AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) - Lawmakers on Wednesday considered the veto-loving Republican governor’s thumbs-down on about 20 bills and overrode his veto of commercial pot sales and Narcan access legislation.
Gov. Paul LePage, who named one of his own dogs Veto, has shattered state records for gubernatorial vetoes that he uses to espouse fiscally conservative principles and lambast lawmakers’ work. The Legislature left the Statehouse Wednesday without concrete plans to consider more than 100 bills that address issues including voter-approved Medicaid expansion, opioid treatment, tax reform, school funding and pay for aides serving people with intellectual disabilities.
Dozens of people lined the halls of the Statehouse imploring lawmakers to fund widely supported pay increases for personal care aides that expire this summer. Advocates also say lawmakers will create massive uncertainty for schools ahead of the school year by ignoring a bill that addresses the funding formula for schools.
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EXTENSION EFFORT
Lawmakers again failed to extend this year’s legislative session on Wednesday amid an impasse largely over funding for voter-approved Medicaid expansion.
The Legislature can still take up more than 100 other pending bills and bonds with bipartisan support if legislative leaders call them back in for a special session. LePage’s spokeswoman Julie Rabinowitz said the governor has no plans to call lawmakers in.
Democratic House Speaker Sara Gideon said obstruction from House Republicans is delaying much-needed state action on treatment for opioid users, Medicaid expansion, which is set to start in July, infrastructure upgrades and nursing homes that are struggling to find workers.
“If I am honest, we are talking past each other,” she said. “The terrible irony in all of this there is actually so much that we agree on.”
Democrats and some Senate Republican in recent weeks supported a package that included widely supported bills in addition to funding staffers to roll out Medicaid expansion.
But House Republican Leader and gubernatorial candidate Ken Fredette said he’ll oppose any package that includes such Medicaid funding without a long-term funding plan for expansion. He said a special session could happen in the coming weeks, but promised that lawmakers will address certain pending issues like pay for personal care aides.
He criticized Gideon for not letting lawmakers vote individually on widely supported bills.
“We think this gives House Republicans an equal seat at the table as we go forward,” Fredette said, adding that his caucus won’t support coming in unless they “see bills we can support.”
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COMMERCIAL POT SALES
Lawmakers overrode the governor’s veto of a bill to finally allow commercial marijuana sales as voters called for in 2016. The House voted 109-39 and the Senate voted 28-6.
Supporters say the bill provides needed changes to the marijuana law to protect children. It eliminates marijuana social clubs, reduces the number of plants that people can have and prohibits sale near schools.
The voter-approved law created a 10 percent sales tax on retail marijuana. The new bill also would require growing facilities to pay an excise tax of $335 per pound of mature marijuana plants and other new fees.
The governor has argued that he cannot violate federal law, which prohibits marijuana possession. LePage said the bill doesn’t address his concerns that adults seeking marijuana will flock to the state’s medical marijuana program.
“As I have stated previously, a concurrent medical program with weaker regulation and a lower tax rate will undermine the regulations established by this bill,” he said.
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NALOXONE ACCESS
Lawmakers overwhelmingly overrode the veto of a bill designed to make the opioid overdose drug naloxone available to all Mainers without a prescription.
Current Maine law doesn’t have an age limit for such access. But the state Board of Pharmacy proposed setting an age limit of 18 and has since pushed to limit access to adults age 21 and older at LePage’s urging.
Gideon proposed the bill to specifically allow access to Mainers of all ages.
The governor vetoed the bill and called it an effort to undermine the Board of Pharmacy’s “reasonable rules.”
“No health policy rationale supports the extreme position espoused by the Legislature that every resident of Maine, including children, must have access to naloxone,” LePage said.
A record of 418 people died of drug overdoses in the state last year. Opioids were the cause of 354 of those deaths.
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