Legislative Blog Post # 12
Spring has arrived in Augusta. Crocuses are blooming.
LD 1867 "An Act To Reestablish Certain Positions
within the Department of Health and Human Services
Spring has arrived in Augusta. Crocuses are blooming.
LD 1867 "An Act To Reestablish Certain Positions
within the Department of Health and Human Services
"SUMMARY: This bill establishes 8 positions in the Department of Health and Human Services to replace positions that were eliminated by Public Law 2017, chapter 284, Part ZZZZZZ, section 9."
This is another bill from the Governor. It is the only spending bill from DHHS this session. It is not made clear in my review of the bill but came out in testimony that these are attorney positions called in the bill "Public Service Coordinators." I attended the Public Hearing on March 26.
Sponsor of the bill, Representative Chace testified: In June of this year eight contract attorneys who are the subject of this bill will no longer be
employed by the Department. These individuals work with complex contracts, and possess
institutional knowledge within the intricacies of policy, programming, and contract execution.
These positions were created in response to the AG s assertion that contracts were unenforceable
and the policy and programming was difficult to defend and substantiate. Since the establishment
of these positions, there has been greater cooperation and understanding between DHHS and the
AG s office. These employees are not litigators and ultimately all enforcement still resides in the
Attorney General s office.
Deputy Commissioner of Program Policy and Operations for the Maine Department of Health and Human Services' focused his testimony primarily on DHHS need for internal legal counsel in relation to the Attorney General's office. He asserted this relationship "led the Department to reasonably take the approach of gradually hiring . . . eight counsel positions as an effective and accepted method for addressing day-to-day legal
issues outside the capacity and/ or scope of the Attorney General's Office and for providing the Attorney General s Office with higher quality work products in matters on which they would
ultimately provide approval or guidance. The Department is confident that the quality and
sophistication of its service contracts, Department rules, and internal decisions have dramatically
increased as a direct result of hiring for these eight positions. It should also be made clear that
these positions are in no way designed to replace or duplicate the Work of the Attorney General s
Office, but are designed to efficiently compliment their work. Furthermore, the Department
believes that the Attorney General s Office even when fully staffed would not have the capacity
to provide the day-to-day in-house legal services required by the Department to successfully
operate; nor has the Attorney General s Office ever provided such services for the Department
historically."
Questions from the committee following the DHHS testimony focused on the need for clarity: Has there been communication with the Attorney General's office about the Department's perceived need for 8 full time internal attorneys? Are there existing attorneys already in the Department who could meet these needs without hiring new? Has there been analysis of hiring priorities in relation to other needs. Who authorized the original hiring?
I did not feel greater clarity about these issues from the Department responses.
There was a pause when the chair asked for people opposed to the bill, Finally the Attorney General said she hadn't prepared testimony but she could address some of the issues she heard in propnents' testimony. She said she had not known about and was not consulted about the hiring of these 8 attorneys. She also said that her office had sufficient staff to handle contract matters of DHHS.
I paused when the chair asked if there were others opposed to the bill, but then got up and confessed that I, too, had not prepared testimony but that I had personal experience that might be relevant. I spoke about the many Health and Human Services needs I heard in my observations of the legislature during this session, and I questioned the priority of hiring 8 new full time attorneys when there were so many unmet needs of people seeking services. I spoke about my experience with family members who could not get needs met. And I said that during the last eight years, trying to negotiate those needs with DHHS gave me the strong impression that DHHS was there to deny services rather than meet needs for services. The DHHS spokesperson said the number of contracts needed had gone down as a result of a push to reduce them. Were services likewise reduced?
LD 1870 "An Act To Reorganize the Provision of Services for Children with Disabilities
from Birth to 5 Years of Age"
I attended part of the the Public Hearing on this bill March 26. "This is a complicated bill from the Department of Education (DOE) that I do not fully understand, but the parts of this bill that seemed to cause the most concern in testimony are these from the SUMMARY: "This bill eliminates the Child Development Services System and moves the entire responsibility for providing services to children from birth to under 3 years of age to the Department of Education's office of special services. The funding plan continues the present arrangement of full responsibility for costs being shared by state funds, federal funds, the MaineCare program, and private insurers.
