Portland will go it alone with General Assistance for asylum seekers. What will that mean?

With services over and parishioners filing out, Ornella Igirubunto, 19, remains in her pew, praying on Sunday morning in Portland. Fleeing violence in Burundi, Igirubuntu and her brother arrived in the city last fall knowing no one. The General Assistance program has allowed them to survive and go to Deering High School. (BDN photo by Troy R. Bennett)

With services over and parishioners filing out, Ornella Igirubunto, 19, remains in her pew, praying on Sunday morning in Portland. Fleeing violence in Burundi, Igirubuntu and her brother arrived in the city last fall knowing no one. The General Assistance program has allowed them to survive and go to Deering High School. (BDN photo by Troy R. Bennett)

The Portland City Council narrowly voted early this morning to go it alone and continue providing General Assistance welfare payments to current asylum seekers without help from the state, the city confirmed today.

To recap what’s now been a yearlong dispute, Gov. Paul LePage threatened to withhold state General Assistance reimbursements from municipalities using that money to benefit immigrants, triggering a lawsuit by the aggrieved municipalities over whether he could actually do that.

Sen. Amy Volk, R-Scarborough (BDN photo by Troy R. Bennett)

Sen. Amy Volk, R-Scarborough (BDN photo by Troy R. Bennett)

Earlier this month, Maine Superior Court Justice Thomas Warren ruled that, while LePage couldn’t punish the city by withholding all GA reimbursements, he could refuse to reimburse for those welfare payments made to those persons deemed ineligible for state or local benefits (a group that includes asylum seekers, according to the governor’s interpretation of the federal guidelines).

A legislative effort, led in part by Sen. Amy Volk, R-Scarborough, to expand state GA funding to cover the asylum seekers in question was approved in both the House and Senate, but not by wide enough margins to survive an all-but-certain veto by the governor.

That left communities like Portland — whose City Council had long delayed passage of its fiscal year 2016 budget, in part, because of uncertainty over what state subsidies to expect — to decide whether or not to provide General Assistance to asylum seekers with their own local tax money. Or to cut those payments off, a step Mayor Michael Brennan and many of those affected said would amount to a “humanitarian crisis” in the city.

On Thursday night, the City Council, acting on a budget amendment proposed by councilors David Brenerman and Justin Costa, allocated $2.6 million to continue covering GA payments to current asylum seekers through the coming fiscal year.

Brenerman and Costa said they cobbled together the amount using funds allocated for other things in the budget, and urged the creation of a new “Community Support Fund,” which could be filled in the future by philanthropic grants and private sector donors to offset GA costs in the future.

“We hope that our amendment will help address this issue in the most cost effective and fiscally responsible way,” Brenerman said in a statement. “It creates a middle ground in addressing the issue of how do we provide assistance for asylum seekers who are escaping political persecution, civil wars, and potential personal harm or even death. We do not believe that we can turn our backs on people who have chosen to make a new life in Portland, and want to contribute to our social and economic fabric.”

So what happens now? Here are a few things to consider about Portland’s new General Assistance initiative:

The legal case isn’t over… yet.

While Justice Warren ruled LePage’s administration can’t be forced to cover GA payments to “persons who are ineligible for state or local benefits,” the city hasn’t given up hope for a better resolution to its legal case.

Gov. Paul LePage (BDN photo by Troy R. Bennett)

Gov. Paul LePage (BDN photo by Troy R. Bennett)

The Maine Municipal Association (which fought alongside Portland and Westbrook in the GA case) filed with the court earlier this week seeking additional clarifications, according to city spokeswoman Jessica Grondin.

One potential area of debate could be Warren’s ruling that LePage’s Department of Health and Human Services didn’t follow proper rulemaking procedures in deciding, somewhat abruptly, to stop reimbursing the cities for GA payments made to asylum seekers.

Can the cities force LePage to go back and follow proper rulemaking procedures — with all the required public hearings and such — and retroactively reimburse the cities for all the withheld payments until he does so?

Or can the cities fight to declare that the asylum seekers are not “persons who are ineligible for state or local benefits”?

There could still be legs to this legal battle.

The local debate isn’t over either.

There’s little time to go back into the municipal budget and make any more changes before the start of the next fiscal year on July 1, so it’s likely the Brenerman-Costa amendment will become the law of the land.

But that amendment passed by the narrowest of margins — a 5-4 vote. The Portland Press Herald’s Randy Billings reported that councilors Jill Duson, Nicholas Mavodones and Ed Suslovic voted against the measure, preferring an alternative plan to cover six months of GA payments to asylum seekers instead of the more expensive full-year plan.

Councilor Jon Hinck voted against it because he was concerned the local General Assistance effort would buck federal law, Billings wrote.

The $2.6 million amendment only covers the GA aid for a year, and only for those receiving benefits as of the end of this year.

If the courts ultimately determine LePage can refuse to provide state reimbursements for GA payments to asylum seekers, the city will have to decide whether it wants to continue the program beyond the near future and/or expand it to welcome other newcomers to the rolls.

This decision could make Portland a magnet for asylum seekers in Maine.

If the city decides to use local funds to provide General Assistance benefits to additional asylum seekers or for a longer term than a year, they’ll be looking at a bigger number than $2.6 million.

If Portland is the only municipality in the state that takes the step of propping up GA for asylum seekers without state help — even if the current plan only covers those receiving the benefits currently — it seems natural that asylum seekers currently in places like Lewiston would move to Portland.

The state’s largest city could be Maine’s only oasis for those fleeing persecution in other countries.

If that happens, it will test the City Council’s patience. In the short term, that could place pressure on the city to expand its program to cover welfare for new asylum seekers, and the city may start to hear grumbling among some constituents that it’s not worth the cost, or that the GA initiative is crowding out other valuable programs.

But asylum seekers also represent a significant pipeline of young, family-oriented entrepreneurs for the city. That’s an important pipeline to have in a state that’s statistically the oldest in the nation, where members of the Baby Boomer generation are retiring faster than the rest of the Maine population can replace them in the work force.

Portland could look at its local GA effort as effectively a seed grant program: Help new, young residents get on their feet, then reap the population and economic benefits as they start families and businesses.

(Note: Thanks to Councilor Costa and reader Steven Scharf for pointing out that the recently approved $2.6 million GA program would cover only those asylum seekers receiving benefits as of June 30, an aspect of the proposal I hadn’t made clear in the first draft of my post.)

Aimee Nyirakanyana, owner of Ebenezer African Grocery Store in Portland, said most of her customers use General Assistance funds to make purchases. Nyirakanyana, originally from Rwanda, said general assistance vouchers enabled her to settle here and become an entrepreneur. (BDN photo by Troy R. Bennett)

Aimee Nyirakanyana, owner of Ebenezer African Grocery Store in Portland, said most of her customers use General Assistance funds to make purchases. Nyirakanyana, originally from Rwanda, said general assistance vouchers enabled her to settle here and become an entrepreneur. (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.