A Maine Republican representative has filed an application to begin collecting signatures for a People’s Veto of the $11.3 billion two-year, party-line budget approved last week.
In Maine, a People’s Veto allows voters to “repeal a piece of legislation passed by the legislature” by using “the initiative and referendum process.”
To earn a place on the ballot, these petitions must each receive more than 67,000 signatures, a number that is calculated based on the turnout levels from the most recent gubernatorial election.
Submitted by Rep. Gary A. Drinkwater (R-Milford), this application to begin collecting signature’s for a People’s Veto petition would kick off the process for potentially giving Mainers the opportunity to overturn the partisan budget approved by lawmakers last week.
The $11.3 billion budget was the product of an extended controversy over a $120 million supplemental spending bill that primarily aimed to provide extra funding for MaineCare, which had overrun it’s budget for the year.
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Because MaineCare was underfunded for the remainder of FY 2025, the original plan was to approve the supplemental spending bill as an emergency piece of legislation, allowing it to take immediate effect.
Generally speaking, approved legislation takes effect 90 days after the Legislature adjourns at the end of the session, which would normally take place about mid-year.
To do this, however, bipartisan agreement was essential, as emergency legislation requires support from at least two-thirds of both the House and Senate in order to take effect immediately.
When Democrats rejected GOP welfare reform proposals, and failed to include modest welfare reforms included in Gov. Janet Mills’ (D) original biennial proposal, Republicans unanimously pulled their support.
When it became clear that GOP lawmakers would not support the MaineCare bailout supplement budget — absent concessions from the Democrats — the majority party took extraordinary measures to ensure that funding would be made available quickly despite the lack of widespread support.
Two days after the supplemental spending bill was officially placed in the legislative files as dead, the Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee offered a more than 400-page amendment to a previously-introduced concept draft, morphing it into a partial biennial budget.
This proposal absorbed key line items from the supplemental budget and extended current levels of funding for all other government spending for two years, with the exception of MaineCare, which the bill left unfunded for FY 2027.
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Following extensive debate in both the House and Senate, where many amendments from Republican lawmakers were introduced but rejected, the multi-billion two-year budget was approved without any Republican support.
Because some Democrat lawmakers also voted against the proposal, it passed the Senate by only one vote.
Although approving legislation along party lines or by a slim margin is not, in and of itself, extraordinary, state Democrats took things a step further so that the funding in this bill could be made available more quickly.
To accomplish this, leadership adjourned the Legislature sine die, only for Gov. Mills to reconvene them immediately after signing the budget into law.
Adjourning sine die refers to when a legislative body ends its current meeting without setting a time to meet again. This procedural move is typically reserved for the end of a legislative session, after all business has been completed.
In this case, however, the Legislature was no where near ready to conclude its session, so the governor signed a proclamation calling them back into session this week.
This move led to serious criticism from members of Republican leadership.
“The problem is, they don’t have any willingness to address the spending spree,” said Senate Minority Leader Trey Stewart (R-Aroostook) of his counterparts across the aisle. “The real losers tonight are the people of the state of Maine who in the short term might see some benefit from the spending, but it’s unsustainable. We’ve crossed that threshold.”
“A Democrat only, unbalanced budget passed today and then they adjourned the legislature so that this fraud of a budget can go into effect,” House Minority Leader Faulkingham said as he exited the state Capitol.
This is not the first time that Democrats in Augusta have used this tactic to approve a budget without support from Republican lawmakers.
In 2023, the state was facing the possibility of a funding gap and potential government shutdown, meaning that lawmakers either had to pass a bipartisan, emergency budget or adjourn early.
Just as they did this year, Democratic lawmakers opted to adopt a party-line budget and adjourn early, only for the governor to immediately call them back into session.
This maneuver was challenged in court last year, ultimately making its way all the way to the Maine Supreme Court where the case was eventually dismissed for a lack of standing.
Should Rep. Drinkwater’s application to collect signatures for a People’s Veto be approved by Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, it would open the door for Mainers to have the opportunity to decide whether or not they would like to see this $11.3 billion party-line budget stand.
