📝 Session-end notes from Augusta

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By Michael Shepherd - April 18, 2022
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Good morning from Augusta. It is Patriot's Day, the rare state holiday on which the Legislature is in. Here's your soundtrack.

What we're watching today

Lawmakers are on track to leave Augusta as scheduled. After a revised version of Gov. Janet Mills' $1.2 billion spending package passed the budget panel unanimously late Friday, lawmakers look like they will adhere to their election-year schedule and leave Augusta by the statutory Wednesday deadline. Sessions are scheduled each day through then, so it may be tight.
We reserve the right to change our minds on this prediction. The Legislature's basic functionality so far does not mean difficult issues are not left. Here are some more notes on how things will wind down.
The price of a bipartisan budget was about 60,000 more relief payments. As we noted last week in the Daily Brief, the Democratic governor's spending plan was advancing steadily and mostly uncontroversially through the budget committee over the course of the 2022 session. The thing holding it up until the end of last week was how many Mainers would get $850 relief payments.
Mills cribbed this idea from legislative Republicans' early budget demands and boosted the proposed checks as fiscal predictions progressively increased. She initially wanted to send them to 800,000 Mainers, while legislative Republicans in recent weeks floated the idea of giving them to all tax filers.
In the end, they agreed to a compromise. Under the new deal that awaits approval by the full Legislature, the payments will go to an estimated 857,000 Mainers — single filers making less than $100,000 or married couples at less than $200,000. It was enough for Republicans to jump on.
The interplay between the three major tribal-rights measures on their way to the governor's desk could get dicey. In a well-documented flurry last week, lawmakers advanced three landmark pieces of legislation that would benefit Maine tribes: a Passamaquoddy water-quality bill, a sweeping sovereignty measure opposed by Mills and a compromise with the governor that would give tribes control of a new mobile sports betting market.
The Passamaquoddy bill was opposed by the Mills administration, but it passed the Legislature with enough support to overturn a possible veto. It will probably move forward. A Bangor casino and off-track betting parlors relegated to in-person sports betting in the tribal compromise bill are lobbying hard against it, but the governor's support makes that measure the next most likely to pass.
One of the biggest remaining questions is whether legislative Democrats will keep the bigger sovereignty bill going to Mills' desk despite her opposition. It would most likely lead to a high-profile veto that would anger progressives as the governor faces former Gov. Paul LePage in the November election. In that situation, there would be still no doubt as to who effectively killed the measure, but the confrontation would be a little less raw.
The AARP is among those opposing bargain between Mills and the solar industry to reduce costs from a ballooning program. Lawmakers have left some tough energy policy bills for last in 2022, including a utility accountability measure that divided a legislative panel into advancing three different versions and another one to rein in the exploding costs of solar incentives.
The latter bill, which would address the net energy billing program passed into law by Mills and Democrats in 2019, would switch mid-sized solar developments to fixed-price contracts instead of the ones now tied to the overall price of energy. It would reduce the price of that electricity from 21 cents per kilowatt hour to 13 cents based on the current market. Mills' energy office and a solar industry group negotiated the deal.
Despite the aim of reducing future costs, opponents including AARP Maine are criticizing the bill for locking in electric rate increases that fund the program. They mirror concerns about the overall program from groups including the Industrial Energy Consumer Group, a coalition of large energy consumers, who argue utility regulators and not the Legislature should be negotiating rates.

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What we're reading

— While Maine officials took strong action to contain the fallout at the first farm to discover forever chemical pollution here, they believed it was an isolated case. The plight of Arundel farmer Fred Stone kicked off mobilization against the chemicals here, but policy changes will not save his farm. Read Caitlin Andrews' investigation of the Stone case here.
— Mills broke with Rep. Jared Golden of Maine's 2nd District and top state-level Democrats to oppose the congressman's tribal sovereignty bill. The attempt to apply federal Indian law to the tribes going forward would effectively undo a 1980s land-claims settlement at the heart of recent state reform bids.
— A recently unearthed 1942 document shows Maine officials scheming to avoid paying millions of dollars owed to tribes. Within a debate over what was owed to tribes, lawmakers then laid out goals of assimilation, buying land from reservations and limiting intermarriage, leading authors of a report released last week to conclude the state had "genocidal acts and intentions."

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Follow along today

10 a.m. The House and Senate convene for the third-to-last scheduled day of the 2022 session.
In the House, votes are expected on at least three energy policy bills including one to more strictly regulator utility monopolies. Other key bills could be brought up as well. Watch here.
The Senate is expected to vote on the House-approved sports betting compromise between Mills and tribes. Watch here.
Adm. Michael Gilday, the U.S. chief of naval operations, will tour Bath Iron Works and the future USS Carl M. Levin, a destroyer, with Sen. Susan Collins. Collins will hold a news conference at 1:30 p.m. after the tour, which is her first public event since testing positive for COVID-19.

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📷 Lead photo: Sen. Bill Diamond, D-Windham, speaks in the Senate chamber at the State House in Augusta on Tuesday, April 12, 2022. (AP Photo by Robert F. Bukaty)

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📝 Session-end notes from Augusta

What we're watching today

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