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In the Maine House of Representatives, Rep. Drew Gattine speaks for parts of Saco, Scarborough, and Westbrook. The Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee and the Joint Select Committee on Housing are both made up of him.
In a recent piece in this newspaper, Rep. Laurel Libby said that the effects on policy of bills passed by the Maine Legislature are not known to the people of Maine.
In it, she describes a chat with a voter who was astonished by several of the Legislature’s last-session laws, notably those related to state budget projects. “Many voters don’t know what’s really happening in government, even when it directly affects their lives,” Libby writes end of first sentence.
You might be shocked to learn that even though I’m a Democrat and Rep. Libby is a Republican, I agree with her. Yes, she’s right. Most Mainers don’t know what really goes on in Augusta or how the choices made by the Legislature affect people all over the state.
I’d like to bring to your attention some things that the Legislature did for the people of Maine over the last two years that Libby and her Republican colleagues were against. You might not know about these things, and they don’t like to talk about them.
In 2023, Democrats in the Legislature passed a two-year state budget that included hundreds of millions of dollars for K–12 public schools, free breakfast and lunch for kids, and extra money for early childhood educators’ salaries.
This money is very important to help local governments handle their costs so that Maine property taxes don’t have to pay for all of their schools and important public services like police, fire, and ambulances.
Libby and the other Republicans who work with her are proud that they did not vote for the budget. There was, however, almost $40 million in the budget just for this school year for Auburn’s public schools, which Rep. Libby clearly did not think was important enough to support.
So that she and other Republicans can show that they care about Maine families’ property taxes, they don’t want to talk about how much property taxes would go up if the state didn’t pass a budget to give this money back to local towns.
They knew it would be terrible, but that didn’t stop them from voting against it. Not sure about this? Look at the list of votes.
That’s not all. The budget, which includes the extra spending plans we passed later in 2023 and earlier this year, also has a lot of money that directly affects the health and happiness of Maine families. They included tens of millions of dollars to help older Mainers by keeping nursing homes open and making the Medicare Savings Program bigger.
This program helps low-income older people pay for their own medical care and medicine. There were also programs to help younger families start their lives here.
For example, more than $70 million was spent to make child care more accessible and nearly $8 million was spent to make sure that more Mainers could get treatment for infertility. Those things were turned down by Rep. Libby and the other Republicans in her party.
Few are like this. Republicans rejected financing for mental health treatment, a new state child tax credit, a higher yearly income tax pension deduction, affordable housing, and relief programs including the Property Tax Fairness Credit and Property Tax Deferral Program. Programs help homeowners stay.
While I read Rep. Libby’s piece, I thought about all of these important policies and how they will help people all over Maine. When she was bragging about how she was against the budget, I couldn’t help but wonder if she told that client that she and her fellow Republicans voted against all of those things.
That person would have known the truth if she had, she said. Aldous Huxley once said that the truth “shall make you mad.”