AUGUSTA (NEWS CENTER Maine) — The leader of Republicans in the Maine House of Representatives promised Monday that lawmakers would fix a mistake in the current two-year budget that is preventing expected payments to candidates through Maine’s Clean Elections program.
The Maine Legislature is still hoping to wrap up its business for the year and adjourn, but the Clean Elections funding dispute appears to be the central issue preventing that from happening.
The budget, signed on July 4, 2017, included $3 million in funding for this year’s candidates. But a mistake in wording is now preventing the Ethics Commission from actually sending the money to nearly 200 candidates for the legislature and one for governor.
Those candidates received initial disbursements in June – House candidates receiving roughly $5,000 for their campaigns, Senate candidates roughly $20,000. Independent candidate for governor Terry Hayes received the initial funding of $600,000.
However, under the Clean Elections law, those candidates are able to generate significantly more funding by collecting more $5 checks from additional supporters. House candidates, for example, can potentially receive more than $15,000 in total, according to Jonathan Wayne of the Ethics Commission. Candidates for governor can generate more than $1 million in campaign funding.
Because of the problem with wording of the budget, none of those additional dollars are being sent to the candidates, even though they may have qualified for the money. Terry Hayes said that uncertainty is bad for the program and causes problems for her campaign.
"The frustration," Hayes said, " is [that] it does seem something voters have wanted for 20 years, and the legislature has funded for 20 years, would reach this kind of impasse over a typographical error."
In past years the response would be to simply correct the language, which all sides agree was a mistake. But this has been a highly contentious 128th Legislature, and fixing the wording problem has not been easy. The problem has become one more squabble between Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives. House Republicans, many of whom disagree with the whole concept of Clean Elections funding, have resisted the "fix."
"I think in a perfect world they would say no, we’d like to use our taxpayer dollars to help the poor and needy rather than give money for politicians to run campaigns," said House GOP leader Ken Fredette.
That said, he also acknowledged that Clean Elections is the state law.
"It is the law of the state and that’s why we will fix the issue and fix the problem," Fredette said, "We just haven’t figured out where that compromise is yet."
Democratic Speaker of the House Sara Gideon said the party had already offered compromises, which failed to win GOP support. She is scheduled to meet with Fredette again this week and hopes they can find an agreement.
"There was a day when if a mistake was made we remembered we had an agreement, shook hands on something and fixed the mistake," Speaker Gideon said. "We find ourselves now in a different day and age where people are trying to get something in return."
That "something" has been elusive, according to Gideon, but Fredette said he wants Democrats to agree to pass a bill to conform Maine’s income tax laws to the federal tax cuts passed in the winter in Washington. Gideon said Democrats support tax conformity, though it isn’t clear if that will be the final compromise – or if there will be agreement on a specific conformity plan.
Lawmakers may return to Augusta next week to vote on vetoes from the governor and a handful of remaining bills, including both tax conformity and a fix to the Clean Elections language error.