AUGUSTA, Maine — A Republican-led attempt to let Maine voters overturn the $11.3 billion state budget that Democratic lawmakers approved in March did not collect the required number of signatures to qualify for the ballot.
Rep. Gary Drinkwater of Milford, who led the people’s veto effort, said Tuesday his group of supporters that included current and former Republican state lawmakers did not collect the required minimum of 67,682 registered voter signatures ahead of Wednesday’s deadline to put the question to voters in November or during an earlier special election.
Drinkwater declined to say how many signatures the volunteers collected. The group announced their people’s veto effort in March after the Democratic-controlled Legislature and Gov. Janet Mills approved a two-year, $11.3 billion budget.
That budget came in the wake of protracted disagreements over a short-term spending plan to fill a $118 million MaineCare deficit that Republicans refused to support unless it included work requirements and other limits for the state’s version of Medicaid that serves about 400,000 Mainers.
Drinkwater criticized Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, for creating “confusion” by proposing ballot language that would have asked voters if they wanted to “stop most state government operations and programs, including new and ongoing state funding for cities, towns, and schools, by rejecting the state’s two-year budget?”
Bellows’ office does not comment on people’s veto efforts when not enough signatures are submitted, spokesperson Jana Spaulding said.
The Legislature is expected to vote this week on an addition to the two-year budget as well. The people’s veto effort had the potential to cause a state government shutdown if it put the budget on hold until an election, but Drinkwater said “no one wanted to shut down the government.”
“That was never a goal, but with such a stranglehold on our state, the Democratic majority continues to recklessly overspend and raise taxes,” Drinkwater said.