Maine
Mainers want a paid leave deal from lawmakers across party lines
A model of this text was initially revealed in The Every day Transient, our Maine politics publication. Enroll right here for every day information and perception from politics editor Michael Shepherd.
Advocates for a sweeping paid household and medical go away program in Maine are coming to the State Home on Tuesday to rally supporters and transient lawmakers on two proposals.
It’s the symbolic kickoff of coverage talks anticipated to be difficult. For one, the supporters have a possible trump card in a referendum they’re making an attempt to get on the 2023 poll.
If their effort will get the signatures wanted to qualify, Mainers will vote on a plan from progressive teams together with the Maine Folks’s Alliance and the Maine Girls’s Foyer. However a legislative fee has additionally provide you with the same and probably extra progressive proposal that it outlined in a Tuesday report.
The political case: These advocates assume they’ve a political winner. Polling performed for them in October from Pan Atlantic Analysis discovered 70 % help throughout Maine’s voters for such a program, together with 57 % of these planning to vote for former Gov. Paul LePage, the Republican who misplaced to Gov. Janet Mills in November. A majority wished the plan principally funded by employers.
Solely 11 states provide these sorts of insurance coverage packages, together with Massachusetts. The form of program we’re speaking about can be an enormous one. Value estimates ready for the legislative fee final 12 months recommend each iterations would price greater than $400 million per 12 months. The referendum model can be funded by new payroll taxes with companies with greater than 15 workers and their staff evenly splitting a 0.86 % tax.
The governor’s position: Mills opened her tenure by negotiating a grand discount on paid go away that united progressives and enterprise pursuits by requiring employers with greater than 10 staff to supply a minimum of 40 hours of go away per 12 months. Many count on the Democratic governor to be closely concerned in these talks as nicely, although she doesn’t seem like but. She has pledged to not increase taxes, though not participating on the subject may merely go away it to voters to take action.
What they agree on: Attainable political inevitabilities are spinning the enterprise foyer into motion. On a minimum of one factor, they agree with Destie Hohman Sprague, the manager director of the Maine Girls’s Foyer, who stated Monday that she would favor a legislative resolution on the difficulty so the events are certain collectively for endurance.
“If we will get a bipartisan resolution out of the Legislature, that’s one thing we will all really feel actually good about,” she stated.
When requested how the enterprise foyer may preserve negotiations on observe within the Legislature, Peter Gore, a lobbyist aligned with the Maine State Chamber of Commerce, stated if he knew, he can be “the neatest man in Augusta.”
However he stated it was necessary for his facet to remain engaged on it, calling it the marquee coverage dialog within the State Home this 12 months. Ultimately, he nodded to the truth that the paid go away advocates must be happy with any resolution.
“The query is: Does it cross muster with the people who find themselves proposing the poll initiative?’” he stated of a possible compromise. “It’s difficult, as a result of the Legislature may cross one thing and any individual may say, ‘Effectively, that’s not sufficient.’”
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