In sporting endeavors, from gambling to baseball, there’s always a fundamental question: Do you want to play, or do you want to watch?
Most of us are watchers; it’s the rare few who can not only play the game, but deal with the consequences of defeats and disappointments when things don’t go well.
The analogy to politics is fairly exact: There are a multitude of watchers, including journalists, who assess the action and evaluate the performance of the players — often to the annoyance of those, as Teddy Roosevelt put it, “in the arena.”
Yet the rules dictate that there be a performance, good or bad, and that those elected to public office do their jobs. And that’s exactly what Maine Republicans refused to do during Monday’s special session, called by Democratic Gov. Janet Mills to consider four bond issues for the November ballot.
The session became necessary when Republicans balked, at the end of the regular session in June, from supplying any votes for the traditional biennial bond package, which in this case was particularly urgent.
During the previous eight years, Mills’ predecessor, Republican Paul LePage, spared no effort to block any bond issue — even those approved under his predecessor, John Baldacci — from providing a nickel for any purpose, except his chosen pet projects, highways and bridges.
Those bonds were necessary because of the dire straits of the Highway Fund, which has declined in actual dollars every year since 2006, and — in terms of construction costs, which keep rising — is producing 30% less than it did just over a decade ago. And the reason for that shortfall, in part, was because LePage cancelled annual indexing for the gasoline tax, and refused to ask for any increase throughout his two terms.
Mills was willing to defer a gas tax increase and continue to pledge $105 million in new General Fund borrowing — traditionally, the Highway Fund pays for its own bonds. In exchange, Republicans were supposed to consider other bonds for equally basic purposes: rural infrastructure, educational investments, land conservation.
In the talks leading up to the special session, Senate Republican Leader Dana Dow privately assured Senate President Troy Jackson that there would be some Republican votes, as long as the governor downsized her original request and allowed a vote on each of the four bond issues separately, rather than as a package. The other three bonds totaled just $58 million, barely half the highway stopgap; Mills agreed.
On Monday, with Senate Democrats needing only one additional vote, there wasn’t a single Republican voting for anything except the transportation bond. Mills was only stating facts when she then called Republicans “the party of procrastination, the party of no.”
Virtually everything in the other three bonds were items Republicans have favored before, and voters have ratified overwhelmingly. In terms of size, Mills’s original, roughly $300 million package, was probably too small, given LePage’s dearth of investment, and Maine’s crumbling public buildings — not just its roads.
One of the lamest political statements of recent times came when Dana Dow, challenged about his about-face after Democrats had complied with all his demands, said that the three bonds were “irresponsible and unnecessary” because there was too much “uncertainty” about a 2020 supplemental budget that has yet to be written.
These Republican maneuvers can seem clever, if dishonest — rather like U.S. Senate leader Mitch McConnell’s gambits to block President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominations and then speed President Donald Trump’s to confirmation by blowing up the century-old filibuster rules. In the short term, Republicans notch a “win.”
Yet it’s becoming clear that Maine Republicans, like their national counterparts, have no positive program, no vision for public services, no answers to the innumerable problems that voters expect their representatives to at least grapple with, if not to solve.
They will find that there are other ways to accomplish things such as the ill-fated borrowing plan Mills just offered. The Governmental Facilities Authority, which now handles borrowing for prisons and court houses — and currently accounts for more bond issues than Republicans have recently allowed voters to consider — could be expanded to take in other areas, and requires only majority support for passage, not two-thirds.
If Republicans are bent on being the “party of no,” there may be other consequences they haven’t anticipated. At some point, doing nothing is not a viable strategy.
Voters want things from government; they always have, and always will. And if those they’ve previously elected to be players are instead only watching, they will find someone else who knows how to play the game.
Douglas Rooks, a Maine editor, opinion writer and author for 34 years, has published books about George Mitchell, and the Maine Democratic Party. He welcomes comment at: drooks@tds.net
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