AUGUSTA, Maine — Maine lawmakers failed Friday to overturn any of the eight vetoes Gov. Janet Mills issued this year, including of a measure to ban bump stocks after the Lewiston mass shooting and a repeated effort to cover farmworkers under Maine’s minimum wage laws.
The last flurry of activity at the State House before lawmakers break for the year and many shift to campaign mode ahead of the November election brought no surprises, as many of the bills only passed the Democratic-controlled Legislature by party-line or narrow margins rather than receiving support from at least two-thirds of members needed to override vetoes.
Last year, Mills used her veto pen to block four measures. Since taking office in 2019, she has vetoed 49 bills and had none overturned. That is well shy of the record 642 bills her predecessor, Republican Gov. Paul LePage, vetoed during his eight-year tenure.
Among the eight bills the Democratic governor successfully vetoed this year included a proposal to ban bump stocks that Sen. Anne Carney, D-Cape Elizabeth, introduced in the wake of the Oct. 25 mass shooting at a Lewiston bowling alley and bar that left 18 dead and 13 injured.
The ban on bump stocks and other devices that let semi-automatic weapons fire rapidly like outlawed machine guns was tacked onto Carney’s original bill to require police to destroy all forfeited firearms rather than only those used in murders or homicides.
Mills said Carney’s bump stock ban used “broad and ambiguous language” that could “unintentionally ban a significant number of weapons used for hunting or target shooting” in Maine. She also noted the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule this summer on a federal ban then-President Donald Trump’s administration issued after the nation’s deadliest-ever mass shooting in 2017, when a lone gunman killed 60 people and wounded hundreds in Las Vegas.
Carney put forward the ban as part of a suite of legislation Democratic lawmakers proposed after Maine’s deadliest mass shooting on record. Mills also proposed and later signed her bill to expand background checks to advertised gun sales, tweak the 2019 “yellow flag” law she crafted with gun-rights advocates to make it easier for police to take people into protective custody and invest in various mental health and violence prevention initiatives.
Additionally, the governor let a measure from Sen. Peggy Rotundo, D-Lewiston, to require 72-hour waiting periods for firearm purchases become law without her signature while directing her administration to monitor legal challenges to similar laws in states such as Vermont.
Similar gun control measures failed to pass the Legislature as recently as last year, but the Lewiston shooting carried out by an Army reservist who legally purchased his guns months before the rampage changed the political picture in a rural state with hunting traditions.
Lawmakers also failed Friday to override the governor’s veto of her own bill that set out to cover farmworkers under Maine’s $14.15 hourly minimum wage. Mills turned on the measure when it received an amendment that would allow workers to sue over alleged violations.
Democratic legislators and labor advocates sharply criticized Mills in April for her veto, which came after she also vetoed similar legislation in 2023 before setting up a committee to study the issue. Several lawmakers said Mills sought on her own to insert a private litigation ban.
Mills also vetoed a bill from House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross, D-Portland, to engage in concerted activity to improve their working conditions, writing she could not “subject our farmers to a complicated new set of labor laws that will require a lawyer just to understand.”
Among other vetoes, Mills blocked bills to raise the state’s top income tax rate on wealthier Mainers from 7.15 percent to 8.45 percent and to end Maine’s “three strikes” law for petty theft cases.
