AUGUSTA — As top legislative leaders pushed to bring to a close one of the longest lawmaking sessions in the past 24 years, some — including House Minority Leader Rep. Ken Fredette, R-Newport — were pushing for a few more days.
Rob Poindexter, a spokesman for Fredette, spoke earlier this week about “pumping the brakes” on the session to get at least four days in, which would bolster Republican Gov. Paul LePage’s argument that the Legislature has adjourned and he has more time to veto bills.
LePage’s legal staff on Tuesday was drawing up a question for the state’s Supreme Judicial Court, hoping the court would take LePage’s side, allowing him to sit on 71 bills that Democrats have said are destined for the lawbooks because LePage failed to veto them within the 10 days allowed under the Maine Constitution.
Fredette said Tuesday he was asking his colleagues to refrain from closing out the lawmaking session until the court had a chance to respond.
“To me, the issue today is the status of 71 bills and the question of whether those bills are law or not,” Fredette said.
On Tuesday, LePage sounded confident as he told WVOM radio talk show host George Hale he believed the high court would support his argument.
“What’s going on the last 10 days is unfortunate,” LePage said. “They are playing chicken and all that, the constitution is very clear, one way or the other we are going to the Supreme Court to ask for clarification. We are preparing the question right now and we’re going to send it over and ask that the question be answered.”
A memo from LePage’s staff attorney, Cynthia Montgomery, to legislative leaders confirmed the question was being prepared and would be presented to the court “in very short order.”
It remained unclear whether that would happen before Thursday. LePage had earlier said he might wait until January 2016 to present his question to the high court.
The state’s Attorney General, Democrat Janet Mills, has issued an opinion siding with the Legislature and stating that LePage missed his veto deadline.
At stake for LePage are a handful of bills, including one that would allow cities and towns to pay General Assistance welfare benefits to immigrants who are seeking asylum in the U.S. but have not received permission to work.
The issue was a key wedge in the state’s $6.7 billion budget negotiations. While the bill passed the Senate 29-5 and the House 81-63, it was widely expected LePage would veto the measure and House Republicans would sustain that veto.
Top lawmakers, including House Speaker Mark Eves, D-North Berwick, and Senate President Mike Thibodeau, R-Winterport, have said the Legislature hasn’t adjourned for 2015 but is on a prolonged recess and will resume its work Thursday.
Both Thibodeau and Eves say they intend to return for just one day and will finish their work for 2015 and adjourn “sine die” — without reconvening the session — on Thursday.
In a short statement issued Monday, Thibodeau made a point of using the Latin phrase, which means “without assigning a day for a further meeting or hearing.”
He said the Legislature on Thursday would take up vetoes on the calendar and a couple of leftover bills. “When we are done with that business, the expectation is the First Regular Session of the 127th Legislature will adjourn ‘sine die.’”
LePage has said that as chief executive he has no intention of enforcing any of the laws in question, prior to receiving a court ruling.
Eves blasted LePage for that in a statement Monday.
“The governor’s decision to disregard the law will have a very real impact on Maine families, seniors and veterans who came to the State House to advocate for health care, tax credits, housing and other key initiatives,” Eves said. “His actions only hurt the people we were all sent to Augusta to represent.”
Fredette called on the Legislature’s rulemaking committee, the Legislative Council, which is made up with lawmakers in leadership in both houses and both parties, to hold an emergency meeting to discuss the fate of the bills in question.
Thibodeau and Eves have rejected any meeting of the council prior to Thursday.
House Majority Leader Jeff McCabe on Tuesday issued a copy of a transcript from a speech that Fredette made prior to a vote lawmakers took to extend the current lawmaking session by five days on June 23.
In that speech, Fredette argued for a quick ending to the session and against extending it for any period longer than necessary.
“There is no need to be here five additional days,” Fredette said at the time. “Let’s do this in a timely fashion, let’s do this in a reasonable way, let’s get the work done.”
Fredette confirmed Tuesday he and his caucus did not believe the Legislature was adjourning for 2015 on June 30 but fully expected to return to finish its work on Thursday. But he said McCabe was taking his speech out of context in that LePage’s question to the court changed the need to finish up the Legislature’s work in an expeditious fashion.
“We have a responsibility to the people of Maine to deal with these things in a pretty forthright manner and not sort of play these cat-and-mouse games of well, we adjourned or we didn’t adjourn,” said Fredette, a lawyer. “When you have legal disputes you go to court and that’s what we should do here. The question should be posed to the law court, we should get an answer and we will all follow the law as determined by the law court.”
McCabe said only a handful of Republicans, including Fredette and LePage, had any doubt about whether the Legislature was finally adjourned.
He said both presiding officers of the Legislature, the Senate president, a Republican, and the House speaker, a Democrat, were in agreement that the Legislature did not finally adjourn on June 30.
He also said it was clear that had LePage vetoed the bills in question, some of those vetoes would have been upheld but a large portion of them would have been overturned.
“I have to imagine the governor probably realized a lot of these would have been overridden because many Republicans are just sick of his antics,” McCabe said.
Even if the Legislature does finally adjourn for 2015 on Thursday, it will mark the longest first half of any lawmaking session since 1991, when state government shut down and reconvened in a special session that adjourned July 18.
If the Legislature does adjourn “sine die” on Thursday, it’s not set to reconvene until January 2016 for the second half of the 127th Legislature.
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