Legislature approves budget with 11th-hour storm relief addition

The Maine State House in Augusta lit up at night during the 2024 legislative session. (Emma Davis/ Maine Morning Star)

The Maine Legislature approved a supplemental state budget at nearly 3 a.m. Thursday morning that includes storm relief Gov. Janet Mills had previously proposed to be funded outside the budget process. 

The governor wrote in a letter to legislators Wednesday morning, before the storm relief was tacked on, that she would approve the budget plan. However, she objected to previous efforts to entangle her storm relief measure with other spending. 

In a statement later Thursday morning, Mills wrote that she was pleased with the package. “I look forward to signing this budget into law,” she wrote.

The budget adds new investments in housing, education and child care, among others, to the biennial budget approved last year. Mills had recommended many of these additions in February, however legislators opted to veer from her requests in several ways, one being proposed rollbacks to the state’s social safety net. 

For example, Mills left out money for the proposed eligibility expansion of Medicare Savings Program aimed to help low-income retirees, an expansion made in the biennial budget passed last year. The budget maintains that change, funding the program at $14.1 million. 

Changes to the Legislature’s budget proposal continued up until the final days of session. On Monday, the budget committee reopened voting on the plan it had previously set around 3 a.m. a week prior, reversing proposed cuts to the highway fund, pensioners and dairy farmers after objections from the Republican minority, some Democrats and Mills. However, these changes were not enough to sway legislative Republicans to support the Democrats’ budget.

Ahead of Wednesday night, lawmakers attempted to fund some of the additional priorities of the Republican minority — notably more money for mental health and nursing homes — outside the budget by way of an emergency bill Mills proposed to provide funding to rebuild infrastructure damaged by the consecutive storms this winter. 

The Senate approved the beefed up bill in a bipartisan vote on Friday night, but Tuesday night the House bypassed the effort, instead introducing their own amendment stripping it back to solely storm relief.

Another last-ditch effort

The disagreement between the chambers, and the growing objections to the budget plan from within the Democratic majority, came to a head again Wednesday night when the Senate attempted to change course.

For a brief moment, shortly after 10:30 p.m., both chambers had passed the budget plan. “I’m sure that every member in this chamber has something in this budget that they aren’t 100% happy with, myself included,” Sen. Jill Duson (D-Cumberland) said on the Senate floor. “But any good compromise has a give and take.” 

During the initial Senate debate on the budget proposal, Sen. Rick Bennett (R-Oxford) criticized Mills’ letter to legislators, in which she wrote she would pass the plan as proposed by the budget committee and threatened to veto the storm relief bill if it arrived on her desk as amended by Bennett. 

Bennett said on the Senate floor that the directive from Mills “reads like a letter from Vladamir Putin.” 

Within the hour, a new version of the budget garnered majority support in the Senate, with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle urging its passage. 

An amendment, introduced by Sen. Nicole Grohowski (D-Hancock), included additional investments for storm relief, veteran’s homes, raising pay for state workers and education technicians, among other provisions — aligning with several of the requests of the Republican minority. 

“I’m a proud Democrat,” Senate President Troy Jackson (D-Aroostook) said in support of Grohowski’s amendment, “but if voting for these things today makes me a Republican, then I’m a proud Republican. These should not be issues that divide us.” 

Other Democrats as well as Republican senators backed the amendment, too. 

​​“This amendment before us, as described, is totally nonpartisan,” Bennett said. “This amendment addresses issues which we all know need to be addressed.”  

However, the House responded with an amendment that only included funding for storm relief, which ultimately passed both chambers.

Democrats prioritize funding for housing

In the House, Rep. Mark Blier (R-Buxton) summarized Republicans’ overall objections to the budget as follows: “It does not go far enough, yet goes too far on certain items.”

Republicans argued the bill goes too far in its funding for housing. The budget includes a $76 million investment to increase housing access through a number of ways, such as through emergency shelters, tax credits and building more affordable options for families, workers and those in rural areas.  

Much of these investments aligned with what Mills had proposed, however the Legislature’s budget goes farther in the way of immediate interventions — putting $18 million toward a pilot program to prevent eviction, $2 million for a subsidy program for homeless students and increasing allocations for low-barriers shelters up to $7.5 million to be dispersed over the next several years. 

Kathy Kilrain del Rio, advocacy and programs director for Maine Equal Justice, said the pilot program will help people right now who can’t wait for new affordable housing to be built. 

“There has been a lot of focus over the last couple of years on other parts of the solution to the housing crisis,” Kilrain del Rio said, “so things like building and investing in shelters, which are very important and we support those things too, but a missing piece of the puzzle was really this rent relief piece.”

Adam Zuckerman, a lobbyist for the progressive advocacy organization Maine People’s Alliance, said that while the allocations are only for a pilot, the metrics from the pilot can be used to push for a permanent rent relief program down the line.

This funding was included after advocates rallied for rent relief at the State House earlier this session. The bill advocates had initially hoped to be the vehicle for rent relief this session, LD 1710, was turned into a study. 

Republicans called for even more funding for mental health initiatives, nursing homes

Alternately, when it comes to mental health and nursing homes, Republicans argued the budget did not go far enough. 

Nursing homes across Maine warned earlier this year that they face a $96 million budget shortfall, partly due to insufficient MaineCare reimbursements for patients. 

A scheduled change in reimbursements rates is slated to begin next year, and the budget provides $26 million to help ease the transition. Republicans had pushed for $31 million to get closer to fully closing the shortfall. 

“We’re kicking the can down the road again,” Rep. Austin Theriault (R-Fort Kent) said. 

The budget includes $19.6 million for mental and public health. Within this is a far-reaching proposal from House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross (D-Portland) that would establish a violence prevention program, build a stronger connection between 911 and the crisis 988 line, and fund two crisis receiving centers — one in Aroostook County and one in Penobscot County. The budget also allocated funding for a crisis center in Lewiston, which Mills proposed. 

In light of the mass shooting in Lewiston last fall, which left 18 dead and 13 injured, shoring up the state’s mental health services has been a bipartisan focus this session.

Mental health providers backed a “resiliency package” of bills to fill in gaps and improve service quality, some of which are funded in the budget. This includes proposals to bridge the gap for mental health organizations participating in certified community behavioral health clinic projects whose grants are ending as well as implementing a community-based model of care for adolescents. 

Advocates for mental health have noted that the initiatives not included in the budget would’ve required greater ongoing funding and, while sympathizing with the challenge of securing long-term appropriations, argued that sustainable solutions require ongoing funds.

Investments in education, other priorities

The budget makes significant investments in education, both continuing allocations from years past and funding new initiatives. It includes a $21 million investment for the state to continue to share the total cost of funding public education from K-12 at 55%.

Funds are also earmarked for an overhaul of one part of the state’s education system: special education for preschoolers. The budget provides funding for a plan to shift the responsibility for free appropriate public education for students with disabilities ages three to five from the quasi-government agency Child Development Services (CDS) to public school districts. 

This transition will create a structure that is more aligned with that of other states and comes after decades of dissatisfaction with CDS over inadequate staffing, resources and comparably poor performance in helping young children. More on that plan here.

Another new addition for education is coming by way of compensation for the staff who help keep Maine schools running. The budget will raise salaries for support staff and education technicians beginning in 2026. 

The budget also allocates funding for 18 additional law enforcement positions, fewer than the 32 positions Mills had recommended in her budget plan. 

This story was updated to include a statement from Gov. Janet Mills and remove a comment from Adam Zuckerman that misstated the scope of the study to be conducted via LD 1710.

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