The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set news policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com
Rep. John “Jack” Ducharme of Madison is the Maine House Republican lead on the Legislature’s Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee.
A recent column by a colleague from the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee cherry picks spending in Democrats’ latest majority budget to paint Republicans as not supporting our communities. This doesn’t reflect reality that I’ve seen.
Legislative Democrats have grown comfortable using the budget process to engage in a sort of political theater unimaginable to most Mainers. Hearings and meetings are regularly delayed often it seems to manufacture a sense of urgency and pressure. Decisions are made behind closed doors between lobbyists and members of the majority party, with time spent “on mic” in the Appropriations Committee often reserved for the scripted rubber stamping of those decisions. Unpopular decisions are often delayed until the middle of the night under the guise of “waiting for the paperwork,” while Mainers are literally kept in the dark about what is happening with their money!
They often attempt to hide the true cost of their spending. Fiscal notes are stripped from bills, effective dates are delayed and other dedicated revenue accounts are raided. They ignore the warning signs and writing on the wall even when it is their own Democratic governor writing the message.
You don’t need to look far to see examples of backpedaling on bipartisan initiatives, especially those that save Mainers’ money and reduce the amount of tax dollars flowing into state coffers. The last biennial budget halted the scheduled increase in reimbursements to municipalities for the Homestead Exemption, leaving towns to increase property taxes to cover it. It eliminated the popular senior property tax freeze, which allowed thousands of retirees to “freeze” their taxes at the previous year’s level, after only one year. In the 2024 supplemental budget, there was even an attempt to reduce a Republican pension exemption initiative that provides a tax break of more than $130 million per year for Maine retirees.
Republicans have supported many major initiatives, including fully funding the state’s share of 55 percent of education costs. Republicans supported ongoing funding for Maine nursing homes and veteran’s homes. Republicans did not support shortchanging our seniors and veterans in favor of new programs. These include initiatives like the “Housing First” Program that seeks to replicate the failed approaches to homelessness seen in west coast cities or the “Office of New Americans,” established in the latest supplemental budget, without a vote of either chamber, to better organize the administration’s assistance to noncitizens, or the $20 million pilot programs for rent relief that includes providing $2 million rental assistance to homeless minors. These are unsustainable for Maine taxpayers.
Republican opposition to the spending stems from the inability to sustain the spending once it is enacted without increasing the tax burden on already the fourth highest taxed people in the nation.
Now, it wouldn’t be fair to say Democrats support all spending and didn’t cut any spending requests from the latest supplemental budget proposal. They cut 17 of 32 requested Maine State Police positions, troopers and sergeants who were destined to help bolster much-needed rural patrol. They cut the governor’s request to save $107 million for the future and tried to strip $60 million from the Highway Fund.
With all this on top of the more than 85 Democratic bills funded off the special appropriations table, there is little question as to why we are facing a structural gap of nearly $1 billion over the next two years. With the latest two-part majority budgets increasing spending by almost $2 billion more than the last, there’s little wonder why the governor refused to act on a flurry of Democrat spending bills sent to her desk in the disorganized closing hours of the legislative session.
The real question is, how long are Mainers going to tolerate this broken process? Elections have consequences.
