The second session of the 123rd Legislature began and ended with discussions around changes to the school district consolidation law, which was passed with broad bipartisan support as a part of the governor’s biennial state budget last year. The Legislature’s Education Committee considered more than 60 proposed amendments to the law from legislators across the state in January, and developed two bills absorbing many of the suggestions their colleagues offered to amend the law. The Department of Education also submitted a bill that included several non-controversial changes, to address unintentional issues that arose as districts worked to consolidate administrative functions. The House and Senate made wholesale changes to the DOE bill and passed a version that the governor vetoed, which led to days of regular negotiations between the legislature and governor on a compromise bill that passed through the House and Senate in the session’s final week.

The Legislature also faced an unexpected challenge midway through the session when the State’s budget forecasting committee determined that Maine was facing a $190 million shortfall in the state budget, due largely to a national economic downturn and cuts to health care funding from the federal government. Governor Baldacci proposed a supplemental budget to close the gap, but it contained cuts to many programs for elderly Mainers, kids and people with disabilities as well as programs to prevent domestic violence and provide shelter for homeless teens that many lawmakers would not accept. Legislators worked around the clock for weeks to amend the budget in order to restore funding to many of those services by spreading the cuts more equitably across state government without raising taxes or borrowing from the State’s rainy day fund.

Legislators were also able to appropriate funding in the budget for some new state initiatives, including a tax credit for developers rehabilitating historic downtown properties and the funding of school breakfast for low income school children.

However, amid the often contentious and challenging debate on school district consolidation and the budget, lawmakers passed a number of new laws in 2008 that will benefit the state’s workers, environment, health and safety.