Gov. Janet Mills highlighted areas of agreement on budget issues while defending her record on the COVID-19 pandemic in her State of the State address on Thursday that came ahead of a 2022 reelection campaign with former Gov. Paul LePage.
The Democratic governor did not mention her likely Republican opponent by name in her hour-long address to lawmakers on Thursday. But she did contrast their tenures, emphasize areas of bipartisan agreement and join other governors in calling for more normalcy.
Here are four key moments from her speech.
Highlighting agreement with Republicans
Mills’ biggest policy announcement of the night was her support for a Republican plan to return half of Maine’s more than $800 million budget surplus to the taxpayers, which could enable checks of roughly $500 each for more than 800,000 Mainers.
“Many of my friends on the other side of the aisle, like Senate Minority Leader Jeff Timberlake (of Turner) and House budget lead (Rep.) Sawin Millett (of Waterford) — have called for a return of half the surplus to Maine people through direct checks,” Mills said. “I think they’re right.”
She later shouted out Assistant Senate Minority Leader Matt Pouliot, R-Augusta, for his bill to expand the Maine Opportunity Tax Credit, which offers student debt relief to certain college graduates. The governor announced Thursday that she would support funding a significant expansion of the tax credit to make all students who graduate with debt eligible for up to $25,000 in relief regardless of their college major or career path.
Pouliot and other leaders were cautiously favorable of those programs but insisted they would need to see the supplemental budget bill and how spending would be fully allocated before getting on board. And they reiterated the money available to Mills is due to federal spending, not her governance.
“It’s a lot easier to sound like you’re doing something when the federal government sends you billions of dollars to be able to allocate out to these different ideas that you have,” Pouliot said. “But the reality is we need structural changes in Maine.”
The ‘previous administration’
Mills took unsubtle swipes at LePage, beginning with a series of headlines from 2015 and 2018 that highlighted labor shortages when the former governor was in office.
She also reminded the Legislature that she had signed an executive order expanding Medicaid on her first day in office after LePage balked at doing so during his final year in office despite the results of a 2017 referendum and highlighted a $15 million bond for senior housing she signed early in her tenure, noting it was “never released by the previous administration.”
Continued economic challenges can be a problem for any incumbent governor, and Republicans across the U.S. have looked to link Democrats to rising inflation. But running against her predecessor puts Mills in a unique position to compare her record directly with that of LePage — even if she resists saying his name.
LePage responded to Mills’ address Thursday night by criticizing Mills over Maine’s unemployment rate and saying she was propping up the economy with “funny money.”
“However, no debt-fueled, funny money from Washington, D.C., can paper over Janet Mills’ failure to manage Maine’s economy,” he said.
Defending the vaccine mandate
The Democratic governor forcefully defended the state’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers, which has drawn sharp criticism from Republicans. But Mills listed a long list of organizations that support the mandate while noting it had been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, along with a similar federal mandate.
“They can’t all be wrong,” she said.
Republicans have faulted the mandate for Maine’s ongoing health care staffing struggles. Several nursing homes closed this fall after it went into effect, although industry leaders pointed to pandemic burnout as the greater staffing challenge.
Their dislike was obvious as lines about vaccine rates and an acknowledgment to Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Director Nirav Shah received chilly receptions. Rep. Joshua Morris, R-Turner, pushed Mills for a testing option for health care workers, saying the governor should defer to those workers’ wishes “rather than lecturing them” with hospitals struggling with staff.
The mandate could become a significant issue in the 2022 gubernatorial campaign, as LePage said he would repeal it on his first day in office. But Mills is prepared to defend it.
A return to normal?
Mills spoke on the return to a pre-pandemic normal at both the opening and close of the night, noting her decision to address lawmakers in person for the first time in two years reflected an “inflection point” in the state’s recovery.
Her speech came as COVID-19 hospitalizations have declined steadily for more than two weeks but still remain higher than any time prior to November. Mills reiterated a position she has maintained throughout the winter surge that emergency restrictions from early in the pandemic would not return, instead highlighting the importance of continued vaccinations and testing.
“Today, we focus not on telling people what they cannot do. We focus on telling people what they can and should do,” she said.