Douglas Rooks has been a Maine editor, columnist and reporter for 40 years. He welcomes comment at [email protected].

With little fanfare last week, the Appropriations Committee reported out a $207.5 million bond package that contained no fewer than eight bond issues, quite a novelty. In Gov. Mills’ second term, voter-approved borrowing measures have been scarcer than hen’s teeth.

It wasn’t always this way. Since the 1950s, Maine has used traditional bonding to make major investments in infrastructure expected to last for decades without overtaxing operating budgets. The state constitution requires a two-thirds vote of House and Senate, and majority referendum approval, to pledge the “full faith and credit” of the state for any bond exceeding $2 million.

Over the decades, bonds have supported a wide array of projects, including highways, bridges, railroads, ports and ferries, airports, drinking water and pollution control projects, school construction, university and community college campuses, Indian tribes, farms, working waterfront, school buses, institutions for the mentally ill and disabled — the list goes on and on.

Because of the need for two-thirds votes, the process necessitates cooperation between Republicans and Democrats. In the olden days — not that long ago, actually — the Appropriations Committee would report out a biennial budget unanimously, then get to work on the bond package. And because voters had the final say, the results truly reflected the people’s will.

Now, lawmakers can’t even agree on the two-year budget. Last year, hospitals had to wait months for more than $118 million in MaineCare payments because Democrats and Republicans couldn’t agree, as the budget process morphed from disagreement to dysfunction.

Increasingly, voters have no direct say over spending. Through Democratic, Republican and independent administrations, bond issues once appeared on the ballot like clockwork. With bipartisan support, Ken Curtis set the record, with 52 voted on during eight years as office, but Angus King had 32 and John Baldacci 23.

Even Paul LePage, who objected to borrowing on principle and tried to block bonds already approved by the voters, yielded to legislative priorities and there were 24 new bonds during his two terms, all approved, generally by wide margins.

With Janet Mills, it’s been quite different. The administration has proposed just four bond issues in eight years, all in the first term, with three devoted primarily to roads and bridges. The three-bond mini-package in 2024 was entirely a legislative initiative.

Mills decided to do without highway bonds by diverting some $100-million-plus annually from the general and liquor funds, not raised for that purpose and which many legislators would prefer to go toward its intended use, though few say so aloud.

Gov. Curtis set the tone for decades of bipartisan work when he said, “Bonds were perhaps the principal means by which we introduced new programs. We couldn’t have done what we did without them.” Now, new programs need not apply. Patch-and-fill is the order of the day.

The Appropriations package points up the priorities we haven’t been meeting since bonding fell out of favor. It includes more for transportation ($65 million), but also farms and forests ($45 million), the University of Maine System ($18.5), water system and wastewater treatment ($40 million in two bonds), “resilience” culverts and a new priority, housing subsidies. Oh yes, there’s $4 million for a courthouse in Newport; the old one was closed by mold.

There’s a notable exclusion. The Land for Maine’s Future Fund was among the most popular bond programs from the 1980s onward, with hundreds of thousands of acres of forest, farms, parks and working waterfronts protected. Mills shifted funding by allocating $40 million from the biennial budget in 2021, but the money has been spent, and there’s no more in prospect. 

Unfortunately, the Appropriations bond package won’t clear the Legislature, at least not in this form. It received only an 8-5 endorsement along party lines. Still, in the final year of the Mills administration, Democratic lawmakers may be laying down a marker for future sessions.

A state that fails to invest in its future is a state that will cease to grow. There’s still plenty of borrowing going on — by the Maine Turnpike Authority, Maine Housing, Finance Authority of Maine, Government Facilities Authority and other guaranty agencies. But none of it has the “full faith and credit” of the state, and none of it has been approved by voters.

As a result, we can more readily build superhighways, courthouses and prisons than public schools, or ensure that community water systems don’t fail and rack up enormous rate increases when they do. Maine’s fiscal policies are out of kilter.

The Mills administration has presided over eight consecutive years of budget growth. It’s too bad we don’t have more to show for it.