Political peace has its own headaches

AUGUSTA – The unique political power-sharing arrangement in the numerically deadlocked Maine Senate has in one way succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest expectation.

Turns out, that’s the problem.

A friendly fusion of Democrats and Republicans on budget issues in the Senate has been met by a similar coalition crossing party lines in the House of Representatives that is supporting alternative positions on taxes and spending.

Can all this bipartisanship be too much of a good thing?

“I don’t think there can be too much bipartisanship,” Senate President Michael Michaud, D-East Millinocket, said with a smile last week. “Clearly, there has to be better communication between the House and the Senate. That clearly has been lacking.”

Indeed, routine references to the Senate by House members as a light-workload “Muffin Club” have taken on a more derisive tone since the two chambers parted ways in late March over fiscal priorities.

But in the Senate, House complaints generally draw shrugs.

Senate Republican leader Mary Small of Bath, the producer of annual stage shows parodying political life in the capital, says her next extravaganza may be an adaptation of “West Side Story” pitting House and Senate members against one another as Sharks and Jets.

Perhaps to make the point that interparty cooperation still reigns in the Senate, the GOP lyricist has already begun sounding out the House caucus to see if it contains any reliable singers.

The Senate found itself in uncharted territory after last November’s voting when two recounts confirmed that the 35-member chamber would have no standing majority. Instead, the Senate would be sworn in with 17 Democrats, 17 Republicans and a single unenrolled or independent member.

A few days before the new Legislature convened in December, the ranking Democrat and Republican in the Senate joined with independent Jill Goldthwait of Bar Harbor to announce the outline of how power would be distributed.

Michaud is serving as Senate president for the first year of the current two-year session while Republican Richard Bennett of Norway holds the title of Senate president pro tem.

Bennett has assumed some duties previously performed by the president, such as serving on the 10-member Legislative Council that manages State House affairs.

At the end of this year, the two will trade jobs with Bennett becoming president and Michaud moving over as pro tem.

Committee chairmanships have been split between the two parties. The three-way deal awarded the Senate chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee to Goldthwait.

Power sharing has had some costs. Three new staff positions were created and Senate spending is expected to increase by more than $140,000 a year during the two-year session.

And if heightened cooperation between the two parties helped lead to the still pending Senate budget package, that has caused friction not only with the Democrat-dominated House but also with Goldthwait, who was left out of the loop when the Democrat-Republican no-tax compromise was struck.

Nonetheless, most senators give their experiment high grades.

“See how smooth the sessions are going,” says Republican Sen. Richard Kneeland of Easton, who moved to the Senate this session after four terms in the House. “I kind of enjoy it. Things move quickly.”

Discussions during morning meetings of Senate leaders and committee chairmen, both Democrat and Republican, allow noncontroversial items to be green-lighted while contentious matters can be scheduled for later debate.

“We have differences of opinion on issues, but there haven’t been a lot of procedural spats,” Bennett said.

Democratic Sen. John Martin of Eagle Lake, the longtime House speaker serving his first Senate term, suggests the proper mark for now might be incomplete.

“In a way, it’s too early to tell. It’s gone fine so far,” Martin said, noting a chamberwide sense that working together is working. “But we really haven’t gotten to the important issues,” such as final voting on a budget, he added.

Goldthwait, who is philosophically inclined toward proportional representation anyway, said some “rough spots” in the mechanics of power sharing were all but inevitable, “but for the most part it’s working reasonably well.”

Given the 17-17-1 split, Goldthwait would still hold a decisive vote on matters breaking down precisely along party lines. But that hasn’t happened often.

“I don’t expect to be in that position a whole lot,” she said.