AUGUSTA, Maine — Lawmakers failed Tuesday to override Gov. Janet Mills’ vetoes of bills to ban foreign governments from spending money on Maine referendums and put farmworkers under the state’s minimum wage rules.
Those moves will send the electioneering change to the November ballot because it originated as a citizen initiative. It will also kill this year’s attempt to make farms pay Maine’s annually indexed minimum wage of $13.80 per hour. The latter was a major sticking point between the Democratic governor and more progressive members of her party.
Both of the bills failed to win the two-thirds majorities needed to override Mills’ veto in the Democratic-led House of Representatives on Tuesday. Most Republicans aligned with the governor, sending the electioneering bill to the ballot in a 73-50 House vote while the farmworker measure died there in a 61-61 vote with many lawmakers absent.
The foreign-influence initiative came out of the divisive campaign over the Central Maine Power Co. corridor, during which the utility, its partner and adversaries that included companies fighting them for shares of the regional power market spent more than $90 million on political activity.
Protect Maine Elections, the group behind the referendum campaign, held a rally Tuesday morning in the State House ahead of the vote and has pointed to polling showing broad support among voters for a foreign electioneering ban, which would apply to companies in which foreign governments have an ownership stake of at least 5 percent.
The question on the November ballot will read: “Do you want to ban foreign governments and entities that they own, control, or influence from making campaign contributions or financing communications for or against candidates or ballot questions?”
CMP’s corridor partner was Hydro-Quebec, the provincial-owned utility. The referendum would bar it from referendum spending in Maine alongside Versant Power, the state’s second-largest utility, whose shares are solely owned by the Canadian city of Calgary. CMP says it would not be affected, but its Spanish parent has several foreign part-owners.
The measure will not affect the utilities’ heavy spending against a November referendum that would have the state borrow billions of dollars to buy out Maine’s power infrastructure and put it under the control of an elected board. CMP and Versant’s parent companies spent more than $17.1 million as of June 30 in an attempt to beat that proposal back.
Mills, who vetoed a similar electioneering ban in 2021, wrote last week that while she wants to prevent foreign influence in elections, the bill would “likely result in the unintended consequences of effectively silencing legitimate voices.”
Sen. Rick Bennett, R-Oxford, chair of Protect Maine Elections, criticized the governor’s action by saying the opponents of the ban are “are few, foreign, and financially unfettered.”
The farmworker bill from House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross, D-Portland, was the subject of a late amendment that removed a portion of the original bill that would have allowed workers to benefit from overtime laws that mandate they receive 1 1/2 times their regular pay for hours worked over the 40-hour workweek.
Maine is one of 19 states that does not apply its minimum wage laws to most farmworkers, according to the National Agricultural Law Center. That is partially because they are not classified as employees under state law, remaining subject to the $7.25 federal hourly minimum wage and left out of mandatory overtime laws.
Mills, a Democrat, wrote in her veto letter last week she supports a minimum wage for farmworkers but is concerned about “a series of questions from members of the agricultural community about the true scope of the language.”
She issued an executive order later Tuesday to reestablish a group to study the issue and present a bill next year based on those findings, a move the Maine Potato Board supports. Potatoes are Maine’s top crop, valued last year at more than $258 million.
The governor’s veto drew sharp criticism from progressives and mixed reactions from agricultural groups. Talbot Ross hammered Mills in a statement, saying she was “yet again using the power of her office to maintain inequality amongst Mainers.”
Sen. Mike Tipping, D-Orono, who co-chairs the labor panel, said Tuesday he was “incredibly disappointed” with the governor’s veto, “especially after her staff worked so hard assisting in writing the legislation.”
The Permanent Commission on the Status of Racial, Indigenous, and Tribal Populations, which Mills established in 2019, also expressed dismay over Tuesday’s outcome.
“Our community deserves more than the bare minimum – which was again denied today,” Commissioner Juana Rodriguez-Vasquez, who also leads the farmworker and immigrant advocacy group Mano en Mano, said in a statement.
