Important Wins for Workers in the New Supplemental Budget

Last week, Governor Janet Mills signed a supplemental budget that will make childcare more affordable while ensuring the very wealthy pay their fair share. The new supplemental budget includes:

Child care affordability: $10 million in annual funding to the Child Care Affordability Program to help working families pay for child care and eliminate the waiting list of the program. The program provides child care subsidies to families earning 125 percent the state median income ($147,581.25 for a family of four).
Tax Fairness: A 2 percent tax on annual income over $1 million, bringing some much-needed fairness to our tax code. This bill (LD 1089) was sponsored by Rep. Cheryl Golek (D-Harpswell).
Retirement security: Adds mental health crisis workers, Bangor Airport firefighters and Chief Medical Examiner employees to the 1998 Special Plan of the Maine Public Employees. This will allow these workers to retire at age 55 with at least 10 years of service, or with 25 years of service regardless of age. Special thanks to the following legislators who sponsored these bill that were included in budget - by Sen. Mike Tipping (LD 579), Sen. Craig Hickman (LD 137) and Rep. Amy Roeder (LD 1236).
Property tax relief: Expansion of the State’s Property Tax Fairness Credit from $1,000 to $1,500 for eligible residents under age 65.

AFSCME Council 93 Director of Legislation & Political Action Jim Durkin said adding mental health crisis workers to the 1998 special plan was a huge victory for AFSCME members.

"After attempting through multiple sessions to secure the funding and support we needed to place all of our mental health professionals un the 1998 plan, we came to the conclusion that the retroactive costs were too high to handle in one budget session, forcing us to pursue incremental progress," said Durkin. "Working in close partnership with the Maine AFL-CIO, last year we secured $2.1 million in the state budget to add our direct care workers at the state’s two psychiatric hospitals to the plan. This month, we secured another $1.8 million to add our community response workers, who work alone in the community to assist people in crisis. Of course, this would not have been possible without the strong support of Maine Senate President Mattie Daughtry, House Speaker Ryan Fecteau and our lead sponsor Senator Mike Tipping."

Budget Disappointments

We are deeply disappointed that lawmakers once again failed to make progress on closing the pay gap for state workers who deliver the public services we all rely on. Last year state's budget had the impact of moving $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. If nothing more is done to address the state employee pay gap, our state will face deteriorating public services and a declining standard of living for our public servants.

Unfortunately, the Appropriations Committee also failed to fund LD 2062, An Act to Enhance the Safety of Public Transit Bus Operators Through the Installation of Vehicle Security Barriers, sponsored by Sen. Teresa Pierce (D-Cumberland), which would have required public transit agencies to install vehicle security barriers that protect transit bus operators from assaults. This was a very important bill to ATU Local 714 members who told harrowing stories of assaults by passengers on buses in testimony before a legislative committee.