Legislative Blog # 7, February 18
For people new to these Observations:
You might want to scroll down to previous Blogs, and read up.
Health Care Rally beginning to gather outside the State house
before the Governor's State of the State.
Jan 31, I attended the final hour or so of the work session on LD 1757, An Act To Protect
Maine's Economy by Slowing the Rate at Which the State's Minimum Wage Will
Increase and Establishing a Training and Youth Wage. The SUMMARY explains
This bill affects
the minimum wage by:
1. Reducing the minimum wage from $10 per
hour to $9.50 per hour beginning June 1, 2018;
2. Reducing the amount by which the minimum
hourly wage rates are scheduled to increase annually on January 1st from 2019
to 2021 from $1 per year to 50 cents per year, and decreasing from $12 to $11
the minimum hourly wage rate required to be paid in 2021;
3. Eliminating the cost-of-living adjustment
to the minimum wage; and
4. Establishing a training minimum wage for
employees 18 years of age or older and under 20 years of age for the first 90
days of employment and a youth minimum wage for employees under 18 years of
age.
This session is
among the most contentious I have attended with some business owners on the
Committee declaring they would have to close their businesses if they didn’t
get some relief from the minimum wage law passed by the voters in the 2017
Referendum. Other business owners on the committee said the law helps their
businesses. 95 people testified at the public hearing. I scanned and tabulated the first 39 to find 32
testifying in favor of the bill, 7 opposed. Since they were listed in alphabetical
order, I’m guessing that is an approximate guesstimate of the entire ratio, and
it gives a sense of what the legislators are up against—Do they respond to the
will of the voters or to the will of those testifying at the Public Hearing?
The committee members voted 7-6 along party lines, “Ought not to Pass,” and issued a divided report which leaves the current law passed by referendum in place unless or until the bill sponsors come back to try again, perhaps with amendments, to reduce the effects of the minimum wage referendum. It looks like they are likely to do that at a future Work Session.
The committee members voted 7-6 along party lines, “Ought not to Pass,” and issued a divided report which leaves the current law passed by referendum in place unless or until the bill sponsors come back to try again, perhaps with amendments, to reduce the effects of the minimum wage referendum. It looks like they are likely to do that at a future Work Session.
Some bills I’m interested in are listed
as “concept drafts": When
directed by the sponsor, the Revisor of Statutes shall prepare a bill or
resolve in concept form. The bill or resolve shall contain only an enacting
clause and a summary of the proposed legislation and shall not be fully drafted
by the Revisor of Statutes. The bill or resolve prepared in this form shall be
printed and referred to a committee in the same manner as other legislation and
may be reported in fully drafted form by that committee in the same manner as
other legislation. I
interpret this as an idea for a bill rather than a fully formed bill, and it
will not be fully formed unless or until it is reported out of committee as a
complete bill.
One
such bill is LD 1063. You can go to the bill tracking site to read the bill, and instead of pages of
detail about the bill which I usually scan quickly to find the summary at the
end, all you find is this:
An Act To Protect Substance-exposed Infants
CONCEPT DRAFT SUMMARY
This
bill is a concept draft pursuant to Joint Rule 208.
This
bill proposes to enact measures designed to enhance the protection of
substance-exposed infants, which may include prevention, intervention,
identification of risk and treatment of prenatal substance exposure.
I wanted to testify at the Public Hearing of the Health and Human Services Committee on this bill, and somehow in my google searches I stumbled across
enough detail to write the following testimony: I support this bill because it puts prevention and intervention with
the mother at the heart of the plan with a focus on outreach, education,
specific contraception and access and choice. I believe there is abundant
evidence that such a plan holds the strongest promise for reducing the
incidence of Substance-exposed infants. Please vote “ought to Pass” on this
important bill.
The specific contraception is Long-Acting Reversible Contraception (LARC). To find more detail about the bill for the purposes of this blog post, I reviewed the testimony of the bill’s Sponsor, Representative Scott Hamann:
“An easy, inexpensive, effective Way to reduce the number of babies born with substance exposure is to help women struggling with substance use disorder to avoid unintended pregnancies. Among women struggling with opioid use, nearly 9 out of 10 pregnancies are unplanned. This bill aims to improve access to one of the most effective methods of contraception. Additionally, this bill supports targeted outreach and education, also in the interest of addressing the dire rate of substance-exposed infants.” “[The] revised version also requires that MaineCare rules around post-partum contraceptive services include protections against potential coercion in patients’ decisions around accessing contraceptive care. The anti-coercion protections in the bill are identical to those of the federal Title X family planning program.” “A further amendment to Section 2 of the bill . . . creates an outreach and educational program: Rather than limiting the outreach to women involved with illegal substances, the outreach should be broadened to reach women at risk of giving birth to an infant exposed to any dangerous substance, including alcohol, and those who are not actively in treatment.” “Programming must be targeted to women and adolescents who are: l. Experiencing substance use disorder; 2. Housed in a correctional setting; 3. Experiencing homelessness; and 4. Living in other circumstances that identify a need for family planning services.”
