AUGUSTA, Maine – A sweeping package to deliver $450 relief checks to most Mainers and provide more heating aid failed in the Maine Senate on Wednesday night, sinking a $474 million package that Gov. Janet Mills had negotiated with legislative leaders.
The measure died in the Senate after receiving overwhelming support in the House earlier Wednesday evening in a vote of 125-16. The measure required the support of two-thirds of members so it could take effect immediately, in time for a winter heating season dominated by spiking energy prices and limited federal heating aid. But the measure garnered only 21 votes in the Senate, short of the 24 required.
Supporters said the relief package was a life-or-death matter. But opponents on the right argued it was an unprecedented action that would spend hundreds of millions of dollars without going through the Legislature’s typical process, which includes a public hearing and committee deliberations and votes.
Before rejecting the package as a whole, senators had rejected an effort by Republicans to send the measure to the Legislature’s budget-writing appropriations committee.
Opponents including Sen. Eric Brakey, R-Auburn, recommended that the bill negotiated with Mills go through committee vetting, with the potential for the whole legislature to pass the measure sometime before the holidays.
“The Legislature is established as a separate branch for a reason,” Brakey said.
Supporters were willing to pass a measure they saw as needed despite not going through the customary process.
Rep. Sawin Millett, R-Waterford, a powerful force on budgetary matters in the House, provided a long defense for voting for the bill when it was debated in the House.
“I’m willing to overlook the process for a moment,” Millett said. “I don’t want to come home and say I had an option to do something good and I chose to put it off.”
Maine Senate President Troy Jackson, D-Allagash, gave an impassioned speech for why it should pass. He even said he could support the bill as the person in the room who has had the most fights with Mills.
“Let’s let the campaign go. If you don’t like the chief executive, that’s fine. But nobody threw this on to us,” Jackson said. “This was an opportunity by the administration to do something meaningful for the people of this state.”
Mills placed blame for the measure’s failure on Senate Republicans.
“Tonight, the peoples’ representatives stood on the floor of the peoples’ house and debated the peoples’ business. Counter to the arguments of Senate Republicans, the voices of the people are being heard,” she said in a statement shortly after the measure’s failure. “Unfortunately, it is the peoples’ interests that were not served by tonight’s vote.”
