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Michael Cianchette is a Navy reservist who served in Afghanistan. He is in-house counsel to a number of businesses in southern Maine and was a chief counsel to former Gov. Paul LePage.
Sequels and remakes are everywhere.
From “Moana” to “Fraiser,” “Gladiator” to “Mad Max,” Hollywood’s beancounters seem to have the upper hand when it comes to greenlighting projects. One big reason? These familiar stories are known commodities, so they are less likely to lose money.
The opposite was true this week in Maine politics.
The day before the Maine Legislature returned for their first work day of 2025, the Mills Administration announced a problem with the MaineCare program. Projected spending through the remainder of the fiscal year, June 30, is $118 million above budget.
The administration blamed the cost overruns on a “perfect storm.” One was increased enrollment from “changes that have increased MaineCare eligibility.” Another was increasing costs of healthcare, while the third was the increase in utilization by people on the taxpayer-funded programs.
If this story seems familiar, it should.
During the last Democratic administration, Gov. John Baldacci made expanding MaineCare a cornerstone of his Blaine House tenure. That expansion led to major cost overruns, which left Maine’s hospitals holding hundreds of millions of dollars in “IOUs.”
To his credit, Gov. Baldacci did not believe that tax hikes were the right way out of the mess. He fought many of his legislative allies on those grounds. However, creative financial constructs were used as one-time patches. The most reviled was the attempted sale of the state-owned liquor monopoly.
Republican opposition helped turn the proposal from an outright sale into a 10-year lease. By all accounts, the winners of the liquor monopoly bid were rewarded handsomely for their very little risk.
The liquor lease expired during the LePage administration. And one of the cornerstones of LePage’s Blaine House tenure was making good on those “IOUs” taxpayers owed Maine’s hospitals.
He did it by putting the asset — the right to sell liquor — back in public hands. A longstanding Maine company was hired to operate the business of warehousing and trucking booze. The profits were bundled into financial collateral and the state leveraged its borrowing authority to make good on those overdue accounts.
Importantly, however, all the profits over-and-above the debt service stayed with Maine.
But, with a new shortfall in the MaineCare program, the sequel is at hand. The script is yet to be written.
It won’t be a shot-for-shot remake. We can’t tap the liquor contract again. The profits were kept secured in a separate fund, which Gov. Janet Mills has tapped to provide long-term funding for Maine’s roads and bridges.
Nor are we starting from the same exact spot. Gov. Angus King left Gov. Baldacci with a massive structural deficit and an empty rainy day fund. Baldacci never managed to put money aside. In contrast, Gov. Paul LePage left Gov. Mills with a manageable budget and a healthy rainy day fund. Mills has continued to build up the so-called “budget stabilization fund.”
Placing a stake in the ground, Mills’ finance chief — Commissioner Kirsten Figueroa — told legislators they should not consider the rainy day fund as a means to solve either the current or projected budget shortfalls. She also knocked “some lawmakers” for attempting to spend an additional $117 million in the final days of last year’s session.
Mills “pocket vetoed” those proposals, primarily from Democrats.
Our 186 legislators will be the primary scriptwriters of this sequel. Democrats, with narrow legislative majorities, hold the pen. Yet Gov. Mills is the executive producer, who can veto their script if it doesn’t pass muster.
If something worthwhile is going to get published, it will probably need Maine Republicans to take a stand and forge a solution. I expect that part of the story to repeat once more.
