AUGUSTA - Early Thursday morning, the Legislature gave final approval to a supplemental budget that makes significant investments in affordable housing, education, health care, child care and relief funding for Maine communities to recover from the devastating winter storms in December and January. It was enacted after a series of last-minute, late-night floor amendments were offered in the Senate and defeated by the House.
The budget also includes significant wins for Maine workers, such as better wage enforcement provisions, a new floor for educational technician wages and a cost-of-living adjustment for state workers to keep up with inflation. The budget also frees up the full salary plan for state workers, which will allow for improved bargaining power in collective bargaining negotiations.
Following the budget's enactment, Speaker of the House Rachel Talbot Ross, D-Portland, House Majority Leader Mo Terry, D-Gorham, and Assistant Majority Leader Kristen Cloutier, D-Lewiston, issued the following joint statement.
"This thoughtful, carefully-crafted budget delivers on our commitments to Maine people while protecting our states long-term fiscal and economic health. Determining how we could best support labor in Maine within our states current fiscal landscape was at the center of these budget negotiations. As an all-woman leadership team, we are committed to supporting Maine workers of all kinds. Last year, we passed a budget that supports women by creating a paid family and medical leave program and providing new grants for child care workers, which will help increase workforce participation and better support a historically women-led industry. This budget builds on those successes by establishing a new floor for educational technician wages, increasing child care stability grants and including provisions for better wage enforcement across the board. We are proud of the work we have done to provide for Maine in this budget, despite numerous attempts to delay and derail this years appropriations process."
Other highlights of the supplemental budget include:
- A $76 million investment to increase the amount of affordable housing available to Mainers. This includes investments in emergency housing, the Affordable Homeownership Program, the Rural Affordable Rental Housing Program, the Low-income Housing Tax Credit Program, and supports for manufactured and mobile home park preservation and assistance.
- A $21 million investment to ensure the state continues to share the total cost of funding public education from K-12 at 55%.
- A $26 million dollar investment to support Nursing Homes.
- $14.1 million to fully fund the income eligibility expansion for the Qualified Medicare Beneficiary Program - aka Medicare Savings Programs (MSPs).
- A $12.9 investment in child care. This includes $11.8 million for one-time grants to child care providers to support their stability alongside $1.1 million in one-time funding for Head Start providers.
- $19.6 million in mental and public health. This includes funding for mental health crisis intervention, mobile response services, two crisis receiving centers, and staff recruitment and retainment incentives for medication management services.
- $9 million to repair storm damage and give local governments more resources to build future resiliency. This includes municipal resilience grants, repairing storm damage to state parks and historic sites and restoring, protecting and conserving coastal sand dune systems.
Contact:
Brian Lee [Talbot Ross, Terry, Cloutier,], 305-965-2744