That $6.1 billion, two-year budget legislators passed last week wasn’t exactly what any of them wanted, but they sent it to the governor. It definitely wasn’t what the governor wanted, but he signed it. Was it what the people of Maine, who sent all these folks to Augusta to run state government, wanted?
There remains some confusion about just what voters had in mind last November when they chose Republican Paul LePage as governor and elected Republican majorities in both houses of the Legislature.
The governor and some Republicans are convinced that the election results amounted to a mandate to overhaul state government and reconfigure its priorities, with no quarter given to potential opponents. Others, including, it appears, two-thirds of the state’s lawmakers, believe the voters were demanding a more bipartisan and realistic approach to dealing with the state’s problems.
