Maine lawmakers sustained vetoes of bills to institute a minimum wage for farm workers and to ban so-called bump stocks that allow a gun to mimic a machine gun on Friday as they attempted to dispatch unfinished business including 80 late spending proposals.
The Maine Senate failed to muster a two-thirds majority to override the veto on the gun bill, something sought by gun safety advocates 18 people were killed in a shooting in Lewiston, while the House failed to override the veto of the farmworkers’ minimum wage bill.
In the end, all eight of Gov. Janet Mills' vetoes were upheld, including proposals to create a higher income tax for wealthy Mainers and to end a “three strikes” law on thefts.
But lawmakers were expected to stay late into the night to address spending proposals that the Democratic governor warned could push the budget “to the breaking point.”
The new bills to be considered would provide more money for free health clinics, African American and Wabanaki studies in schools and the establishment of a civil rights unit in the attorney general’s office. Other initiatives would provide one-time relief for blueberry growers and provide free entry to state parks to Indigenous people, among other things.
The governor’s original budget set aside about $100 million to offset anticipated difficulties in the next budget cycle but lawmakers ended up spending much of that.
The proposed new spending was about $12 million but the total impact is more than $33 million, according to the Department of Administrative and Financial Services. The bills would reduce the general fund and transfer money from special revenue accounts such as the Fund for Healthy Maine and Bureau of Insurance, the department said.
A spokesperson for the governor issued a statement accusing the appropriations committee of employing “budget gimmicks like stripping fiscal notes, delaying effective dates, and raiding other special revenue accounts to spend more, which the governor previously warned them not to do and which will push the state budget to the breaking point.”
The Legislature’s Republican leaders issued a statement accusing Democrats of recklessness in spending. “In a few short years, Democrats will turn a record-breaking surplus into a deficit,” said John Bott, spokesperson for House Republicans.
The governor's objections to the farm worker minimum wage center on a provision allowing workers to sue their employers.
As for bump stocks, she said she agreed with efforts to restrict devices that can convert a regular rifle into the functional equivalent of a machine gun but she objected to the bill that she said relied on “broad and ambiguous language.”
Though that bill failed, the governor signed several other gun safety bills including background checks on private gun sales, waiting periods for gun purchases, criminalizing gun sales to prohibited people and strengthening the state’s yellow flag law.
