This week, I signed a bipartisan supplemental budget into law. That budget provides meaningful help to Maine nursing facilities, Maine’s hospitals, small businesses, and others in need of immediate relief.
Hello, this is Governor Janet Mills, and thank you for listening.
Every other year, the Governor and the Legislature craft a budget that will guide our state over the following two fiscal years. Our current biennial – or two-year – budget ends on June 30, the last day of the state’s 2023 Fiscal Year.
But the biennial state budget, like any good plan, requires occasional fine tuning as circumstances change. That’s where the so-called “supplemental budget” comes in. This supplemental budget takes any surplus revenues – as we have this year, generated from strong economy and prudent fiscal management – and puts those funds to use for Maine people.
This year, it involves investments like $25 million in state and federal funds for long-term care and nursing facilities to make sure older Mainers are taken care of. And another $25 million to support Maine hospitals as they continue to recover from the extraordinary costs of the pandemic.
The supplemental budget also extends an initiative from my Maine Jobs & Recovery Plan to help small lower the cost of health insurance for employees. After all, small businesses are the backbone of our economy, and we need to help them survive and grow.
The supplemental budget also includes a one-time payment averaging $175, the equivalent of one-percent cost-of-living adjustment, for 37,600 retired state employees and retired teachers, helping them deal with increased costs.
And the supplemental budget includes $50,000 for the Maine Milk Commission to assess the cost of milk production, and $10 million to go toward the dredging of Portland Harbor.
Finally, the supplemental budget authorizes the Maine Commission on Indigent Legal Services to increase the rate of pay for those attorneys who are rostered from $80 per hour to $150 per hour as part of a larger effort to attract more attorneys to represent indigent people in criminal and child protection cases.
I am grateful to this Legislature for its strong bipartisan approval of this emergency supplemental budget.
As I’ve said before, my guiding belief as Governor is that the foundation of our economy is our people.
This supplemental budget, just enacted, makes meaningful investments in Maine people and Maine businesses – and it does this while maintaining a balanced budget, as the Maine State Constitution requires.
In the weeks and months ahead, I look forward to working with the Legislature to craft a new two-year budget, a biennial budget, for fiscal years 2024 and 2025 that improves the lives and livelihoods of Maine people.
Last month, I offered a balanced budget proposal that will do just that, by investing directly in education, housing, healthcare, roads and bridges, and giving money back to the towns and cities and to the property taxpayers without raising income taxes or sales taxes, and without touching our record-high savings, or Rainy Day Fund.
I am confident that this administration and this legislature can and will enact a balanced, bipartisan budget that is truly worthy of the people of Maine.
This is Governor Janet Mills, and thank you for listening.