Maine Gov. Janet Mills will deliver the State of the State address on February 10. She will not release her supplemental budget proposal until after the address.
Details about the address are still forthcoming, but the remarks will be delivered in-person from the House of Representatives chamber to a joint convention of the legislature.
According to a press release from the governor’s office, Mills will discuss “the challenges Maine is facing, including the impact of the pandemic on the state; outline the actions her Administration is taking to strengthen the economy and improve the lives and livelihoods of Maine people, and share her vision for the future of Maine.”
The same press release also stated Mills will deliver her supplemental budget proposal “in the days following the State of the State.”
In 2021, Mills submitted her supplemental budget proposal to the legislature on January 8. In 2020, Mills submitted her supplemental budget proposal on February 3.
This year’s budget proposal was widely expected to be submitted to the legislature in January.
Since November, the administration has been saying the proposal would be released “in the coming weeks.”
In a November 23 press release following the Revenue Forecasting Committee’s announcement that it was upgrading the revenue forecast for the General Fund by $822 million, Mills stated she “would like to examine ways we can use this additional revenue to provide direct financial relief to folks hard hit by these increases to help them through these difficult times.”
But Mills has since indicated a desire to proceed cautiously in any initiative to return the surplus to Mainers.
“I know that this pandemic can change things abruptly, change things dramatically and it can affect our economy in the weeks and months and years to come. So I want to be very cautious about what we do and how much we depend on the revenue projections in this early stage,” Mills said during a January 4 press conference.
In a December 29 press release, Mills indicated that her supplemental budget will include $7.6 million for a supplemental wage adjustment to “assist nursing and residential care facilities with labor costs through the rest of the 2022 Fiscal Year.”
Few other details about what will be included in the supplemental budget are known. Mills’ press office did not respond to a request for comment about the delay in delivering her proposal.
