Retired MSEA-SEIU Staffer Running for Hallowell State House Seat

Longtime Maine Service Employees Association staffer Steven Butterfield is running for the Maine House of Representatives in House District 55, which comprises the towns of Hallowell, Manchester and West Gardiner. Butterfield, who faces a primary opponent, said his key priorities are workers’ rights, retiree rights, properly funding education and lowering health care costs.

“I'm running because I think that labor rights have been ignored for too long, particularly about the public sector employees having the right to strike and making arbitration binding on economic issues for public employees,” said Butterfield. “I'm also very focused on repairing the state retirement system after pensions were cut severely by [former State Treasurer] Bruce Poliquin and the LePage administration in 2011.”

Butterfield grew up in the Augusta area and has lived with his wife Janet in Hallowell for over 43 years. He has two adult sons, including former Bangor State Rep. Steve Butterfield. He is also a 22-year veteran of the Maine Army National Guard and retired in 1996 as staff sergeant, earning "The Army Commendation Medal" for "the highest traditions of selfless service and devotion to duty.” Butterfield has served MSEA for 56 years. His father served as MSEA president in the 1970s and Butterfield was doing volunteer work for the union before he could drive. He worked for 42 years as MSEA’s Researcher, Negotiator and IT Director before retiring in 2017 to help care for his aging father. For over 35 years, Butterfield was responsible for analyzing state budgets and proposing changes to make them more fair for working people.

“As a researcher I gained the experience to drill down and look for the facts,” said Butterfield. “As a negotiator I learned how to bring people together to solve problems and come to positive agreement. These skills and experience will help me represent and serve the voters of House District 55.”

He has long been considered MSEA’s de facto expert on the Maine Public Employee Retirement System (MainePERS). Butterfield has been appointed by Governors, Senate Presidents and House Speakers to serve on several workgroups and committees focused on retirement and pension issues. He has also researched health care costs for state employees and presented ways to improve the distribution of funding. Butterfield is particularly passionate about ensuring more Mainers have retirement security.

“Retirees spent their lives working within our communities,” he says. “Now that they have retired, they should be able to live a full life, have the resources necessary to maintain a home and have access to the healthcare that they need.”

He noted that the LePage administration cut $250 million out of state pensions to deliver massive tax cuts for the top 1-2 percent of the wealthiest households in Maine. These cuts included dropping the cap on cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) from 4 to 3 percent, freezing COLAs for two straight years and adding a $20,000 limit on what was COLA eligible, so if someone had a $40,000 pension, they only receive a COLA on the first $20,000. There was also a group of retired state employees who missed the window to buy back their time for their furloughs and COLA cuts LePage made due to a legislative glitch six years ago. As a result, they are getting a third less in their pension on top of all the cuts the LePage administration did. Butterfield noted that state employee health insurance benefits have also eroded over time.

“It used to be that state workers, regardless of where they were on the meager pay scale, always got 100 percent of their health insurance covered by the state. Now they have this graduated system where you might have to pay in 5 to 15 percent depending on how much you make and you have to jump through all these hoops to get credits,” he said. “Governor Mills has made some improvements, like giving bumps in COLAs and one-time ad hoc COLAs, but they don’t affect the base amount. Retirees just keep falling further and further behind and active state workers are also falling behind because the Governor won’t address the pay gap.”