“This is an enormous tragedy. There are more than 200 people who lost their home. Their belongings were destroyed—and their security shattered. Their lives are in limbo without the basic things we all take for granted each and every day,” said Senate President Justin Alfond. “If the Governor feels he is unable to take action right now, the legislature will. There is an immediate need to help the people of our state.”

Lewiston lawmakers expressed thanks for swift, decisive action by the Legislature that provides fire victims in their city will desperately needed emergency assistance.

The Legislative Council approved a funding request for $30,000 for housing vouchers to help Lewiston residents who were left homeless by three recent fires, the amount requested by Lewiston officials. Legislative leaders unanimously approved the request during an emergency meeting of the Legislative Council, the governing body of the Legislature made up of the 10 Democratic and Republican leaders. The request was made by Lewiston’s entire legislative delegation.

“The people of Lewiston are grateful for the swift action the Legislature took in the absence of the governor’s using his authority and contingency funds to address the crisis our community is facing,” said Rep. Peggy Rotundo of Lewiston. “The Lewiston delegation is grateful to the Legislature for supporting our community when we needed it most.”

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Maine’s dowtowns and Main Streets would be strengthened and grow under a measure sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Seth Goodall.

“Downtowns are the backbone of every community and are needed for a healthy local economy,” said Senator Goodall of Richmond. “This bill is beneficial to the bricks and mortar of our Main Streets. Additionally, it attracts businesses, creates jobs, and has proven results.”

A dozen people came out and testified in support of Goodall’s bill, LD 1172, An Act to Support the Maine Downtown Center,” a measure allocating $100,000 to the Maine Downtown Center.

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Majority Leader Rep. Seth Berry wants to help jobs grow as he and others on the bipartisan workforce committee look to improve higher education, Maine’s downtown communities and small business opportunities. Photo by Ramona du Houx

A budget should reflect our values. That’s why it’s so hard to stomach the budget Gov. Paul LePage is proposing. Maine needs a budget that helps grow our economy from the middle out and allows the middle class to prosper. The governor takes a top-down approach that hurts our elderly, our youth, our small businesses and our middle class. These are not the values of the Maine I know and grew up in.

When the governor unveiled his two-year budget three months ago, he passed the buck to Maine communities and their local taxpayers. He tried to wash his hands of responsibility even as he handed Maine taxpayers a bill for four-hundred-and-twenty-five million dollars. Democrats have been working ever since to prevent the governor from unloading the biggest tax shift in Maine history onto our state’s taxpayers.

A lot of bad ideas went into the governor’s budget. He wants to cut the funds that communities need to keep their roads from crumbling. He cuts important property tax reduction measures, like the Circuit Breaker, that many Mainers rely on. He’s pushing new costs onto local school districts. He even decided to cut a program that helps elderly Mainers afford their prescription drugs.

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School pride. For many of us, regardless of how long ago it may have been since we graduated, we still hold on to the memories of high school pep rallies, athletic events, and school field trips. There were school mascots, school fight songs, and school colors–how many of us wore our school colors even when we weren’t at school?
 
Perhaps it is through our school pride that we learn, as young adults, that we belong to something, we identify with something, a symbol of what and who is important to us.As the years pass, we now know that school is much more than the bricks and mortar. We may no longer remember the words to the school fight song, but we do remember the teacher who urged us to study a little longer; the principal who remembered our name as we passed in the hall; or the guidance counselor who gave us the courage to take a class that pushed our limits.

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Marie from Bangor has a part-time job that doesn’t provide health insurance. She has a serious heart condition that doesn’t allow her to work full time. Without health insurance for her or her family, she is forced to choose between putting gas in her car or paying her medical and utility bills. Marie shared her story with lawmakers last week in Augusta. Unfortunately, she is not alone.

The story I just told you is a reality for tens of thousands of Mainers who are unable to afford health insurance. A working father who can’t afford to pay for his heart medicine; an older Mainer struggling to pay for prescriptions or food; a veteran who can’t afford his insulin.

Many of you know how frightening it is to be sick and unable to afford go to the doctor. Or to have a loved one in that situation. Maine has an opportunity to change that. We can change the lives of nearly 70,000 people in our state by accepting federal health care dollars under the Affordable Care Act.

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Senator Emily Cain’s bill to increase access to batterer intervention programs was signed into law by Governor Paul LePage yesterday. The measure strengthens measures Cain successfully passed into law protecting victims of domestic violence in the last Legislative session.

