The End Is Near

With committee work wrapped up, the supplemental General Fund budget finalized, and the last edition of MMA’s Legislative Bulletin published and emailed on March 27, the Legislature is on pace for an April 15 adjournment.  In this episode of the podcast, Rebecca Lambert and Amanda Campbell discuss how bills move between the chambers, highlight the municipally relevant components of the supplemental budget, and provide updates on the legislation debated this week.   

Transcript

 Welcome everyone to Potholes & Politics, Local Maine Issues from A to Z. I'm your co-host Rebecca Lambert, and with me as always is my amazing colleague, Amanda Campbell. 

Good morning, Rebecca. Thanks everybody for listening. 

Things at the legislature may have slowed as it relates to committee work, but the House and Senate floors are now heating up as the bills reported out of committee are moving through the process.

On our last episode, we provided a brief update on county jail funding, the work session on EPS funding formula changes and the property tax relief task force. It was a quick episode that was just under 10 minutes, but it's worth checking out if you haven't already listened to it. As always, please consider liking and subscribing to our podcast so you never miss one of these important updates.

Also, the time has come for our legislative bulletin to end for the session, we know you're all grief stricken. That's not to say communication from us has ended. Please watch for action alerts from the advocacy team, and you can always tune into this podcast to hear what work has been making its way through the House and Senate.

So let's start with a little primer on this next step. The main sponsor of a bill determines where the bill starts in the final steps of its journey. If the sponsor is a representative, it starts in the house, and if the sponsor is a senator, it starts, you guessed it, in the Senate and before a bill can be enacted, it bounces between both chambers twice.

Generally speaking, if a bill was voted out of committee with a unanimous report, it will either die if the report was “ought not to pass” or it will show up on the House or Senate calendar as part of the consent agenda. That group of uncontested bills passes under the hammer, unless objected to by any member of that body.

So, to illustrate this point, one bill that was passed under the hammer was LD 2042 aAn Act to Clarify the Requirement for Municipalities to Provide Public Notice in a Newspaper. And that was sponsored by Senator Black of Franklin County. We've talked about this bill during previous podcast episodes, and there's been articles in the legislative bulletin. Because this initiative was sponsored by a Senator and was voted out of the state and local government committee unanimously, this bill was on the consent agenda beginning in the Senate. Ultimately, the bill has been passed to be enacted in both chambers. 

At this point in the session, the Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee have been working hard to get through the work on their plate. It's slow and at times hard to understand why they vote the way they do since iscussion largely happens off of mic. However, it's worth clarifying that the line items AFA members vote on are straw votes and will come back to the House and Senate for debate. It's not necessarily the final action that will be taken recently in AFA. 

There were several initiatives bundled together into one bond package aimed at improvements across several areas, including funding for sewer and water infrastructure improvements, culverts and stream crossings, housing initiatives, and improvements to the University of Maine infrastructure.

For this bill, the house was debating it during Monday's session. It was passed to be engrossed in the house and then it was sent to the Senate on the same day for their debate in the Senate. There wasn't any debate, so it sailed through that body. Its status was then passed to be engrossed and needed to go through both chambers for enactment.

However, on Tuesday when it was put before the house again for enactment, it did not receive the two thirds vote needed to pass a bond measure and the measure failed. Because of that, the Senate on Thursday moved to reconsider their action to enact the bill, but when the vote to reconsider failed, they tabled the legislation.

That was an interesting twist. I'm anxious to see what happens next in that saga of the bond package. 

Indeed. 

Uh, and also speaking of AFA, the supplemental budget work was completed in the wee hours of Thursday morning after many long days of voting and a lot of hurrying up and waiting.

Items that the team is watching included funding for the Maine Office of Community Affairs Code Enforcement Officer Pilot project, which was voted in, and they've also proposed including the recommendation from the real estate property tax relief task force to include the property tax fairness credit increase from $1,000 to $1,500 for qualified filers who are under 65 years of age.

