AUGUSTA – Maine broadcasters received a big break Wednesday from state lawmakers who overrode Gov. Angus S. King’s veto of a bill exempting television stations from sales taxes on equipment purchases.

But LD 457 was the only vetoed bill that was resurrected by the Legislature. Efforts to override three other measures dealing with the expansion of mental health insurance coverage, the extension of unemployment benefits to part-time workers, and a bill that would allow the daughter of a murdered Bangor taxi cab driver to sue the state, all failed.

The successful override vote, which required two-thirds approval by legislators present in both houses, passed 109-30 in the House and 28-7 in the Senate. It was only the second time in nearly eight years that the Legislature mustered enough votes to enact legislation over the objections of the governor.

Under the bill’s provisions, broadcasters would not have to pay a 5 percent sales tax on expensive equipment purchases such as new towers and transmitters. King estimated the loss to the state’s General Fund from those sales taxes at between $1.1 million and $2 million. Broadcasting lobbyist Suzanne Goucher disputed those figures which she said were actually closer to $650,000.

At the end of the debate, lawmakers seemed to be more concerned about fairness in the application of state tax policy than the loss of tax revenues which won’t be felt until the next budget cycle begins on July 1, 2003. Goucher said broadcasters simply wanted tax parity with the state’s newspapers which are exempted from the sales tax on major purchases such as printing presses.

“All we were saying was level the playing field and give us the same tax break everybody else gets,” Goucher said after the vote. “And they agreed.”

In explaining his objections to the bill that he vetoed last week, King argued that LD 457 went far beyond its original intent which was to assist television stations in complying with conversion to digital signals as mandated by the Federal Communications Commission. The governor maintained the legislation could be expanded to apply to all transmitting equipment used not only by television stations, but cable television companies and radio stations as well. He was supported by a few lawmakers like Rep. Joseph Brannigan, D-Portland, who argued the legislation contained too many conflicting pieces of information on revenues losses.

“Why can’t we leave this for the next Legislature who will have to foot the bill and when there will be a chance to get this confusion to be taken care of?” he asked. “I think we should stick with the governor’s veto on this one.”

On other veto votes, the House failed to reach the necessary two-thirds majority on LD 1627 which would have expanded the number of mental illnesses the state mandates be covered under health insurance policies. The lawmakers voted 86-54 in favor of an override, seven votes short of the required two-thirds.

In 1995, King signed a progressive mental health parity law that required health insurance coverage for seven specific biologically based mental illnesses in policies held by employer groups of 20 or more. In vetoing LD 1627, King said the bill proposed by the current Legislature goes “considerably beyond” the 1995 act to expand mandated coverage to 11 categories of mental illness as defined in the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The vetoed bill increased the number of potentially covered disorders to more than 40.

Those new categories included licensed clinical professional counselors in the definition of providers eligible to treat mental illness and receive reimbursement for those services. The bill also required coverage for residential treatment services and home support services. King said the addition of anxiety disorders, personality disorders, attention-deficit/disruptive behavior disorders and the substance abuse aspects of those illnesses already covered under the 1995 law inevitably will increase health insurance costs.

Rep. Marilyn Canavan, D-Waterville, reasoned that denying the mentally ill access to services covered by insurance companies in other states represented another burden for people already facing significant challenges in life.

“Discrimination against folks with mental illness is so widespread it affects our justice system, our housing policies and our employment practices and our insurance laws,” she said. “How can we possibly call it anything but discrimination when we provide comprehensive coverage for cancer, heart disease and diabetes and then contend that we just can’t afford to provide good health coverage for many mental illnesses?”

In a 77-65 vote, the House also failed to override King’s veto on LD 1258 which would have extended unemployment benefits to part-time workers. Late Wednesday, members of the House were still working on a second bill to provide similar benefits as LD 1258 in a way that would be acceptable to the governor.

An effort to allow the daughter of murdered Bangor taxi cab driver Donna Leen to sue the state for as much at $475,000 also failed in a 81-55 vote. Leen’s body was found in her cab in Corinth last October after she was allegedly bludgeoned to death by Carl Wayne Heath, a 21-year-old Fryeburg man with a criminal past and a history of mental health problems. The bill’s supporters maintained Heath was prematurely released from the supervision of the Department of Corrections and that Leen’s daughter, Michelle Booker of Bangor, should be allowed to bring a wrongful death suit against the state.