As many of you know, I am an ardent opponent of the vast majority of environmental roll backs proposed by Governor LePage in the name of job creation. Many of you have contacted me indicating you agree, and have implored me to fight against them. The Natural Resources Council of Maine has put together a document with the 50 worst environmental bills introduced this session, and you can find them here. (PDF)
Before I go on, The Fund for a Healthy Maine (FHM) was created by the Maine Legislature in 1999 to receive and disburse Maine’s annual tobacco settlement payments.Maine uses non-taxpayer money to pay for eight established catagories of public health. The FHM prevents diseases, promotes better health, and lower health care costs for the state. Sadly, the FHM is constantly raided to fill in budget gaps, and this is what is occurring again. Even more egregious, however, is that the Governor has put in language to allow the FHM to be used for whatever the Legislature wants.
The Governor’s two year budget proposes cuts of $18 million from the Fund for Healthy Maine. The cuts to substance abuse programs will be $4.4 million from FHM, which will cause Maine to lose $1.4 million in federal funds through federal block grants. The $5.8 million dollars of cuts to substance abuse treatments will greatly affect clients at both Milestone, which treats over 60 clients per night, and the Serenity House, serving over 150 per year. The cuts could eliminate the substance abuse residential treatment programs, emergency shelters and detoxification programs. If these services were eliminated, these clients would be forced to use less effective public systems for services. The reality is, these cuts have the potential of closing down one or both agencies.
On Friday, March 4th, I joined other legislative colleagues for a breakfast at Wright Express in South Portland. CEO Michael Dubyak spoke to us about Wright Express’s business, where it is going, and what challenges the company is facing here in Maine.
The conversation was dominated by two themes: the consistent under-funding for higher education and the lack of finding skilled workers here in Maine. Michael Dubyak stressed how a recent report, Envision Maine, illustrates that Maine under-funds higher education by over 25% below the national average. Additionally, he shared how few computer science graduates were coming out of our higher education system. Currently, there are only 60 students in the Greater Portland area studying computer sciences. Meanwhile, the six largest companies in Greater Portland currently have over 1,800 IT jobs, and the need over the next five years will grow by at least 300 jobs. Clearly, this is a huge gap that will need to be addressed.
I am working to get Michael Dubyak and representatives from the other five largest businesses from Greater Portland to speak in front of the Education Committee and discuss ways we can close this gap.
It was announced last week that we will report out LD 1 on March 31st to the House and Senate. The biggest problem I see is that there is a coordinated effort to roll back years of sound, reasonable environmental regulations, such as eliminating the Board of Environmental Protection, removing our BPA ban, and eliminating vernal pools, among others.
As I sat listening to the board members of the Board of Environmental Protection, I was struck that Governor LePage wants to eliminate a board that has been around for 40 years. Having citizens involved in statewide applications shaping our environment has been effective and important. To be clear the BEP was involved in just two cases in 2010, and only five statewide cases in the last four years. Yet, you would believe from the Governor’s actions and words that the BEP is the problem. It’s becoming very apparent that the Governor is going after the wrong regulatory items.
When our committee toured the state on our listening tour, I heard loud and clear from small businesses that they want to see technical changes to the regulatory system, such as streamlining the application and permitting process, making renewals easier, and improving customer service when working with the State. Sadly the majority party and Governor seem to be making this much more complicated than it needs to be thus far. I will continue to update you on the progress of LD1.
To pay for this cut, the Governor either needs to raise taxes somewhere else or cut more money from the budget, and he has chosen to balance this on the backs of teachers and public employees. The only way he can do this is to break our promise to the thousands of dedicated public servants who have worked their entire lives providing for our state. In addition, when you look at the full implications of these cuts, it becomes clear that the Mainers who benefit the most are not working-class Mainers. Those in Maine making $84,000 and above are receiving 67% of the tax cut. To put this tax cut into perspective, someone who is earning $120,000 will get a tax cut of $899, while someone earning $36,000 is only getting $84 back. It seems wrong that this major tax cut is not benefiting Maine’s middle class.