"The intent of the changes to the Child Development Services System [CDS] statutes are based on the belief that children with disabilities are best served by their local communities; children do better when there are fewer transition points; there are efficiencies that can be achieved by eliminating duplicative state functions and by maximizing existing services and facilities at the local level; and the State should continue its current practice of funding all services for preschool children with disabilities that are not paid for with federal funds, through the MaineCare program or from private sources."
State Director of Special Services, Birth to 20 from the DOE testified in support of the bill:
"The problems plaguing CDS include high rates of staff turnover, due to the inability of CDS to offer competitive salaries and benefits; children on waiting lists for services; high and inequitable provider rates; and funding defecits. Contributing to the funding problems are redundancies in human resources, finance, and transportation, as these structures already exist in schools or State government. CDS has skilled, committed employees, and the Maine Department of Education's proposal is not intended as a comment on the quality of services that CDS has provided to our children. CDS has served many children very well over the years. But the system, configured as it is, has become cumbersome, inefficient, and most important, inadequate in its capacity to serve children.
"The Department's proposal is based on the following key principles: First, no child who needs services should have to wait for those services. Second, children are best served in their local community by the same professionals who will also work with other members of their families. Third, children and families do better with fewer transition points. And finally, greater efficiency in a system means better services for its clients. This bill is intended to correct many problems in the system, to serve our children with disabilities as economically as possible, and to help ensure positive outcomes for our birth to 5-year-old population."
"The problems plaguing CDS include high rates of staff turnover, due to the inability of CDS to offer competitive salaries and benefits; children on waiting lists for services; high and inequitable provider rates; and funding defecits. Contributing to the funding problems are redundancies in human resources, finance, and transportation, as these structures already exist in schools or State government. CDS has skilled, committed employees, and the Maine Department of Education's proposal is not intended as a comment on the quality of services that CDS has provided to our children. CDS has served many children very well over the years. But the system, configured as it is, has become cumbersome, inefficient, and most important, inadequate in its capacity to serve children.
"The Department's proposal is based on the following key principles: First, no child who needs services should have to wait for those services. Second, children are best served in their local community by the same professionals who will also work with other members of their families. Third, children and families do better with fewer transition points. And finally, greater efficiency in a system means better services for its clients. This bill is intended to correct many problems in the system, to serve our children with disabilities as economically as possible, and to help ensure positive outcomes for our birth to 5-year-old population."
Opponents of the bill, including CDS Providers and Families of children who were provided services by CDS, feared the loss of critical services with the elimination of CDS. They were particularly concerned about losing the Child Find program which seeks to find children in need of early intervention and provide it. Opponents argued the bill was being rushed trough the process without adequate planning nor time to transition children and their families from the home-care services offered by CDS to the public school system. One opponent, a preschool and CDS provider, likened the school's responsibility in implementing the plan to "flying the plane as they are building it." Some testified neither for nor against with many suggestions for amending the bill that would assure the continued services in the public school that CDS provides.
A 3rd Work Session on this Bill is scheduled for Wednesday, April 2, Room 202 Cross Building.
Update on L.D. 1874 Resolve, To Ensure the Continued Provision
of Services to Maine Children and Families
On March 27, I attended the work Session on this bill that "prohibits, until April 1, 2019, the Department of Health and Human Services from reducing, eliminating or redirecting services or funding relating to programs designed to protect children and families. The resolve also prohibits the department from cancelling contracts awarded pursuant to RFP number 201509167, Community Partnerships for Protecting Children (CPPC), and requires the department to renew those contracts."
This bill attempts to restore an important program that DHHS cut the funds for. Discussion in the Work Session focused on a possible amendment to delay consideration and implementation of the bill so that a compromise might be worked out that would satisfy the need for the program to continue with the perceived need for DHHS to cut funding for it. The committee voted 8 to 3 Ought to Pass as amended with a divided report to be issued.
After vigorous debate in both Chambers, An Act To Encourage New Major Investments in Shipbuilding Facilities and the Preservation of Jobs at Bath Iron Works, owned by the giant defense contractor General Dynamics, passed by wide margins in the House on March 28 and in the Senate on March 29.
