10 bill titles to watch for Portland

Gov. Paul LePage and state Sen. Justin Alfond, D-Portland -- often political rivals -- appear together at an event last year in Portland. (BDN photo by Troy R. Bennett)

Gov. Paul LePage and state Sen. Justin Alfond, D-Portland — often political rivals — appear together at an event last year in Portland. (BDN photo by Troy R. Bennett)

This is the time of year when state lawmakers submit bill titles — a sentence or so very generally describing the intent of the legislation — and those titles get fleshed out with text detailing what the bills would actually do and how much they’d cost.

It’s a bit of a transitional period when the work of the upcoming Legislature begins to take shape, battle lines are drawn and local senators and representatives advocate for bills that help their hometown constituencies.

Many bills coming down the pike will never see the light of day — they’ll get merged with similar bills or shot down in committees, while others may make it to the full Legislature and voted down or pass and be vetoed by Gov. Paul LePage.

Many of the 1,500-plus bill titles submitted by lawmakers would have a significant impact statewide if ultimately fleshed out and passed. In cases where those pieces of legislation are likely to disproportionately impact more populated areas, the city of Portland will feel the effects more than anywhere else in Maine.

With that in mind, I’ve tried to isolate 10 bill titles likely to be of special interest to Portland and its residents. Work is ongoing to add text and details to these bills, so depending on when you read this, some of these titles may actually have been fleshed out.

Without further ado:

10. An Act To Amend the Laws Related to Public Funding of Charter Schools (Rep. Brian Hubbell, D-Bar Harbor)

State Rep. Brian Hubbell, D-Bar Harbor (BDN photo by Troy R. Bennett)

State Rep. Brian Hubbell, D-Bar Harbor (BDN photo by Troy R. Bennett)

This is one of eight proposed bill titles related to charter schools and their funding, a group which includes one to remove the 10-school cap on the number of charter schools allowed in the state, one to limit for-profit charter schools in Maine and another to put a moratorium on new virtual charter schools.

It seems clear there’s interest among lawmakers in changing something about the way charter schools are funded. While it remains to be seen what changes, exactly, will be proposed, the issue of charter schools has been of particular interest in Portland, where Mayor Michael Brennan lobbied vociferously against the establishment of the charter Baxter Academy for Technology and Science.

Opponents of charter schools, like Brennan, have argued the schools siphon public funds from established, traditional public schools which are already facing financial struggles. When the state legalized charter schools in 2011, the new schools were to be funded by tuition dollars from their home school districts, a method that has since come under fire from many public school departments complaining they’re effectively paying for their students to take classes somewhere else.

9. An Act To Authorize a General Fund Bond Issue To Support Local Food Hub Programs and Encourage the Use of Local Farm Products in Public Schools (Sen. Christopher Johnson, D-Somerville)

Here’s another issue right in Mayor Brennan’s wheel house. Since his election in 2011, Brennan has been pushing for greater food sustainability in Portland, and in particular, greater consumption of local food in the city’s public schools.

Cheryl Berube slices locally grown red onions in Portland Public Schools' Central Kitchen in this file photo. (The Forecaster photo by Ben McCanna)

Cheryl Berube slices locally grown red onions in Portland Public Schools’ Central Kitchen in this file photo. (The Forecaster photo by Ben McCanna)

Brennan wants to see 50 percent of the food served in Portland schools coming from local sources — there at about 30 percent now — and the city’s kitchen has gotten a lot of publicity for its efforts on this front. According to our colleagues at The Forecaster, the Portland Public Schools served 50,000 pounds of local produce and 15,000 pounds of local meat in 2013-2014, and was on pace to double those amounts last year.

Those advances were largely made within the financial confines of local budgets. If Sen. Johnson is successful in getting bond money to develop local food hubs and encourage more local food in public schools, it could serve as a significant boost to an already ambitious effort going on in Portland.

8. An Act To Better Coordinate the Work of Mental Health Crisis Agencies with Local Law Enforcement (Rep. Mark Dion, D-Portland)

This is something the city’s substance abuse task force is already looking closely at, most recently with a visit by Seattle’s Kris Nyrop, who has helped develop a program there partnering police with local shelters and counselors.

