AUGUSTA, Maine — Democratic lawmakers worked all day Tuesday to pass a short-term budget that fills a $118 million MaineCare funding gap, stopping short of enacting it amid a lack of Republican support that threatened to delay payments to health providers.
It was a chaotic day at the State House around Gov. Janet Mills’ supplemental budget, which was uncontroversial until Republicans turned last week against a bipartisan deal that was negotiated by some of their members. They vowed to vote against it, withholding the two-thirds votes that are necessary in both chambers to enact it immediately.
Majority Democrats began to push it through the Legislature in an arduous series of votes on Tuesday. But in the end, they blinked and voted after 7 p.m. to adjourn the Legislature until Feb. 25. That left more time to negotiate with Republicans, but it foreshadowed a contentious road ahead for lawmakers who must also pass a two-year budget by this summer.
“I hope that they can address the discord, disconnect, disarray within their own caucus, whatever it is, so that we can responsibly move forward and get to work on the biennial budget,” Rep. Drew Gattine, D-Westbrook, the co-chair of the budget panel, said of Republicans at a news conference.
Timing was the major question entering Tuesday on the Democratic governor’s supplemental budget, which closes the MaineCare funding gap and also includes $2 million to fight spruce budworm infestations. If Democrats were to pass the plan with simple majorities and no Republican support, it would take 90 days to become law.
The Office of MaineCare Services emailed providers Monday to lay out how that situation would lead the state to temporarily withhold certain payments starting in March. The state’s health department outlined a plan to minimize pain for providers with a system that caps and delays certain payments to bridge the funding gap until a budget is enacted.
Mills joined her fellow Democrats to implore Republicans to pass their plan, but the minority party insisted. They wanted their peers to reinsert a provision that Mills initially included to create an annual three-month limit on General Assistance per recipient, injecting that and other ideas into a series of amendments that Democrats shot down on Tuesday.
But that process did not go smoothly. The Senate took an extended break in the evening after four Democrats voted for a Republican amendment that proposed a cost-of-living increase to nursing home and other support workers. Three of them switched their stance to vote against it when the Senate reconvened.
Mills has proposed a $11.6 billion plan that fills a roughly $450 million shortfall but has already faced criticism from the right and left for mixing tax hikes with health-related cuts. Republicans are unlikely to vote for it. The cuts, including the General Assistance change that Mills and Republicans are pressing for, made Democratic lawmakers uneasy.
Frustration was evident on both sides Tuesday, particularly as the Senate took up the plan in the afternoon. Senate Minority Leader Trey Stewart, R-Presque Isle, said his party was “strong-armed” during votes in the budget committee last week, when Republican negotiators endorsed a plan that did not have the support of their caucuses.
Sen. Peggy Rotundo, D-Lewiston, who co-chairs the budget panel, reminded her colleagues that Republicans on the committee worked with Democrats to reach numerous compromises in the plan while pushing other items to two-year budget negotiations.
“I just have to say that no one was strong-armed,” Rotundo said.
The widespread Republican opposition to the plan was clear by the morning after the appropriations committee vote, when Rep. Ken Fredette, R-Newport, a panel member who was absent the night before while attending a high school basketball game with his stepdaughter, cast a vote against the budget. Democrats have focused on his role in the dispute.
“I didn’t realize the member who was not present had as much influence over the entirety of the Republican caucuses in the House and Senate, but it’s clear that he does,” House Speaker Ryan Fecteau, D-Biddeford, told reporters on Tuesday.