Also proposed to be included in the supplemental budget was the funding and language for retrofitting school buses with crossing arms and anti-pinch sensors, funding for emergency shelters with amended language that ties the funding directly to the shelter operations fund within the Maine State Housing Authority, funding for minimum teacher salaries and the so-called millionaires tax, which is expected to inject roughly $150 million in the next biennium.

And finally, the emergency clause was stripped from the bill, so it no longer requires a two thirds vote to pass the chambers. 

Well, that is interesting. With it not being an emergency, it will take 90 days after adjournment for the budget to take effect. Since the supplemental budget wrapped up, did they also get to the special appropriations table on Wednesday?

Well, the budget document is done, but before they run the table, the main budget has to go through the House and Senate for approval. And once that's gone through both bodies, if there's money left in the general fund, they'll run the bills on the special appropriations table.

Since there are things we're watching on the special appropriations table, we should probably explain to our listeners what being on the table means for these bills.

Whenever a bill is placed on the special appropriations table, it means the legislation has passed both bodies, but the bill has a fiscal impact on the state's general fund, so it would be placed on the special appropriations table. Going through this process ensures the state budget remains balanced and allows the AFA committee to review all bills with a fiscal impact together. After the main budget is set, bills on the table either wind up being funded, amended to change the funding or eliminate it, or it can die on the table due to lack of funding. Anything not taken up or left on the table when the legislature adjourns for the year will automatically die.

And the advocacy team currently has several bills that we're watching on the special appropriations table, and as of yesterday's senate session, there are 63 bills that we tracked on the table, and 25 of those are ones that the LPC debated. 

So, it sounds like the table will be part of a future podcast episode. We'll add a link in the show notes to a bulletin article from a couple years ago that provides a fun summary on how the table works. 

Rebecca, I just have to say that I wrote that article and it is one of my favorite things that I have ever written.

It's great when work can also be fun. 

That's true. 

Moving on to bills moving through the chambers, one that we've talked about before in the podcast is LD 2121. This is the bill that would create a 13-member working group to study ways to keep judicial officers and legislators safe. It also establishes a pilot project that would grant each applicant a subscription to a service that would scrub their data from publicly accessible websites.

When the bill was being debated in the house on Monday, Representative Poirier rose to speak against the initiative in large part because in her view, the pilot project could provide a false sense of security. Not only that, but also the pilot project that would scrub the personal data from publicly accessible websites has been proven to be inconsistent in their application. According to Representative Poirier, information from old websites or databases could resurface only to be reposted. 

And does the subscription continually scrub data from those publicly accessible websites? 

That's a great question and one I don't have an answer for. I think that would be something found in the terms of the subscription service, but those specifics weren't talked about in committee, and I don't remember it being talked about on the floor either.

However, it's a really good question, and if this bill were to be enacted, hopefully that would be something they look at when they conduct the search for the subscription service providers. But what I do know for certain is that this bill passed the house for final enactment on Thursday.

Also in the house on Thursday, they took up LD 2232, which would increase the county jail funding. We've talked about this before. The majority report of “ought to pass as amended” was moved on the floor and a roll call was requested. I'm not sure if we've mentioned this before, but for our listeners’ benefit, a roll call is when each legislator's vote is recorded and saved to the public record.

This typically happens when legislators are split on how to vote and allows anyone to look back to see how someone voted. When a roll call vote isn't requested, that list is not available to the public. And for LD 2232, the bill did pass through the house Tuesday and then pass the Senate on Thursday, and it will now need to go back through the House and Senate for final enactment. And since it has a fiscal note, it will end up on the appropriations table. 

An energy bill of interest to municipal officials has cleared the house and been sent to the Senate. LD 2112, An Act to Authorize Municipalities to Form Community Choice Aggregation Programs to Procure Electricity creates a framework for municipalities, counties, and tribes to enter in a community choice aggregation or a CCA plan to aggregate the electric load of residential and small commercial customers within the jurisdiction.