The Seattle program allows police to — instead of outright arresting substance abusers involved with crime — divert certain offenders into counseling and housing programs aimed at turning their lives around.

According to The Forecaster, preliminary returns on the three-plus-year-old program have shown it has helped drive down total arrests by 16 percent and felony arrests by 25 percent.

While details of the former sheriff Dion’s legislation will determine what specifically this bill would do, the Seattle blueprint has been of great interest in Portland and seems to indicate collaborations like this are promising.

7. An Act To Provide Universal Health Care (Rep. Heidi Brooks, D-Lewiston

Mark McForbes gets his blood pressure and sugars checked at Portland's former Health Care for the Homeless Clinic in this file photo. (BDN photo by Troy R. Bennett)

Mark McForbes gets his blood pressure and sugars checked at Portland’s former Health Care for the Homeless Clinic in this file photo. (BDN photo by Troy R. Bennett)

This is one of three similar bills, the other two proposed by Sen. Geoff Gratwick, D-Bangor. This maybe counts as one of those bills that would represent a big difference across the state, regardless of municipality. And given what will probably be the price tag of expanding health coverage to every citizen in the state — combined with Gov. LePage’s regular vetoes of Democrat efforts to expand Medicaid coverage in Maine — this is probably a long shot to make it into law.

But the largest hospital in the state, Maine Medical Center, is in the city of Portland, and the city and local nonprofits spend a lot of time and energy trying to build an infrastructure that makes health care accessible to the homeless and less fortunate.

Universal health care would not only lift the burden of organizing and paying for that infrastructure from local agencies, it could add a more stable tool to those agencies’ tool kits when trying to provide wrap-around services to the homeless or other individuals trying to pull themselves up from the bottom.

6. An Act to Stabilize Homeless Shelters in Maine (Sen. Justin Alfond, D-Portland)

This is sort of similar to the previous bill title, in that the impact could be felt across Maine, but Portland is where the largest homeless shelter is located and where — by a fairly wide margin — the largest homeless population is.

How the legislation would stabilize homeless shelters remains to be seen, but between 400 and 500 people seek shelter in Portland every night, and any bill to provide extra funding for local shelters or seed money to build more capacity would likely be welcomed by the Portland Department of Health and Human Services.

In Portland, service providers have long been advocates for the housing first model, essentially offering low-barrier rooms or apartments for the chronically homeless under the notion that, with stable housing, those individuals are statistically much more likely to then get lingering substance abuse problems under control or more reliably take their prescribed mental health medications.

In a 2011 study I’ve cited frequently in writing about these issues, University of New England social work professor Thomas McLaughlin found that a group of nearly 100 Greater Portland homeless individuals with disabilities cost taxpayers a total of $622,386 less while living in stable housing than they did while living on the streets. The cost avoidance came primarily from more efficient use of medical care and fewer run-ins with law enforcement.

5. An Act to Increase the Minimum Wage (Rep. Scott Hamann, D-South Portland)

This is one of eight bills seeking to increase the minimum wage outright, while another proposed by Sen. Tom Saviello, R-Wilton, would assemble a work group to study the issue.

Still another, proposed by Rep. Janice Cooper, D-Yarmouth, would eliminate the exception from the state’s minimum wage laws for workers who receive tips.

Anyone paying attention to Portland news knows that increasing the minimum wage has been a key initiative of Mayor Brennan’s, and a proposal to do just that is being considered by a City Council committee. Brennan’s plan, which was formulated over about a year’s worth of public meetings and deliberations by a specially appointed task force, would boost the minimum wage in Portland to $9.50 by July 1, then bump it up again to $10.10 on Jan. 1, 2016.

A year later, the city minimum wage would go up to $10.68, and then it would be increased regularly in the future along with annual rises in the Consumer Price Index.

City restaurant owners have largely been open to the concept of an increased minimum wage, but their support has hinged on whether the city would seek to remove an exemption for tipped workers. Restaurateurs have argued that while their waiters and waitresses make just a few dollars an hour, their tips push their pay up well beyond $10 per hour or even $20 per hour.

Meddling with that system, some Portland restaurant owners have said, would have the effect of driving up payroll costs on food service businesses just making ends meet, while not actually giving wait staff any additional money.

