State News:
The 131st Maine Legislature is off to a slow start largely due to new leadership on the House side, and a series of snow storms which have cancelled legislative session and committee meetings.
Of the four caucuses, only one has the same leadership team as last session. Senate President Troy Jackson (Aroostook), Senate Majority Leader Eloise Vitelli, and Assistant Senate Majority Leader Matthea Daughtry will continue to lead the Senate Democrats.
Both Republican caucuses have completely new leadership. The new House Minority Leader is Representative Billy Bob Faulkingham (Winter Harbor) and the Assistant House Minority Leader is Representative Amy Arata (New Gloucester). The new Senate Minority Leader is Senator Trey Stewart (Aroostook) and the Assistant Senate Minority Leader is Senator Lisa Keim (Oxford).
The House Democrats have one member who was in leadership last session, Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross. Talbot Ross, the first Black Speaker of the House in Maine’s history, served as the Majority Whip in the 130th Maine Legislature. The House Majority Leader is Maureen Terry (Gorham) and the Assistant House Majority Leader is Kristen Cloutier (Lewiston).
Legislative Update:
The list of legislator bill requests filed by the December 30th cloture deadline was released on January 17th. Of these 2,123 legislative requests, 330 have been printed as legislative documents, to date.
The final report from the Commission to Develop a Paid Family and Medical Leave Benefits Program is expected to be released very soon. The Commission, tasked with putting forward legislation for consideration by the 131st Maine Legislature, met 13 times over the past two years. The final meeting was held on December 2nd, five days before the new legislature was sworn in.
The Commission is aiming for a 12-week benefit, which could be extended to 16 weeks in some cases. The report is not expected to recommend a specific payroll tax or benefit but will provide lawmakers with models to choose from to create a stronger or weaker program. It is expected that employers with 15 or fewer employees would be exempt from paying in and that the self-employed would be eligible.
The two Chairs of the Commission are the two Whips of the Democratic caucuses. Both Senator Daughtry and Representative Cloutier have expressed that instituting a paid family and medical leave program will be one of their top priorities this session.
An effort led by the Maine People’s Alliance and the Maine Women’s Lobby to gather enough signatures to force a 2023 citizen-initiated referendum to create a paid leave system has been put on hold. Those groups decided to forgo putting the issue on the November 2023 ballot and focus on getting a strong paid family and medical leave program through the legislature. To get on this November’s ballot, the groups would need to turn in 63,067 valid signatures with the Secretary of State by January 26, 2023. The groups say that they have gathered over 80,000 petition signatures and will submit them to the Secretary of State this summer to get the matter on the November 2024 ballot if paid family and medical leave stalls out in the legislature.
This has become a standard tactic of the MPA in recent years using the referenda process for leverage in the legislative process.