Entrance to the Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee room in the Maine State House in Augusta. (Jim Neuger/Maine Morning Star)
For the few ways a bill can become law, there are many more ways legislation can be killed.
Sometimes the path to a bill’s demise is clear. Maybe it gets votes out of a legislative committee with members suggesting its passage, but it doesn’t secure enough votes in either the Maine House of Representatives or Senate to advance, like a proposal for a data privacy law this session (though outcomes are also complicated by behind-the-scenes lobbying efforts).
Other times a bill may pass both chambers but the governor vetoes it, and if the Legislature doesn’t secure the support of two-thirds of those present in both chambers to override that opposition (which has yet to happen during Gov. Janet Mills’ tenure), the bill won’t become law.
Less publicized, however, is when a bill dies a quiet death after initially securing the approval of both chambers because it gets caught in the funding process.
Less than 10% of bills that made it onto the “appropriations table” this year became law.
Bills that land on the table have already passed the full Legislature, however if they aren’t explicitly funded in the state budget, they need to be paid for using remaining unappropriated money.
At least 250 bills got put on the table this year — with 140 of those carried over from last year, the first session of the two-year legislative cycle in Maine. The Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee, which oversees the table, moved to fund only a handful of bills before the deadline for the Legislature to conclude its work.
These proposals subsequently became law, securing the enactment votes needed in the Legislature and avoiding the governor’s veto pen. They include increases to the cap on bonds issued by the Maine State Housing Authority to reflect current housing production needs and allowing for the treatment of human remains by natural organic reduction as an alternative to burial, among other measures.
The long and ultimately unsuccessful path of one education bill
However, lawmakers did not as swiftly decide most of the fates of the bills on the table this year.
Take for example, LD 2001, a proposed African American and Wabanaki studies advisory council. When House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross (D-Portland) first presented the bill for consideration before the Legislature’s Education Committee on Jan. 12, it was narrower in scope.
The original bill proposed creating positions and training programs for educators to ensure African American studies is effectively and accurately added to school curricula, as it became a teaching requirement in 2021 through separate legislation also sponsored by Talbot Ross.
Two days prior to hearing this bill, the Education Committee heard a separate proposal to establish a commission to ensure that the history of the Wabanaki Nations is included in Maine’s K-12 curricula. While required teaching since 2001, a 2022 report found that school districts have failed to consistently and appropriately include the course of study.
Several people cautioned that African American studies could see the same fate without additional resources and accountability measures, and the bill sponsors agreed to combine the bills given the overlapping concerns.
Legislature passes bill to create African American and Wabanaki Studies advisory council
The Education Committee recommended in late January that the full Legislature pass the combined measure, and by the end of February, it did. However, lawmakers placed the bill on the “appropriations table” in early March, and it sat there past the legal deadline for the Legislature to conclude its work, April 17.
Other bills on the table did see movement that day. The Appropriations Committee voted to fund 21 off the table, though fewer actually became law after several got left in limbo in the Senate.
At that point however, the Legislature did not adjourn “sine die,” or finally. That would happen some weeks later on May 10 and, a few days prior, the Appropriations Committee took steps to fund the advisory council bill and 80 others off the table.
Because the budget committee amended the bill to reduce its cost, LD 2001 still needed final approval from both chambers of the Legislature. While the Senate gave the go ahead, the House never took it up, sticking the plan back in a limbo status when the Legislature finally adjourned the night of May 10.
Technically, the Legislature passed an order allowing for some unresolved bills, including LD 2001, to be carried over into a hypothetical special session — though lawmakers say at this point that is highly unlikely.
Tracking the table
Essentially this means LD 2001 died, and the bill was not alone.
In addition to LD 2001, the Appropriations Committee amended 49 of the other bills it took off the table the last week of session — largely reducing or stripping their costs entirely. The Legislature also left these bills unresolved upon final adjournment, after the House did not take votes on the measures.
In a rebuke of lawmakers, Mills says she will not sign bills enacted on ‘veto day’
However, 30 bills that the budget committee voted off the table without amendments did get approved by the Senate and were sent to the governor for final approval, as well as a few proposed studies.
Still, they too did not become law, as Mills declined to sign any of the legislation sent to her desk on the final day of session, objecting to added spending and lawmakers taking action on measures aside from vetoes past the adjournment deadline.
Throughout the session, the Legislature will produce point-in-time lists of bills on the table but does not publish a total list of all legislation that has landed on the table nor what the ultimate outcome of each of those pieces of legislation is upon adjournment.
Maine Morning Star followed bills placed on the table throughout the 2024 session in an attempt to provide greater transparency into the appropriations process.
Of note, there are a handful of bills left on the table that — either in full or in part — that lawmakers incorporated into the state budget. For example, this includes proposals to raise the minimum wage of school support staff, add grandparents and great-grandparents with a serious health condition to the list of persons related to an employee for whom paid family medical leave may be taken, and expand crisis supports across the state. You’ll see that these measures are still listed as “on the table” upon adjournment.
Not counting measures incorporated into the budget, just 21 of the at least 250 bills that were placed on the table at some point this year ended up becoming law.
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