Bipartisanship is in short supply, demonstrated once again as the Legislature digs into the meat of its agenda.
An earlier bruising battle over the supplemental budget necessary to get Maine through its current fiscal year went the limit, as a two-day session March 10 and 11 lasted into Friday morning before leaders came up with a deal.
It’s never a good sign when the Appropriations Committee deadlocks and the fight moves behind the scenes as rank-and-file lawmakers wait, and wait, for the outcome.
Based in part – but only in part – on that initial set-to, Democrats announced Monday they’re pushing ahead with a “majority budget,” a two-year current services plan, which they can enact with only Democratic votes. It needs to pass by April 1 to meet the deadline for “non-emergency” legislation.
This peculiar situation exists because the state’s constitution requires 90 days to elapse before bills can become law, except when there’s two-thirds “emergency” passage.
It traditionally gives minority legislators a crucial say, a power that Republicans, now perennially in the minority, used – and some say abused – to bring on the 1991 state government shutdown.
Since then, Democrats have created a work-around, allowing a steady-state budget to be approved early, after which they adjourn and quickly return in special session.
It was first employed in 1997 by then-House Speaker Libby Mitchell, after a session in which Republicans had forced what Democrats saw as a premature end to tax increases enacted in 1991 – yes, the same session where the state shut down.
Democrats went to the well again in 2004 for a supplemental budget, then in 2005 for a biennial. Partisan differences were actually blurring – there was little disagreement over major policy items – but that only seemed to increase infighting.
Republicans finally returned the favor with a majority supplemental budget in 2012, during the one recent session they controlled the House, Senate and governorship.
There’s a huge flaw to this strategy, however. It averts a shutdown, but does little more.
While, theoretically, once current services are funded for two years, one party could also push through major changes to the tax code, or launch new programs, they rarely do.
Once the overall framework is set, tinkering can occur but it’s mostly back-and-fill. State government, following its dramatic re-founding in its current form by the Curtis administration a half-century ago, has gone the other way and embraced inertia.
Budgets and programs change very little from one year to the next, other than the tax cuts the two parties agreed to starting in the Baldacci years – which require lower overall spending, and consequent shrinkage in state capabilities.
This year, however, is a big exception, and one where a majority budget should lead to a dramatic supplemental budget.
Maine will receive $1.6 billion, possibly more, from the American Rescue Plan that Democrats in Congress – minus only Maine’s Jared Golden – enacted March 10. A few cities will get a direct share; the Legislature will divvy up the rest of the municipal aid portion.
And it will likely do so by majority after Republicans failed to insert a supplemental budget provision requiring two-thirds votes.
Unlike the CARES Act, which Gov. Janet Mills distributed all by herself, since the Legislature was out of session after March 2020, legislative Democrats will have a substantial say in allocating nearly $1 billion, enough to launch and perhaps even sustain new initiatives.
For a year or two, Maine can respond to the numerous needs and insights created by the experience of a world-wide economic shutdown lasting at least 15 months.
After that, it will be business as usual, at least until lawmakers overhaul a budget process that, perversely, requires a supermajority to get much done.
Even Congress, in spite of the notorious Senate filibuster, manages to enact budgets by majority. California was the last big state crippled by supermajority requirements, and Democrats there finally got rid of them – by winning House and Senate super-majorities and amending budget law.
Maine Democrats, while still dominant, are unlikely to achieve those majorities, and altering constitutional provisions, while possible, is equally unlikely.
There are several ways to accomplish the same ends, through annual budgets and shorter sessions, or by carving out “budget reconciliation” rules similar to the U.S. Senate’s.
With term limits ensuring rapid leadership turnover, structural changes rarely even get discussed. Yet the alternative is more stasis, and less ability to respond to the rapid changes the pandemic and climate crisis demand.
If Maine wants to reclaim the enviable reputation it earned in the 1970s for responsive and creative governance, it had better get cracking.
Douglas Rooks has covered the State House for 31 years. His new book, Statesman: George Mitchell and the Art of the Possible, has just been published. Comment is welcomed at drooks@tds.net.
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