AUGUSTA — The state ethics commission announced Tuesday that the Maine Clean Elections Act fund does not have enough money to issue full payments due to 120 candidates in the fourth quarter of the fiscal year, which ends Saturday.

In a memo to commission members, Executive Director Jonathan Wayne said the fund has been alloted just under $390,000 but owes candidates more than $1.3 million. The ethics commission was expected to meet Wednesday to discuss the shortfall, which could also affect the operations of its staff, including paying the rent for its office space.

Wayne’s memo said full dispersement would not be made to 120 candidates, including 37 Senate candidates, 82 House candidates and one candidate running for governor, Terry Hayes.

The announcement came as the Legislature engaged in partisan wrangling over how to fix a typographical error in the law that funds the state’s publicly financed election campaign system.

At stake is about $3 million of clean elections funding that the Legislature included as part of a two-year state budget bill passed in 2017. Although the funds were transferred to the clean elections account, a typographical error prevents Wayne from legally releasing them to eligible candidates.

Lawmakers who support the system said Tuesday that those holding up the fix, largely members of the Republican minority caucus in the House, were seeking to gain an advantage in the fall campaigns and also breaking a deal they made last year. House Republican lawmakers countered that Democrats had rejected a compromise proposal that involves returning $3 million to the state’s general fund, in exchange for fixing the error that prevents the release of funds.

“There were a lot of different things that were negotiated in the budget and we had a deal,” said Senate Minority Leader Troy Jackson, D-Allagash, “and where I’m from a deal is a deal.”

Jackson said he agreed to things in the budget deal of 2017 that he disliked too, but he wasn’t trying to go back on those agreements now.

But House Minority Leader Ken Fredette, R-Newport, said the Legislature in the last two weeks had added about $140 million in new spending to the state’s current budget cycle, and the revenue surplus was going to be less than $200,000 by the time lawmakers finished. He said Republicans wanted to return some of the money previously put into the clean elections account as they didn’t believe it would all be needed anyway.

“We are trying to pay attention to our books,” Fredette said. He dismissed the notion House Republicans were backing out of a deal they had made. He said the final budget, which many House Republicans voted for and Republican Gov. Paul LePage signed into law to end a short state government shutdown, was largely negotiated by Democrats and Senate Republicans.

Under the clean elections law approved by voters more than 20 years ago, candidates for Legislature and governor can receive money to run their campaigns in exchange for forgoing most private contributions. Public campaign financing is a billed as a way to reduce the influence of big-money special interests while allowing candidates more time to discuss issues with voters rather than ask for donations.

In the 2018 elections, House candidates running in contested races can receive a total of $7,600 for their primary and general election campaigns, while Maine Senate candidates can receive $30,400. Gubernatorial candidates, meanwhile, can receive between $800,000 and $1 million each.

But because there is no limit on how much money a privately financed candidate can raise or spend, the Clean Election Act allows publicly financed candidates to qualify for “supplemental payments” through the November election. Candidates for governor, for instance, can receive an additional $1.4 million in public campaign financing by demonstrating their community support with small-dollar “qualifying contributions.”

It’s those supplemental payments that are now in doubt.

In the budget bill passed last year after a three-day government shutdown, lawmakers bumped up the timing of a $3 million transfer to the clean elections fund to ensure the program had sufficient money to operate during the 2018 elections. But language in that bill inadvertently prohibits the Maine Ethics Commission from actually handing out the money to campaigns after July 1.

This story will be updated.

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