“To curb domestic violence, batterer intervention programs must be available to men and women in Maine,” said Senator Cain. “These programs work, and must be available for all perpetrators of domestic violence, regardless of gender.”

The law will ensure gender equality for certified batterer intervention programs by approving gender-neutral certification standards. Currently, there are certified batterer intervention programs in Maine for men, but not for women.

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Majority Leader Rep. Seth Berry wants to help jobs grow as he and others on the bipartisan workforce committee look to improve higher education, Maine’s downtown communities and small business opportunities. Photo by Ramona du Houx

While much of the country has begun to emerge from the Great Recession, Maine ranks 45th in job creation, and more than 50,000 Mainers remain unemployed. In 2011, Maine was the only state in New England whose economy shrank, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Maine is one of only three states nationwide in 2012 whose revenues were below estimates, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

To help address the situation, the President of the Senate, Justin Alfond, and the Speaker of the House, Mark Eves, created the Joint Select Committee on Maine’s Workforce and Economic Future, with an emphasis on workforce development, so jobs can be created and filled by skilled workers in Maine.

“A number of people have expressed that they are very appreciative of the Legislature for taking on the issue. Folks are eager and determined to help. It’s a great opportunity for bipartisan collaboration here and real results,” said Rep. Seth Berry, the House chair on the bipartisan committee. “We’re working together to take the right actions now to move Maine’s economy forward, both in the short and long term. We will strengthen Maine’s economic future by strengthening our incumbent workforce and by making our downtowns and main streets more vibrant, so that they are better engines of economic activity.”

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Majority Leader Rep. Seth Berry has proposed a bill for tax fairness in Maine that would mirror the Buffet Rule. photo by Ramona du Houx

“This bill seeks to make our tax code fairer by correcting an imbalance that puts too much of the burden on lower- and middle-income Maine people,” said Berry. “People making more than $250,000 a year can afford to pay at least as much per dollar as those making $48,000.”

Taxation rates for the state’s highest-income households would come into alignment with the rates paid by all other Mainers under a measure proposed today by House Majority Leader Seth Berry of Bowdoinham.

Berry’s measure, LD 1113, “An Act To Provide Tax Fairness for Maine’s Middle Class and Working Families,” follows the same philosophy as the federal Buffet Rule: that everyone should pay their fair share. Under Berry’s bill, Mainers with annual incomes of at least $250,000 would pay at least the same effective rate in state and local taxes as the average paid by all other taxpayers.

Meanwhile Governor Paul LePage is raising taxes in order to pay for his income tax cuts, passed in 2011. LePage’s $6.2 billion two-year budget proposal cuts off all revenue sharing with municipalities and reins in two of the state’s main property tax relief programs, the Circuit Breaker refund and Homestead Property Tax Exemption. The proposal also ends the Business Equipment Tax Refund program, which reimburses businesses for equipment they purchase, and requires school districts to pay a much larger share of their teacher retirement benefits, and eliminates state revenue sharing.

How the LePage administration has outlined his objectives in this budget proposal amounts to over $400 million in a tax shift- or tax increase- to communities across the state because he can’t pay for his tax cuts enacted by the Republican controlled 125th Legislature. Revenues from Berry’s measure. estimated at $200 million in the first biennium, would fill half the budget gap created by new tax cuts largely benefiting the wealthy.

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Earlier this week, Democrats announced a plan for hospital repayment and hospital reform.
 
We believe the two go hand in hand: We must pay our bills—and also, address the high cost of health care. To do one, without the other, would be neglecting how we got here in the first place. To be clear, Democrats have always been committed to paying the hospitals. However, in spite of Democrats’ efforts, the issue of paying back the hospitals has been a political football— one used as a political wedge by many Republicans.

For ten years, Democrats have led on repaying the state’s debt to our hospitals–even during our nation’s worst recession. We know our job is not yet done and we must make this final payment. As we’ve said, it’s our obligation. So while we share the governor’s sense of urgency to pay back the hospitals, we believe there must be a choice for lawmakers and Maine people.

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Earlier this week many of us celebrated Valentine’s Day. A day where we take the opportunity to remind our loved ones how much they mean to us. The day also has another meaning: V-Day, as it is called, is a global movement to end violence against women and girls.

Domestic violence is a pattern of physical, verbal, or sexual aggression used by one person in a relationship to control the other. Last year, in one year alone, the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence worked with nearly 100,000 people, and its crisis hotline received more than 32,000 calls from people seeking help for domestic violence. This is a serious issue facing our friends, our neighbors, and our loved ones.

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