AUGUSTA, Maine — Maine’s high court ruled Friday that the Legislature can enact referendums that were set for the 2023 ballot but became part of a timing dispute with Gov. Janet Mills and other top state officials.
The 31-page ruling from the Maine Supreme Judicial Court primarily affects an initiative seeking to ban foreign governments from influencing referendum campaigns here, which supporters are trying to push through the Legislature instead of going to the November ballot.
Democrats who lead the Legislature, led by Senate President Troy Jackson of Allagash and House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross, asked the high court to weigh in after they bypassed Republicans to pass a state budget in March. To put it into effect by a July 1 deadline, they had to technically adjourn the Legislature and return in a special session to finish work for the year.
Mills, also a Democrat, issued a proclamation saying the move put four referendum questions on the ballot because lawmakers had not acted on them during the legislative session in which they were presented. Lawmakers countered that the bills had not been printed by late March.
The dispute presented questions about whether lawmakers had missed their chance to enact the bills, but the Legislature agreed with Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and Attorney General Aaron Frey that they still could put the questions into effect. The high court agreed with Mills on the timing but held that lawmakers could still act on the questions.
“To hold otherwise would thwart the constitutional power of the Legislature to adopt an initiative without change,” the unanimous ruling said.
The proposal most likely to pass as a result of the ruling came about in response to a 2021 referendum that tried to halt Central Maine Power’s controversial transmission corridor through western Maine. Hydro-Quebec, the Canadian power supplier for the project, spent millions on the referendum. The Legislature has not enacted any ballot initiatives since 2007.
The Legislature passed a foreign electioneering ban in 2021, but Mills vetoed the measure that was also opposed by the Maine State Chamber of Commerce and Maine Forest Products Council.
Along with the electioneering question, the three other referendums on tap for 2023 would create a new electric utility run by an elected board, seek to block that referendum by requiring voter approval of state agencies and electric cooperatives borrowing more than $1 billion and force manufacturers selling vehicles in Maine to make information available to vehicle owners and independent repair shops under a “right to repair” law.
Legislative Democrats are also facing a challenge to their budget maneuver in Kennebec County Superior Court, where a pending lawsuit that includes several Republicans as plaintiffs claims the process was unconstitutional.
Two of the seven Supreme Judicial Court justices, Rick Lawrence and Catherine Connors, who were each appointed to the bench by Mills, recused themselves from the case over the Legislature’s powers without citing reasons for doing so.
