Leaders support violence initiative Proposal exceeds budget by millions

AUGUSTA – Legislative leaders rallied around a new initiative Wednesday they promised would provide the most significant infusion of state resources into domestic violence programs since 1986.

The $4.8 million proposal far exceeds the $500,000 Gov. Angus S. King has allocated for domestic violence programs in his $5.5 billion state budget.

House Majority Leader Pat Colwell is the lead sponsor of the Violence Intervention and Prevention Act, a bill that would expand services to domestic assault victims by pumping $2.5 million into prevention, $1.1 million in direct services to victims and $1.2 million to meet infrastructure and capital needs of associated support agencies.

Colwell, a Gardiner Democrat, credited the governor with boldly drawing attention to domestic violence cases a year ago during his State of the State address when he used empty chairs in the House balcony to represent women who had died at the hands of their abusers.

“Last January, Governor King proclaimed violence against women and children ‘public enemy number one,'” Colwell said. “In May, Chief Justice Daniel Wathen began his keynote address at the Attorney General’s Conference on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault with this question: ‘We are doing some things now to protect people and prevent violence – how can we do them better and more effectively?’ Now is the time for the Legislature to answer this question.”

But what Colwell either couldn’t answer or wasn’t prepared to reveal was exactly where proponents of the legislation would find the extra $4.3 million to fund the ambitious initiative. King’s budget allocates most available revenues to local reimbursement for education and maintaining tax cuts approved by two previous Legislatures. The governor has proposed closing an estimated $253 million structural gap in the two-year budget by siphoning off tobacco settlement funds pegged for illness-prevention programs, leaving little money available for programs such as domestic violence.

Colwell said “everything is on the table” for discussion as lawmakers prepare to take King’s budget apart to identify funding for the program.

“The unseen costs of allowing domestic violence and sexual assault problems to continue raging like a fire out there is evidence that this is not only the right thing to do in terms of human investment, but it’s the right thing to do in terms of financial investment because we’re already paying these costs,” he said. “Whether it’s lost productivity in the workplace or the loss of human potential in the children who grow up lacking the self-esteem to pursue their careers. The loss is already there.”

John Ripley, spokesman for King, said the proposed budget provides money for new prosecutors, along with $3.3 million to help keep track of domestic offenders and to create a domestic violence coordinator, one of the few new programs in the tax and spending package.

“The governor would love to appropriate $5 million if the resources were there, but there is a new era of restrained resources and everyone has to cut back a bit,” Ripley said.

There was no lack of state officials among proponents of the domestic violence bill gathered Wednesday. Former House speaker and now state Sen. John L. Martin, D-Eagle Lake, was among the crowd gathered in the Hall of Flags, along with former House speaker and recently elected Maine Attorney General Steve Rowe. House Speaker Michael V. Saxl, D-Portland, was also on hand and credited by Colwell as having undertaken the “heavy lifting” in identifying new revenues for domestic violence programs during his first four years in the House.

But more importantly, Colwell also attracted significant Republican support for the bill in the House and the Senate. Senate Republican Leader Mary Small of Bath said the proposal would greatly assist domestic violence education programs at the school level where young bullies have been known to mature into adult abusers.

“Currently the state funds just 25 sexual assault or domestic violence educators to work statewide,” Small said. “Yet there are 831 schools, kindergarten through grade 12, in the state. There’s just one educator for every 33 schools in Maine. They cannot begin to cover every school adequately.”

The hour-long press conference also featured a number of testimonials from domestic abuse survivors and crisis intervention volunteers, including Rachel Fried, an articulate 16-year-old from Portland who volunteers as a peer educator in the Young Adult Abuse Prevention Program. Incidents of sexual harassment take place daily in the school environment, she said, and state officials must do more to reverse negative stereotyping that relies on violence as a means to remedy disputes.

“I myself could become a victim of domestic violence,” Fried said. “I don’t want to be victimized. The governor says that domestic violence is public enemy number one. I agree with him. But I think that fighting our public enemy requires a real public commitment.”