
