4. An Act To Provide Funding to the Department of Transportation To Complete the Assessment for the Completion of the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad Line from Portland to Lewiston (Rep. Jared Golden, D-Lewiston)

This is a sleeper bill many people outside of Portland and Lewiston-Auburn may not pay much attention to, but which could be a significant one for those communities.

Interest in developing a strong railroad connection between the state’s two largest cities has been building momentum in recent years. If passenger rail service is reconnected, commuters to either city along the route could benefit — and supporters say towns along the way would grow as they became more convenient bedroom communities.

The “big enchilada,” as Androscoggin County Chamber of Commerce President Chip Morrison once called it, would be to then continue that rail connection on to Montreal. This is probably years away from reality, but a direct pipeline to a Canadian city of 1.7 million people would go nicely with tourism connections Portland has built with Nova Scotia through ferry service, Boston by rail and throughout the world by cruise ship.

Of course, freight rail lines to and from Portland’s International Marine Terminal, home of the city’s burgeoning shipping activity, allow companies from abroad to send products to America by sea to Portland, then to the rest of the country’s metropolitan markets by rail. Many of the nation’s better known import/export hubs, like New York City, are getting too busy and too clogged, and Portland hopes to become an attractive alternative with all the same connections.

3. An Act To Create a Local Option Sales Tax by Referendum (Sen. Linda Valentino, D-Saco)

Brooks also submitted a similar bill title, being An Act To Allow Municipalities To Administer a Local Option Sales Tax. Either of these could be a huge difference for places like Portland, where more stuff is sold than almost anywhere else in the state — with, perhaps, the exception of places with big malls, like neighboring South Portland and Bangor.

Local sales taxes wouldn’t be implemented without controversy. Efforts to raise the minimum wage in Portland and ban single-use bags have been criticized by some in the business community as burdensome costs which could alienate shoppers, and local sales taxes would add to those.

But even 1 percent added on to sales in Portland would likely generate hundreds of thousands in revenues that could at least offset reductions in municipal revenue sharing being proposed in the governor’s biennial budget, and at best allow the city to pursue programs and services it feels are necessary without feeling quite such sharp budget pressures.

2. An Act To Legalize, Tax and Regulate Marijuana (Rep. Diane Russell, D-Portland)

This is one of four bill titles from Russell regarding marijuana generally, as well as another three bill titles clarifying or loosening restrictions on medical marijuana.

Portland voters in 2013 approved a local ordinance legalizing recreational use of marijuana, but the ordinance is in conflict with state law, which still outlaws pot use outside of certain medical circumstances.

A state law legalizing marijuana across Maine would remove that conflict (although it wouldn’t resolve conflicts with federal prohibitions of marijuana) and potentially open the door to Colorado-like pot retail stores.

Whether that’s a good thing or bad thing is a point of contention between marijuana advocates and opponents of greater distribution of the drug. But at least it would clear up ambiguity between state and local laws.

1. An Act to Restore Programs and Faculty to the University of Maine System (Russell)

Alfond also proposed a bill titled An Act to Stabilize the Faculty and Programs at the University of Southern Maine. In either case, the bills would likely make a difference in what has been a contentious dispute between the USM administration and faculty over the elimination of 51 faculty positions and five academic programs, cuts university President David Flanagan has insisted are necessary to overcome a $16 million budget gap for the coming fiscal year.

Flanagan has characterized the cuts as necessary to put the budget into balance moving into the future — that one-time funding boosts will only fill the gap for a year, and do nothing to prevent the same gap from reappearing the next year.

But others, like Mayor Brennan, have argued the state needs to buy time for the school to see the benefits of rebranding the university and propping up new programs, like cyber security.

However the situation at USM is resolved — whether it’s through an infusion of state money to stave off the problem or the sweeping elimination of jobs and programs — the impact will be felt throughout Greater Portland.

A woman walks across the University of Southern Maine Portland campus in October. (BDN photo by Troy R. Bennett)

A woman walks across the University of Southern Maine Portland campus in October. (BDN photo by Troy R. Bennett)

Seth Koenig

About Seth Koenig

Seth has nearly a decade of professional journalism experience and writes about the greater Portland region.