LD 912 An
Act To Clarify the Scope of Practice of Certain Licensed Professionals
Regarding Conversion Therapy [or so-called reparation therapy] is also a Concept
Draft. This bill was not on my radar until I
had an email from Rev. Carie Johnson, Pastor of the Augusta Unitarian
Universalist Church I attend sometimes. She said she was going to testify in
support of the bill the next day and invited people on her list to come stand
behind her in support while she testified. I looked up the bill on the
legislative site and found the CONCEPT DRAFT SUMMARY: This bill proposes to amend the current law
to establish that practices or treatments that seek to change an individual's
sexual orientation or gender identity for people under 18 are prohibited for
certain professionals licensed under the Maine Revised Statutes, Title 32 and
to establish penalties for that conduct.
The
bill has a bipartisan panel of cosponsors including my own Representative Trey Stewart.
On the basis of what I could find at the time, I emailed Rev. Carie back and
said I would be honored to stand behind her at the hearing the next day, Wednesday,
February 14.
A Medical Dictionary defines Conversion Therapy as Psychiatric therapy aimed at changing a person's sexual orientation,based upon the assumption that homosexuality is a mental disorder requiring therapy, (a position condemned by the American Psychiatric Association as unethical).
I couldn’t find
an official definition of Reparative Therapy separate from Conversion Therapy.
The terms are used interchangeably in the professional literature. However Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D who testified as an expert witness in
opposition to the bill said: Conversion
Therapy is broad, ill-defined, there's no ethics code, no governing body, and
it's practiced predominantly by unlicensed individuals. Conversion therapy in
some forms may be harmful to some people. The American Psychological
Association has expressed legitimate concern about some of these approaches. In
reparative therapy, the client is in the driver's seat. He sets his own goals,
which the therapist helps him achieve. We use established, evidence-based
treatments, the same treatments found in other clinics throughout the world, to
treat trauma and sexual addiction. And as those underlying issues are resolved,
the sexuality begins to change on its own.
According to his testimony, Joseph Nicolosi is the
son of the creator of Reparative Therapy, and his family owns the trademark
rights to the term. According to another person who testified, the rights have
been applied for but not yet granted. An article in the New Republic says it was Nicolosi who brought gay
conversion therapy into the mainstream, popularizing it among religious
communities and the American right, and turning what was once a scattered
practice of abuse into a multi-million-dollar worldwide industry.
I had to leave at 3:00 PM so I didn’t hear all of
the 53 testimonies. Of what I heard, virtually all of the professionals
representing professional associations spoke in favor of the bill. All of the
LGBTQ people I heard testified in support of the bill. One of these had been
exposed to Reparation Therapy for 3 years. During this time he was traumatized
by not being allowed to speak to his mother or 2 sisters because, he was told,
there was too much feminine influence in his life and it needed to be reduced;
his father paid a total of $30,000 to the Reparation Agency, and he is still
gay.
In addition to Rev. Carie, there were other pastors
who spoke in favor of the bill based on Christian values of faith in “social
justice, equity, and compassion through words and actions.”
Virtually all of the testimony opposed to the
bill had a Christian or family-values rationale also. Headmaster of Bangor Christian
Schools stated this position clearly: The
mission of Bangor Christian Schools is to assist families in educating the whole
child by encouraging spiritual maturity and academic excellence in a supportive
environment. Our final authority in all matters is the Word of God. Every facet
of our program seeks to understand God, His creation, His purpose for humanity
and to have our students accept their responsibility for each of those things.
We have a school counselor on staff and we refer students as necessary to
several licensed counselors that hold to a Biblical worldview consistent with
our mission, vision and statement of faith.
For
treatment of minors, the bill has an exception for pastoral counselors who are
not licensed to practice therapy, but the ban would apply to licensed
practitioners they may refer students to.
From listening to
the testimony, it is not clear how much of this therapy is practiced in Maine, but
judging by testimony of some social workers and by my experience with some
social workers, there are Christian therapists who are likely practicing
a form of it.
Homosexuality was once listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual as a disease. It is no longer listed as a mental health disease. Many testimonies in
favor of LD912 repeated that LGBTQ people are not suffering from a disease or
disorder to be fixed or treated, though the person may need to be
treated for the effects of stigma and discrimination. LGBTQ people adjust to
their lives better when they accept themselves and when we accept them for who they
are and how they identify themselves. They don’t need to be converted or
repaired.
Perhaps that is a standard that should be applied to other
diagnoses of mental illness listed in the DSM? But that idea is too big to
adequately develop in this post, so I will just leave it there to think about.
Health-care Rally inside the State House halls awaiting the Governor's arrival.
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