Democrats Force Through Controversial Office of New Americans by Hiding it Inside Budget Bill

Maine legislative Democrats forced through a controversial measure on the final day of the legislative session by hiding it inside the supplementary budget.

In a last minute budget amendment, Democrats included the establishment of a divisive Office of New Americans (ONA).

“The Office of New Americans fiscal note was $302,060, what is that doing in the middle of this budget? That bill was not reported out of committee, and yet here it is. In looking at the language of creating the ONA, Office of New Americans, it gives them rulemaking authority,” said Rep. Mike Soboleski (R-Philips), “What we have, madame speaker is an office which is gonna make its own rule making, own routine technical rules, no oversight.”

According to Soboleski, the inclusion of the ONA was revealed after the deadline for amendments to be submitted, meaning that it could not easily be removed from the bill.

Originally, the establishment of an ONA was set to be considered as a standalone bill, but that bill did not garner suifficient support.

Instead of moving forward with that bill or giving up, Democrats have inserted the establishment of the ONA into a recent amendment to LD 2214, the supplementary budget bill for the legislative session.

The controversial ONA would use taxpayer funds to help achieve Gov. Mill’s goal of bringing thousands of new immigrant workers to Maine, and would help those immigrants find jobs which could be held by Mainers as the state suffers economic turmoil.

Soboleski also expressed concerns that the ONA will be empowered to make rules without any oversight.

The original ONA bill, LD 2167, was proposed by Gov. Janet Mills (D-Maine) and would have established the ONA inside the governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future (GOPIF).

Legislators did not have the opportunity to cast their votes on that bill, as it ultimately did not appear before the house.

Instead, the establishment of the ONA was inserted 185 pages into the nearly 250 page supplementary budget.

When it was proposed as a standalone bill, lawmakers would have been able to vote based simply on their opinions of the ONA.

When the bill was included in the budget, however, lawmakers were forced to decide between opposition to the state funded resettlement program, and the need to approve funding for essential state operations and services.

Along with establishing the ONA itself, the budget created a 24 member ONA Advisory Council, which will issue advice regarding “matters affecting the long-term economic and civic integration of immigrants in the State.”

The makeup of the advisory council also includes a requirement that at least 10 of the 24 members be immigrants, meaning that the house speaker, senate president, and governor must discriminate based on national origin when appointing council members.

The ONA would also serve to bring Maine into the Office of New American’s State Network, a group spanning 17 states with offices dedicated to immigration services.

That network is a subsidiary of the American Immigration Council, which receives funding from organizations founded by Democrat Megadonor George Soros, and advocates for granting legal status to numerous illegal immigrants.

Ultimately, the supplementary budget passed through the house with a 77-67 vote, with all Republicans opposing the bill, and all Democrats except one supporting.

Rep. Bruce White (D-Waterville) was alone among Democrats in voting against the bill with his Republican colleagues.

The senate voted 20-13 to pass the bill, with all Democrats present voting for the budget and all Republicans opposing it.

Alongside hiding a controversial bill inside a supplementary budget, Democrats have used a variety of tactics which have reduced transparency in the legislative process.

During the current legislative session, numerous controversial bills from Democrats have begun life as concept drafts, a process which allows bills to be introduced and considered without their text being revealed to the public until the time of a public hearing.

“The public has no idea what the contents of a concept draft may be until the sponsor comes to the hearing with a better idea of what he or she is trying to do with the bill,” said Sen. Rick Bennett (R-Oxford) “And so you end up with a public hearing which doesn’t fulfill a public purpose.”

One bill introduced this way was the highly unpopular LD 227, often called a “transgender trafficking” bill, which allows out of state adults to bring minors into Maine to receive transgender procedures or abortions without permission from the minors’ parents.

That bill began as a concept draft simply titled “An Act Regarding Health Care in the State” with no further information available.

In another move earlier this month, Democrats on Maine’s Committee on Appropriations and Financial Affairs (AFA) held a meeting early on a Saturday morning, which began at 11pm the night before and stretched past 3am, as the majority of Maine recovered from a blizzard which brought widespread power outages.

During that meeting, Democrats reversed numerous bipartisan spending initiatives, and attempted to seize funding from the Department of Transportation to be used as they saw fit.