AUGUSTA, Maine - By wide margins, the Maine House and Senate have overridden Gov. Paul LePage’s veto of the $6.7 billion two-year state budget brokered by leaders of the two parties in the Legislature. The Senate voted 25 to 10 without debate while the House voted 109 to 37.
With only hours to go before the current state budget was due to expire, lawmakers have avoided a feared partial shutdown of state government. That possibility was clearly a factor for many lawmakers, including House Republican Leader Ken Fredette of Newport.
"If we don’t have a state budget I think we are faced with a state government shutdown," Fredette said. "There may or may not be an alternative, certainly there is not one that has been tried before. But at the end of the day, I am going to support this budget."
But other Republicans were not convinced that failing to pass the budget negotiated by legislative leaders would automatically lead to a state shutdown. Rep. Deb Sanderson is a Republican from Chelsea.
"We do not have to shut state government down if we do not vote to pass this budget today. We do not have to do that," Sanderson says. "And to say that we are going to shut state government down if we don’t pass this budget, that’s what I hear as a false choice."
And it wasn’t only Republicans who voted to sustain the governor's veto. Some Democrats believe their leaders have given up too much to the Republicans in the budget deal. Out of frustration and anger with those leaders, they also voted with the governor. Several times the debate got heated. Rep. Gina Melaragno, an Auburn Democrat is among those upset with the package.
"The Republicans got exactly what they want, and that was the redistribution of the wealth to the top," Melaragno said, before she was cut off by the committee chair. "The Chair would remind all members that as emotional as the debate is to stick to the substance of what is in front on you do not question the motives of other members.”
Democratic House Speaker Eves says the budget is a good compromise for most Mainers, who will find things to dislike and to like in its details. "First of which is a middle class tax cut," Eves says. "Second is property tax relief for every homeowner in the state, third is putting more money in kids' classrooms, and fourth is making sure we are establishing workforce training programs that increase workers’ wages. So we are very proud of what we have done."
Gov. Paul LePage is not fan of the budget, which he will have to deal with for the next two years. He told a morning rally of supporters that the document was crafted in secret by the four top legislative leaders of both parties who made a travesty of his own budget priorities.
"In the wee hours of the morning before people that had their little budget deal, they took money out of education, took monies that we had earmarked for other priorities of the state," LePage says.
The governor may not like it but the budget is now law. It sets the basic spending priorities of state government for the next two years. But lawmakers expect that by the start of their second session in January, LePage will once again push for his spending priorities, and they expect there will be yet another budget battle.