Budget Committee Votes to Tax Millionaires, Improve Child Care Affordability & Retirement Security

After years of union members pushing for tax fairness, including at the Maine AFL-CIO’s annual Labor Lobby Day last month, lawmakers advanced a budget that will ensure wealthy people start to pay their fair share to meet working people’s needs. The Legislature’s Appropriations committee also voted to add $10 million in annual funding to the Child Care Affordability Program to help working families pay for child care and voted to improve retirement security for mental health crisis workers and workers in the Office of Chief Medical Examiner.

Below is a statement from Matt Schlobohm, Executive Director of the Maine AFL-CIO:

“There are important victories for working people in this supplemental budget. This budget takes big steps forward on tax fairness, childcare affordability and retirement security.

“Today, the top 1% pays a lower state and local tax rate than the working class. A nurse or a firefighter is in the same tax bracket as a multi-millionaire. But this week, the Legislature’s appropriations committee passed a supplemental budget that calls for millionaires to pay an additional 2% tax on annual income over $1 million, bringing some much-needed fairness to our tax code.”

“At the same time, we are deeply disappointed that lawmakers once again failed to make progress to meet the needs of state workers who deliver the public services we all rely on. Last year, legislators moved $56 million out of the salary plan which pays state workers’ wages, limiting their ability to negotiate raises to close the well-documented pay gap. The state workers’ union contract expired 10 months ago, and the Mills administration has been offering raises that are well below the rate of inflation, pointing to the limited resources available to them because of actions by the Legislature.”

“This budget transfers $292 million from the budget stabilization fund to the general fund, and will raise an estimated $95 million in new revenue in the coming fiscal year from the millionaires tax, yet state workers were left with less than the status quo. We need legislators to address the pay gap this session. Short of further action by the Governor and legislative leaders, our state will face deteriorating public services and a declining standard of living for our public servants.”