AUGUSTA – Legislation limiting school employee criminal background checks to only new hires won final approval in the Senate on Tuesday by a narrow 18-16 vote. Despite the victory, supporters reluctantly conceded they did not have the votes needed to override a promised veto of the bill by Gov. John E. Baldacci.

The Senate action on LD 890 Tuesday followed last week’s affirmative 75-54 vote in the House. Those two tallies all but guarantee the governor’s veto will be sustained since it requires two-thirds of the membership present in both houses to overturn a veto.

Still, some proponents had hoped wider margins would emerge in both houses, brightening the prospects for a significant challenge to the governor.

“Well, not according to the vote we took this morning,” said Sen. Carol Weston, R-Montville. “They just don’t have them in the Senate – if people are actually voting their conscience. I hope we can finally close this issue this session.”

Rep. Glenn A. Cummings, D-Portland, once thought a veto override was within reach. The former teacher, who is still employed in the educational field, was a moving force behind the success of the new hires bill in the Legislature as House chairman of the Education Committee. On Tuesday, Cummings conceded there was little, if no, hope that a veto could be overturned.

“I think the numbers are certainly marginal in the Senate at best and it very much underscores the difficulty posed by a veto,” he said, “The governor is clearly going to stand by his word on the veto. He’s been consistent ever since he came out a month and a half ago saying he would not support new hires’ [fingerprinting]. The interest in overriding that veto in the Senate is clearly limited, and even here in the House we’re probably 15 votes short of what it would take to override.”

Officials with the Maine Education Association estimate about 80 percent of Maine’s teachers have already complied with the state’s phased-in 1999 law, leaving around 4,000 who still must be fingerprinted and reviewed. Those opposing the current law estimate that about 65 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. Another 120 or more may have abandoned educational jobs without bothering to publicly denounce the policy, according to some teachers opposed to the fingerprinting law. Baldacci and other proponents maintain current law is the only way to ensure sexual predators will be kept out of Maine schools.

Weston agreed, saying existing law makes it clear that students and their parents deserve to know whether teachers have a criminal history or not.

“There was no wavering for me, and I can’t truly understand anyone not wanting to protect their children when we mandate education,” she said.

But Cummings said current law does not always result in a complete picture of a charge that may have been lodged against a teacher years ago. The background check information, which opponents of the law say can sometimes be misleading, circulates only among a handful of key state officials, according to the governor, who is also in that loop. Cummings said it was clear to legislators that Baldacci “has information that we don’t.”

“That is in itself a frustrating piece, yet I think the release of that information would precipitate more questions than answers,” Cummings said. “So we are, unfortunately, trapped in a very difficult situation. But I have to respect the governor’s position on this, given that he does have the commissioner of education giving him her opinion based on the numbers she has.”