The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set news policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com
Rep. Drew Gattine represents parts of Saco, Scarborough and Westbrook in the Maine House of Representatives. He is a member of the Legislature’s Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee and the Joint Select Committee on Housing.
Recently, Rep. Laurel Libby recently published a column in this newspaper suggesting that policy impacts from bills passed by the Maine Legislature are hidden from Maine people.
In it, she writes about an experience speaking with a constituent who was surprised to learn about some of the measures that the Legislature passed last session, specifically regarding initiatives included in the state budget. Libby concludes the piece’s opening paragraph by writing, “Many voters don’t know what’s really happening in government, even when it directly impacts their lives.”
Rep. Libby is a Republican, and I’m a Democrat, so you might be surprised to learn that I actually agree with her. She’s right — most Mainers aren’t fully aware of what happens in Augusta and the real-life impacts that the Legislature’s decisions have on people throughout our state.
So, I’d like to shine a light on some things that the Legislature did for Maine people over the past two years — things that Libby and her Republican colleagues opposed that you might not know about, and they certainly don’t like to talk about.
In 2023, Democrats in the Legislature passed a two-year state budget with hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for municipal revenue sharing, K-12 public schools, free breakfast and lunch for students and salary supplements for early childhood educators. This funding is essential to help ease the cost burden on local governments, so Maine property taxpayers don’t have to pick up the entire tab to support their local schools and critical public services like fire, ambulance and police.
Libby and her Republican colleagues brag about not voting for the budget. But the budget included nearly $40 million for Auburn public schools for this school year alone, funding that Rep. Libby evidently did not find important enough to support. While she and other Republicans are making the case that they are the ones who really care about the property tax burden on Maine families, they don’t want to talk about how much property taxes would actually increase if the state did not pass a budget to send this money back to local communities. It would be devastating, but that didn’t stop them from voting against it. Don’t believe me? Check the voting record.
And that’s not all. The budget, including the supplemental spending packages that we passed later in 2023 and earlier this year, also included significant funding that directly impacts the well being of Maine families. They included tens of millions of dollars to support older Mainers by keeping nursing homes open and expanding the Medicare Savings Program, which helps older people with low incomes pay their out-of-pocket costs for medicine and medical care. There were also initiatives to help younger families build their lives here, like more than $70 million to expand access to affordable child care and nearly $8 million to ensure more Mainers can access infertility treatment. Rep. Libby and her fellow Republicans voted against all those things.
These are only a few examples. When Republicans voted against the budget they voted against funding to make mental health treatment more accessible to those who need it, to create a new state child tax credit, to increase the annual income tax pension deduction, to build more affordable housing and expand existing relief programs like the Property Tax Fairness Credit and the Property Tax Deferral Program, which are proven to help people remain in their homes.
As I was reading Rep. Libby’s column, I thought about all these important policies and the good that they will do for Mainers across the state. I found myself wondering whether or not she told that constituent about how she — and her fellow Republicans — voted against all those things when she was bragging about opposing the budget.
Because if she had, then that constituent would have known the truth. And the truth, as Aldous Huxley once wrote, “shall make you mad.”
