Special session won’t be called, Baldacci says

PORTLAND – A month after signaling the administration would consider calling a special legislative session this summer to resolve differences over stalled bond and tax relief proposals, Gov. John E. Baldacci said Wednesday no such meeting is likely to happen.

“I’m not planning on a special session unless there’s a bipartisan agreement on what’s going to happen,” the governor told a breakfast meeting of Portland-area business representatives.

A consensus tax relief plan to eliminate the need for proponents to support Question 1, the school funding referendum on the June 8 ballot, or to compete against a property tax cap proposal on the November ballot, eluded the Legislature before it adjourned last month.

Lawmakers also were unable to craft a bond proposal that could attract the necessary two-thirds support in the House and Senate.

Never one to give up on apparently lost causes, Baldacci closed the legislative session by saying he would recall the lawmakers – possibly in August – to devise a plan for about $90 million in new bonding and a tax relief plan that would satisfy the concerns of many legislators.

Now those plans have been abandoned as legislative campaigns for the House and Senate kick into gear for the summer.

“There’s no plans at this time by myself to have the Legislature come back in unless there’s a bipartisan agreement,” Baldacci said. “It will probably be sometime in January before anybody begins to look at these issues.”

Dana Connors, president of the Maine Chamber of Commerce and a veteran presence in the State House, said Wednesday that this year’s legislative session had been one of the most disagreeable in recent years.

With lawmakers dividing over health care and constitutional spending caps, and legislators even taking each other to court over special session pay, Connors did not see even the glimmer of a breakthrough on highly charged issues like tax relief and bonds.

“If you take a chapter out of the book of the last session, then one wouldn’t look for much hope or optimism that [a bipartisan agreement] would be forthcoming,” he said.

But he added that disagreements happen in politics and that he couldn’t blame either party in particular for what happened.

Blame, as always, is for someone else to assign. From House Speaker Pat Colwell’s perspective, the responsibility for a lack of agreement on bonds and tax reform can be placed squarely on the Republicans’ doorstep.

“Frankly, the Republicans withheld all of their votes on the bond package that we voted on,” said the Gardiner Democrat. “And they withheld all their votes on the property tax relief measure we voted on in the House. If they’re interested in getting something done, we’re interested in coming in – but it doesn’t appear that they are.”

Senate Republican Leader Paul Davis of Sangerville said he never favored the Democratic tax proposal or bond package and wouldn’t miss not being in a special session in August.

“I don’t see any point in it,” he said. “I don’t see why we can’t do in January what we could do now. Why do we need a special session?”