AUGUSTA — In a last-minute bid to help Maine’s struggling biomass industry, the Legislature on Friday approved $13.4 million in aid aimed at keeping four working plants, including those in Stratton and Livermore Falls, open for another two years.

The bill gained broad bipartisan support, even from fiscal conservatives who had vowed they wouldn’t increase any state spending in 2016.

“I stand before you today as somebody who doesn’t believe in a lot of subsidies for a lot of things,” said Rep. Jeff Timberlake, R-Turner. “I’m going to vote for this because of the friends I have in this industry and who I represent.”

Timberlake said the vote was a difficult one for him because he knew, given the current state of Maine’s forest products industry coupled with reductions in the cost of other types of energy, including oil, the days of biomass-generated energy in Maine were numbered.

“I don’t know how to fix this,” Timberlake said. “And I don’t know if two years will be the cure, but I do know it gives us two years of life and a chance for us to fix this.”

Other lawmakers with whom Timberlake frequently finds himself at odds on the Legislature’s budget-writing Appropriations Committee, including Rep. John Martin, D-Eagle Lake, agreed with him.

Martin said the measure was at least a way to buy some time for workers in rural Maine who either work at the facilities or who provide the wood to them. He said the bill wasn’t perfect, but without it rural Maine, especially his own Aroostook County, which depends heavily on forest-product-related jobs, would face further population loss and an even darker economic future.

Martin pleaded with lawmakers from Southern Maine to support the measure, noting that the state had helped bail out industries in their part of the state.

He said every town in Aroostook County, except two, lost population in the last U.S. Census. Martin blamed that on the loss of mill jobs that were in many ways a result of policy decisions made by the Legislature.

“That in part is based on state policy, which this Legislature is responsible for,” Martin said. “I hope today you don’t put another nail in the coffin.”

The emergency bill easily passed the Legislature on Friday with an initial 25-9 vote in the Senate and a 104-40 vote in the House of Representatives. Support and opposition fell across party lines. Lawmakers will still have to correct a technical error in the bill later in the month when they return to consider any vetoes by Gov. Paul LePage.

Timberlake said he believe LePage is supportive of the biomass measure, but not all lawmakers were on board with the bill.

Rep. Beth O’Connor, R-Berwick, called the bill “corporate welfare.” Rep. Gay Grant, D-Gardiner, agreed, saying she’d rather give the money behind the bill directly to workers affected by biomass layoffs than subsidize a polluting industry.

“In the end, the deep pockets are the ones who will walk away happy,” she said.

Bangor Daily News staff writer Michael Shepherd contributed to this report.

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