Rep. Emily Cain in her office at the State House in Augusta, Maine. photo by Ramona du Houx

This week, Governor Paul LePage took the unprecedented step of issuing a line-item veto to changes made to the state’s two-year budget. The governor vetoed funding for general assistance reimbursements to cities and towns.
The budget agreement was overwhelmingly approved by Republicans and Democrats in the Maine House and Senate.

This bipartisan agreement on general assistance was not arrived at easily. We worked with officials from cities and towns across the state — and from all political leanings — to craft an agreement that was fair and responsible.

The agreement prevented an $8 million budget shortfall in the state’s general assistance reimbursements to towns from being shifted to property taxpayers. More than two-thirds of lawmakers in the House gave it a stamp of approval, followed by a unanimous vote in the Senate.

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Workers stand up for their rights at the state capitol this year

Gov. Paul LePage signed three bills this week he said will help open the door to jobs. But advocates for Maine’s workers disagree.

LD 1913 is called, An Act To Review and Restructure the Workers’ Compensation System.The bill caps benefits for almost all injured workers at 10 years, even if their injury still prevents them from returning to work. It also makes it harder for injured workers to qualify for benefits by moving the threshold to receive workers compensation benefits from 12 to18 percent disabled.

“This is among the worst affronts in a series of Republican attacks on working people this year,” said Rob Hunt,of Buxton, who serves on the Labor, Research and Economic Development Committee, where the bill was first considered. “It won’t help create a single job or get our economy back on track.”

The previous law provided a safety net of benefits for severely injured employees who must deal with permanent loss of earnings. The system prevents workers who are injured on the job from suing their employers for negligence.

“Nobody goes on workers comp to get rich,” said Rep. Anne Haskell of Portland, “After 10 years, a permanent ailment doesn’t get better.”

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Hans-Bruns was cut off from his MaineCare because of a LePage policy. He has cancer and since then has only received emergency care for his critical illness because of Maine's new policy that discriminates against immigrants. courtesy photo

Maine Equal Justice Partners and the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine Foundation today filed suit in U.S. District Court against the Maine Department of Health and Human Services to restore health insurance coverage for a man with a life-threatening illness who is suffering unbearable pain.

The suit was brought on behalf of Hans Bruns, a resident of Fort Fairfield who lost health care coverage through MaineCare in October. In addition, the suit seeks class status for an estimated 500 individuals who were also denied coverage as part of a change in state law adopted last year.

“Hans Bruns has cancer and is suffering from incredible pain. Without proper treatment, Hans faces a terrifying and painful fight for his life with a very poor prognosis for survival,” said Robyn Merrill, a policy analyst and attorney for Maine Equal Justice Partners. “We are asking the court to restore Hans’ health insurance coverage so he can get the full range of treatment that could result in better health outcomes and ease his suffering.”

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Rep. Emily Cain, Maine's Democratic Minority Leader in the state House of Representatives. photo by Ramona du Houx

Maine’s House Minority Leader, Rep. Emily Cain, sat down for an interview about this session. Cain is the spokesperson for democrats in the House of Representatives and since the LePage administration has moved in her public role has increased. Young, energetic, quick witted and intelligent she handles tense situations with ease and grace. She never backs down from her principles and has a clear understanding how to move Maine forward economically while maintaining Maine’s quality of life, Having severed on the Appropriations and Education Committees she brings unique insights to her job which helps during negotiations.

This session has been dominated by Gov. Paul LePage’s proposed cuts that would result in people losing health care. When did this all start?

Before we even arrived back in session, long before Christmas, the Appropriations Committee had held hearings on his supplemental budget that made $220 million in cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services.

First the governor tried to blame “too many people being on the program.” Then he blamed the federal government. He wouldn’t take responsibility for errors within DHHS — these were errors within his own administration — for why that cash-flow problem happened.

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Maine People's Alliance members protesting that Bank of America does not pay taxes. The protest was in Portland, Maine

Members of the Maine People’s Alliance, together with members of the Maine Small Business Coalition, gathered outside Bank of America locations in Portland, Bangor and Augusta today to protest the fact that while millions of Americans are supporting their communities today by paying their federal taxes, corporations like Bank of America aren’t paying a dime, despite having made billions of dollars in profits and having received massive public bailouts and corporate subsidies.

“It’s particularly frustrating for small business owners when we see mega-corporations like Bank of America find ways to get off the hook,” said Betty Ann Sheats, owner of a remodeling company from Auburn who spoke outside the Portland Bank of America branch. “Their tax dodging tilts the playing field against small business and starves our local economies of the resources we need to invest in our future and get our economy back on track.”

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Maine State capitol

Early this morning, the Maine Legislature recessed until May 15 when lawmakers will return to take final votes on the governor’s proposed budget cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services for 2013. Votes were delayed on the DHHS budget after lawmakers learned the administration’s figures were inaccurate due to serious computer errors, which allowed more than 25,000 ineligible people to receive health care assistance.

“It’s disappointing that our work has been delayed,” said Senate Democratic Leader Barry Hobbins of Saco. “But what’s most important is that we work with trust and confidence that we are getting accurate information.”

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“Passage of LD 1913 hurts the backbone of the Maine economy- Maine’s workers. LD 1913 harms severely injured workers in order to line the pockets of the insurance industry,” said Maine AFL-CIO President Don Berry.”LD 1913 will cap workers compensation benefits at ten years for the vast majority of severely injured workers, even if they cannot earn a living due to their injuries.”

The vote was along party-lines of 75 Republicans to 71 Democrats.

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In a party-line vote of 75 to 71, the Maine House voted late this afternoon to reduce unemployment insurance benefits to unemployed job seekers. The Republican-backed bill forces unemployed workers to use up their earned vacation time prior to collecting unemployment insurance and shortens the duration of the benefit.

“This is the money unemployed workers are counting to pay their bills in the worst of times,” said Paul Gilbert of Jay. “We were elected to create jobs not make things harder for the unemployed.”

The measure, LD 1725, delays unemployment benefits and reduces the time frame during which a job seeker is required to widen their job search outside their occupation, wage, or geographic region, from 12 weeks to 10 weeks.

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The Maine legislature has killed a bill that would have allowed Gov. LePage to keep unprecedented amounts of written records private. The proposal, which drew opposition from open records advocates, went down by a 34-0 Senate vote. The House voted it last week. Transparency in government has been maintained.

The bill sought to create an exception in Maine’s public records law for proposed legislation, reports and working papers of the governor and the governor’s office.

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Protesting a bill that aims to take away workers rights

More than 150 people from all over Maine brought a message to LePage and lawmakers to: “Put Maine First” on April 2. And today over 100 community leaders, small business owners, and workers from across Maine gathered at the State House to voice their opposition to LD 309, the so-called ‘right-to-work’ legislation.

These citizen-lobbyists that gathered April 2 at the Capitol attended a legislative briefing organized by a coalition of groups working in the public interest and then made their way to the State House to have their voices heard.Among issues discussed where harmful changes proposed for Maine’s General Assistance program, to the tax code, to workers’ rights and unemployment insurance, and environmental protections that safeguard Maine’s clean water.

“Many of the bills being rushed through will have far-reaching and long-lasting consequences,” said Lisa Pohlmann, executive director of the Natural Resources Council of Maine, who drew attention to a bill that would undermine safeguards for mining in Maine.

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