Around the State House they’re still talking about the legislative session’s end on May 10, and for good reason. The last day, with a crush of bills and insufficient time, is always chaotic, but this time ended in complete dysfunction.

The ultimate toll is striking: from hundreds of bills on the Appropriations “table” — passed by both House and Senate, but not funded — only 10% became law.

Even 35 bills sent that day to Gov. Janet Mills with unanimous approval failed because Mills decided no further spending should occur after the supplemental budget was approved on April 17, the statutory adjournment.

The cause of the train wreck wasn’t hard to find: an increasing divergence between priorities of the governor and Democratic caucuses in both chambers.

Throughout her time as governor, Mills has been primarily a manager, not policymaker, and her legislative agenda has been modest.

In her first term, disrupted for three years by pandemic shutdowns, Democratic lawmakers pushed priorities for criminal justice reform and reconfiguring relations with Indian tribes, to little avail.

In her second term, legislative leaders have become more insistent, proposing new programs and new spending, with slightly more success. Lawmakers pushed through a paid family leave program Mills initially opposed, and set in motion a new public defender system to replace court assignments.

Beyond that they hit a wall. The first sign of serious revolt came when, in a late night Appropriations vote led by House Democrats, a budget amendment clawed back $60 million transferred into the Highway Fund, while spending a somewhat higher amount on new legislative priorities.

The amendment reflected a rethinking of the 2023 agreement transferring at least $100 million a year from sales tax revenues to prop up the ailing Highway Fund.

The automatic transfer, proposed by Republicans and endorsed by Mills, was the most dubious budget decision of recent decades, obliterating a constitutional barrier created in the 1930s to protect the then-burgeoning Highway Fund from diversions to other programs.

While sales and especially income tax revenues have grown steadily since the turn of the century, support for road and bridge construction — flat fees for fuel, vehicle registrations and licenses — have languished.

In the 1990s, Gov. Angus King tried to add 5 cents to the gas tax, but settled for less, plus indexing for inflation — a provision wiped out by Gov. Paul LePage in 2011.

Revenues stagnated, with the gap partially filled by annual $100 million bond issues. The obvious solution — raising the gas taxes and registration fees — wasn’t seriously considered.

The Democrats’ revolt was a sign that bailing out highway construction with revenues traditionally raised for education, health care and other programs was a bad deal. Ultimately, the 30-cent gas tax must be raised at least by inflation since 2011, which would be 42 cents today.

If that’s still not enough, lawmakers should resume transfers from the Maine Turnpike Authority, which unlike Maine DOT is flush with cash, and is supported to a greater extent by out-of-state travelers. The General Fund should be off limits.

Difficulties run far deeper than legislators’ futile attempt to redo the budget, involving how the Legislature organizes itself and passes the budget.

Two problems are obvious: the enormous number of bills that must be processed and voted on, 2,291 in all, some still being introduced during the session’s final days.

The other is the gyrations caused by constitutional deadlines preventing lawmakers from passing biennial budgets by majority any time after April 1, barely halfway through the first session running through June.

There are solutions. The deadline issue could be finessed by moving the state fiscal year to match the federal year of Oct. 1.

The bill crush should prompt limits on early bill titles, while allowing the joint committees to take a larger role in crafting bills once they begin meeting in January.

Outside the glare of headlines, committees do most of the actual work of legislating. To have months of work be blown up at the end or left on the cutting room floor is profoundly demoralizing, and disserves the public.

The present system functioned, more or less, when there was greater consensus and less partisanship, but it isn’t working now.

And the inability of lawmakers to move a budget forward by majority ends up shifting power to the Governor’s office, amplified by the inexperience of most leaders produced through legislative term limits.

As lawmakers consider who will lead them next year they need to ask candidates how they plan to change things so the legislative implosion of 2024 doesn’t recur.

Otherwise, it will be déjà vu all over again.

 

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