- Associated Press - Monday, March 29, 2021

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) - Republican leaders in Maine want to curb the governor’s office from exercising as broad emergency powers as Gov. Janet Mills has during the coronavirus pandemic.

Mills, a Democrat, issued a “state of civil emergency” order more than a year ago and has renewed it numerous times. Her office has said the declaration “allows Maine to deploy all available tools to respond to and contain COVID-19.”

Republicans in the Maine Legislature have long contended that the emergency declaration has gone on for too long and gives Mills too much authority. House Republican Leader Kathleen Dillingham has proposed a bill that limits a governor’s emergency powers to 30 days. It would require subsequent renewals of a state of emergency to receive a two-thirds majority from the Maine Legislature.

The proposal was slated to face a public hearing before the Committee on State and Local Government on Monday. It also states that the legislature can use a joint resolution to “terminate a state of emergency at any time.”

Mills has repeatedly said the emergency declaration is necessary to keep the spread of the virus under control in the state.

“When the governor took office, she never thought she would have to declare or maintain a state of emergency for such an unprecedented length of time. But she, like everyone else, also never thought we would be confronting such an unprecedented pandemic - one that has sickened more than 50,000 people in Maine and killed more than 735,” said Lindsay Crete, a spokesperson for the governor.

Other states, including Kansas, Oregon and Georgia, have also been the site of struggles between governors and legislatures over emergency powers. The current emergency declaration in Maine is set to expire on April 15.

In other pandemic news in Maine:

THE NUMBERS

The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday that the state has surpassed 50,000 reported positive cases of the coronavirus.

Maine CDC also reported that 736 people have died from the virus in Maine since the start of the pandemic. The agency’s total reported virus count in Maine was 50,030 since the start of the pandemic.

The daily case count also continued to rise from previous weeks.

The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in Maine has risen over the past two weeks from 176.86 new cases per day on March 13 to 198.00 new cases per day on March 27. The seven-day rolling average of daily deaths in Maine did not increase over the past two weeks, going from 2.57 deaths per day on March 13 to 1.00 deaths per day on March 27.

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REOPENING SCHOOLS

A group of 51 lawmakers has sent a letter to the Maine Department of Education and Maine CDC calling for the agencies to “work in conjunction to immediately ease the restrictions that are preventing schools from opening full-time.”

The lawmakers, who are mostly Republicans, said the departments should rescind three-feet physical distancing requirements for students and direct school districts to implement localized strategies for bring students back into the classroom.

“Schools across Maine have reported minimal transmission of the coronavirus; therefore, the continued justification of the aforementioned restrictions is excessive, and its practical implications are deeply troubling,” the lawmakers said.

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