In my not-so-humble opinion this is a bipartisan mistake for reasons I explained before the vote on Thursday in a message to every senator:
In my not-so-humble opinion this is a bipartisan mistake for reasons I explained before the vote on Thursday in a message to every senator:
When you cast your vote on this bill, please consider the following:
- The total lack of BIW transparency and willingness to answer questions in committee about their financial situation or financial relationship to General Dynamics that would demonstrate need for this tax subsidy. I was there, watched and heard it.
- The fact that during the time period of the former tax subsidy of $60 million BIW reduced the work force by about 10,000 workers.
- With LD 1781, BIW will be a triple tax winner 1) dependent on tax dollars to buy their product via US contracts that have built-in profits and tax write offs for state and local property taxes, 2) a wind fall tax break with the Trump tax breaks, 3) the tax break LD 1781 provides. And if the current bill to conform taxes to the Federal Code passes (4) that would make them a quadruple tax winner.
- The dire need in Maine for money to adequately fund needs of health care, social services, education, and the environment that I have been witnessing daily in my observations of these committees.
- What will happen if/when BIW fails to live up to its commitment for investment and job retention and pleads again to legislators its need to remain competitive as the reason. Why should voters trust our legislators then when we can't trust them now to do the morally right thing?
- The increasing income inequality between the few richest and the rest of us, and the increasing power and influence those few richest exert over all our lives.You have the power to do something about this with your vote on this bill.
Please vote no on LD 1781
How much money, war, and defense jobs does it take
to make and keep the peace?
LD 1864 An Act To Establish Universal Home Care
for Seniors and Persons with Disabilities.
SUMMARY: "This [citizen] initiated bill establishes the Universal Home Care Program to provide in-home and community support services for all people with disabilities living in Maine who require assistance with an activity of daily living and people 65 years of age or older who are living in Maine and who require assistance with an activity of daily living, without regard to income, to be funded by a new tax of 3.8% on income and wages that exceed the maximum wages subject to social security employment taxes." 
This is a Referendum bill to be on the November ballot.
Governor LePage explains his opposition: "Big-money special interests from out of state are using Maine’s referendum process to push policies that would never make it past my veto. The Maine People’s Alliance will tell you that this bill simply taxes the wealthy to pay for free in-home care for people with disabilities and for all our seniors." "Just like the 3 percent surcharge on last year’s ballot, this bill will drive high-earning professionals out of Maine." "the bill includes a list of other things it can pay for: transportation, home repairs and rent, among others. A vast bureaucracy would need to be set up to audit these payments to prevent fraud." "it creates yet another wait list for services for our elderly and our people with disabilities." "this bill would . . . require any individual care provider to be considered a state employee for collective-bargaining purposes. . . . Forced unionism. " "[This bill] would just create a system that can’t pay for its promises."
I attended a Session of the House of Representatives in which a motion to refer this bill to the Taxation Committee was discussed. For over an hour, Representatives on the left side of the aisle (from my perspective in the gallery, on the right from the perspective of the chair) echoed the opinions of the Governor and insisted the bill ought to go through the process that all bills go through for thoughtful analysis in a public hearing and work sessions by the committee. Although I did not hear it explicitly stated, I thought it was also implied that the bill should be voted out of the Taxation Committee Ought Not to Pass.
In addition to echoing the governor's reasons for his promised veto if the Referendum Question should pass in November, the Representatives on the left side of the aisle also repeated frequently that voters do not understand the bills they vote on in referendum, and the committee process would help them understand all the unintended consequences. One Representative was explicitly anti-democratic, restating the argument (I'm paraphrasing here) that our system is a Federation (representative government) not a democracy, and if we are going to allow voters to make policy by referendum, the legislature might as well just give up and go home.
During that whole hour I kept wondering who or what the left side was arguing against. Only at the end did one representative on the right of the aisle get up to say that other Referendum questions did not normally go through the Committee process. So the argument from the right side of the aisle was mostly unvoiced which disappointed me. And still, even without substantial argument from the right side of the aisle, the motion to refer the bill to the Taxation Committee failed 72 to 71. A second motion to postpone the bill and accompanying papers indefinitely passed 72 to 70.
I am generally in favor of more democracy, not less, and I always favor it when I favor the referendum question. However, I must admit that I sometimes doubt the majority will of the voters, especially in view of what happened in some of our state and federal leadership elections in recent years, and in view of some opinions I have heard expressed by voter-elected officials in this legislature. Sigh! I think it was Churchill who said "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others which have been tried from time to time."
