AUGUSTA – After a chaotic Wednesday night that found the Maine Senate grappling with repealing the state’s school fingerprinting law, the senators apparently had a change of heart Thursday and signed on to a House version of the bill that limits criminal background checks to new hires only.

LD 890 now faces a final vote in each chamber and a promised veto by Gov. John E. Baldacci who believes Maine children are best served by the current law. Despite intensive lobbying by lawmakers and others, the governor said Thursday he will not negotiate his veto pledge.

“We’re going to stay right where we are on this one,” Baldacci said Thursday night.

On Wednesday, the Senate took up LD 890, the new hires bill, and LD 653, a bill that would repeal the state’s mandatory fingerprinting policy for school employees. With 32 members present, the Senate tied twice on the repeal measure before postponing further action. The lawmakers then went on to reject the new-hires bill 20-12 after that bill had been approved earlier in the House 75-54.

But Thursday morning, with no debate, Sen. Richard Bennett, R-Norway, moved to kill the repeal bill and the motion was accepted without a roll call vote.

Meanwhile, in the House, lawmakers refused to reconsider their vote on the new-hires bill. Later in the day, the Senate capitulated and reversed its earlier stand by voting 19-16 in favor of that measure.

The close votes in the House and Senate almost certainly assure the governor his veto will be sustained. It requires two-thirds of the membership present in both houses to override a governor’s veto.

Officials with the Maine Education Association estimate about 80 percent of Maine’s teachers already have complied with the state’s phased-in 1999 law, leaving about 4,000 teachers who still must be fingerprinted. The teachers’ union estimates that 45 teachers have left the profession as a matter of conscience rather than submit to a law viewed by many as professionally demeaning and personally humiliating. Baldacci and other proponents maintain that current law is the only way to ensure sexual predators will be kept out of Maine schools.