The bill requires that these be opt-out plans, meaning if a jurisdiction pursues a plan, all customers within the jurisdiction in these rate classes would be included unless they actively opt out. The bill was amended by the Energy, Utilities and Technology Committee to include protections for low-income rate payers and the Public Utilities Commission is tasked with rulemaking to start no later than January 1st, 2027.

 LD 978 was brought up in the house on Thursday and the majority “ought to pass as amended” was offered and a roll call requested. This is the bill that would increase general assistance reimbursement to 75% up from the current 70%. And that majority “ought to pass as amended” report recommended that increase for all communities across the state.

The debate in the house was essentially the same debate that happens in the HHS committee. Some legislators are against any increases in reimbursement because one city in Maine gets the majority of those funds. However, it's that same city that provides the majority of GA services in the state. So, this will be an ongoing argument until either the department or the HHS Committee commits to overhauling the entire system. If the bill is enacted and makes it off the appropriations table, it will be a win for all municipalities who will bear a tiny bit less of a burden for GA expenses. 

As mentioned earlier, the AFA committee included the funding to retrofit school buses with crossing arms and anti-pinch door sensors in the supplemental budget, however, there is still a bill making its way through the House and Senate on the same topic.

LD 2159, as amended, would require school buses to be retrofitted with crossing arms and does not require, but allows them to be retrofitted with anti-pinch sensors. 

And there was a floor amendment offered in the house for LD 2159, correct? 

Yes, Representative Golek of Harpswell offered an amendment that would require the anti-pinch sensors, but the amendment failed on a roll call vote.

And one of MMA’s platform bills is making its way through the chambers as well and has cleared the Senate and the House for engrossment, the first step. LD 1530 would provide insurance reimbursements to non-transporting EMS providers and is an important first step in making reimbursements to providers when a patient refuses transport a reality. With a small fiscal note, it's our hope that this will be enacted and make its way off the table. 

The Housing and Economic Development Committee held a language review session on Tuesday, March 31st on several bills they are seeking to wrap up in advance to the chambers for consideration. Among those is LD 2173, the LD 1829 “fix” bill.

Many members have reached out to our team for information about this bill, so we wanted to provide a quick update. The final version of the bill as amended makes some needed improvements over LD 1829. If this version survives, municipalities can expect the implementation deadline for all provisions of LD 1829 to move to July 1st, 2027.

In addition, the bill makes some adjustments to the requirement to allow greater density in areas outside designated growth areas served by public water and sewer. In this version, LD 2173 mandates that a municipal ordinance may not require a minimum lot size that exceeds 10,000 square feet for the first dwelling unit, or 20,000 square feet for the first two dwelling units within a single structure.

Many communities were rightly concerned about the prior 5,000 square foot minimum lot size requirement, as this would significantly increase density outside of designated growth areas, potentially straining municipal infrastructure. Other notable revisions include the removal of the “other comparable sewer system” language in the ability to exclude areas identified as a coastal barrier resource system, special flood hazard, or coastal sand dune system from some provisions if they meet the statutory definitions of these features and are identified and exempted in a duly adopted ordinance.

As this brief update shows, this is a complex bill, and we'll keep members posted as it makes its way through the chambers. In related news, the Maine Office of Community Affairs, or MOCA, is holding an info session for round two of their municipal ordinance development grants on April 6th, 2026 at 10:00 AM.

These grants provide funding to municipalities for ordinance work related to recently passed housing legislation. For details and to register Visit Mocha's website, which we will link in the show notes. 

That was a lot of talking after a lot of listening this week. 

I know that was a lot of information we shared this week, but this will do it for this episode of Potholes and Politics, and as always, feel free to reach out to any of us on the team with any questions, comments, or fan mail.

Yes, we are always happy to hear from our members about any topic, and most of all, we hope that you find this information helpful. So, thanks so much for listening. We appreciate you all. 

Thanks for listening. Have a great week everyone.

Read about the Special Appropriations Table in our March 29, 2024 bulletin.

Learn more about MOCA’s Info Sessions on their website.