A recent Atlantic article addresses the Democracy issue "across a range of issues, public policy does not reflect the preferences of the majority of Americans [. . . .] The subversion of the people’s preferences in our supposedly democratic system was explored in a 2014 study by the political scientists Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin I. Page of Northwestern [. . . .] The results were shocking. Economic elites and narrow interest groups were very influential: They succeeded in getting their favored policies adopted about half of the time, and in stopping legislation to which they were opposed nearly all of the time. Mass-based interest groups, meanwhile, had little effect on public policy. As for the views of ordinary citizens, they had virtually no independent effect at all. 'When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy,' Gilens and Page wrote."
I attended a Session of the House of Representatives in which a motion to refer this bill to the Taxation Committee was discussed. For over an hour, Representatives on the left side of the aisle (from my perspective in the gallery, on the right from the perspective of the chair) echoed the opinions of the Governor and insisted the bill ought to go through the process that all bills go through for thoughtful analysis in a public hearing and work sessions by the committee. Although I did not hear it explicitly stated, I thought it was also implied that the bill should be voted out of the Taxation Committee Ought Not to Pass.
In addition to echoing the governor's reasons for his promised veto if the Referendum Question should pass in November, the Representatives on the left side of the aisle also repeated frequently that voters do not understand the bills they vote on in referendum, and the committee process would help them understand all the unintended consequences. One Representative was explicitly anti-democratic, restating the argument (I'm paraphrasing here) that our system is a Federation (representative government) not a democracy, and if we are going to allow voters to make policy by referendum, the legislature might as well just give up and go home.
During that whole hour I kept wondering who or what the left side was arguing against. Only at the end did one representative on the right of the aisle get up to say that other Referendum questions did not normally go through the Committee process. So the argument from the right side of the aisle was mostly unvoiced which disappointed me. And still, even without substantial argument from the right side of the aisle, the motion to refer the bill to the Taxation Committee failed 72 to 71. A second motion to postpone the bill and accompanying papers indefinitely passed 72 to 70.
I am generally in favor of more democracy, not less, and I always favor it when I favor the referendum question. However, I must admit that I sometimes doubt the majority will of the voters, especially in view of what happened in some of our state and federal leadership elections in recent years, and in view of some opinions I have heard expressed by voter-elected officials in this legislature. Sigh! I think it was Churchill who said "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others which have been tried from time to time."
A recent Atlantic article addresses the Democracy issue "across a range of issues, public policy does not reflect the preferences of the majority of Americans [. . . .] The subversion of the people’s preferences in our supposedly democratic system was explored in a 2014 study by the political scientists Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin I. Page of Northwestern [. . . .] The results were shocking. Economic elites and narrow interest groups were very influential: They succeeded in getting their favored policies adopted about half of the time, and in stopping legislation to which they were opposed nearly all of the time. Mass-based interest groups, meanwhile, had little effect on public policy. As for the views of ordinary citizens, they had virtually no independent effect at all. 'When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy,' Gilens and Page wrote."
To Allow Courts To Prevent High-risk Individuals from Possessing Firearms
"SUMMARY: This bill creates a community protection order to authorize a court to order a person to surrender that person's firearms temporarily for 21 days or on an extended basis for 180 days when it has been proved that the person poses a danger of causing personal injury to that person or another person. The bill provides that:
1. A law enforcement officer or a family or household member may file a petition for a temporary community protection order, which expires in 21 days. A temporary community protection order may be issued on an ex parte basis. The court is required to hold a hearing to determine if the temporary community protection order should be extended for an additional 180 days;
2. A person who is the subject of a community protection order is required to surrender all firearms in the person's possession to a law enforcement officer. The firearms must be returned to the person at the expiration of the community protection order; and
3. A person who possesses firearms in violation of a community protection order commits a Class D crime. Part of the sentence must include a prohibition on possession of firearms for an additional 2 years."
From Suit Up Maine: "A public hearing on the bill will be held Tuesday, April 3. Contact members of the Judiciary Committee, submit public testimony, and attend the public hearing to demand passage of LD 1884."
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