AUGUSTA – Last year, partisan wrangling doomed efforts to pass a Maine bond package that would have funded road and bridge improvements, protected public land and more.
Gov. John Baldacci now vows to take a different approach in hopes of getting a bond package approved this year.
The plan: More discussions with lawmakers before formulating the bond package.
Baldacci said Friday that he won’t go to leaders with an amount or a plan for use of the bonds at first. Instead, he’ll listen to lawmakers. He said the listening will begin in earnest this week.
Getting a bond package passed this year is the governor’s third priority. “The focus is: tax reform, the budget, the bond package – one, two, three,” Baldacci said.
Last year, Democrats wanted to seek voters approval to borrow well over $100 million for a variety of projects, from road and bridge improvements to protecting public land from development to research and development. Republicans were interested in borrowing less than half that amount.
Because they couldn’t agree, no bond proposal ever made it to Maine voters.
Bipartisan model
This year, “we’re trying a different approach,” Baldacci said. “One in which there aren’t any lines drawn anywhere, and I want to begin to have a discussion and use the L.D. 1 – the tax reform package – process for how we deal with bonds.”
A bipartisan committee hammered out the details of the tax package.
Baldacci said he won’t propose any “preconditions. … There’ll be some things I will have in the bond package, but I haven’t gotten to any dollar figure. I want to hear from them.”
The governor said he’s open to a variety of options for sending a bond package to voters. It could go on the June or November ballot. A group of bonds could be proposed under one ballot question or the bonds could be separated into individual questions to avoid forcing voters to pass or reject all the bonds.
In November, it will be two years since voters have approved any bonds, and Maine is missing out on job opportunities, Baldacci said. The secret to job growth is to continue to make investments in research and development, he said.
House Speaker John Richardson, D-Brunswick, agreed Maine missed out last year when no bond proposals went to voters. “This was even after we reduced the proposed amount by $80 million.” Maine businesses need economic development investments the bonds would provide, he said.
He called no bond package last year “a disservice to the people of Maine, and shouldn’t be allowed to happen again.”
House Minority Leader David Bowles, R-Sanford, said Republicans are open to working with the governor for a “reasonable” bond package. “But, realistically, there’ll never be a bond package large enough to satisfy Democrats, and there’ll never be one small enough to satisfy Republicans,” Bowles said.
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