2025 Legislative Priorities
MECEP’s legislative priorities in 2025 aim to advance economic justice and opportunity, including racial equity. We want to bring fairness and accountability to the tax code, ensure Mainers can find and afford health care and child care, and build a budget that helps families who need it most.
A Fair Budget
MECEP will continue to play a leadership role in understanding the major elements, informing lawmakers and the public, and providing analysis on need for investments in crucial areas. MECEP’s priorities include:
- Reversing the cost-of-living cuts to health care providers
- Restoring funding for child care workers and Head Start
- Stopping reductions in public sector staffing levels
- Maintaining investments in our safety net and public health infrastructure
- Supporting the Governor’s push to maintain funding for the state’s share of education costs, free school meals, and making the Free Community College program permanent
- Fighting for the inclusion of progressive revenue policies (outlined below) that will allow the reversal of the proposed cuts as well as additional investments in our communities proposed by the legislature
Learn more:
MECEP blog: Governor Mills’ budget proposal: key takeaways and recommendations
Revenue-Raising Tax Fairness Proposals
Maine can avoid harmful reductions that result in lower wages for already underpaid and undervalued workers by asking the wealthiest residents to pay their fair share in taxes. Specific options include:
- Creating a “millionaire’s tax” to raise over $200 million next biennium
- Raising the real estate transfer tax on higher priced homes to raise tens of millions of dollars per year
- Increasing the corporate income tax to raise $35 million per year
- Ending ineffective subsidies for wealthy corporations to raise over $100 million dollars per year
- Increasing taxes on capital gains to raise almost $120 million per year
- Several proposals around property taxes, that would allow the state and municipalities to treat family homesteads different from mansions
Learn more:
MECEP explainer: Tax Fairness
MECEP brief: Tax Policy Solutions for 2025 and Beyond
Affordable and Accessible Child Care
High quality child care is essential for preparing children for school and for allowing young parents to stay in the labor force. Yet early childhood educators are paid low wages, and the cost of child care is out of reach for many working families. Senate President Daughtry is introducing a bill to secure and build on recent investments to expand access to the state’s child care affordability program and to enhance child care professionals’ wages to help retain them in this critical field.
Learn more:
MECEP stories: Bouncing Bubbles Child Care | Creative Play Childcare | Youth and Family Outreach
Investments in Direct Care Workers who Support Older and Disabled Mainers
Direct care professionals who provide skilled supports to older and disabled Mainers remain undervalued and in short supply. Despite some progress in recent years, the failure to adequately compensate these workers contributes to a widening gap between the care people across our state need and what’s available. Speaker Fecteau has introduced a bill to raise the labor reimbursement rate to 140% percent of the minimum wage so these workers can earn a more competitive wage and people can get care when they need it most.
Learn more:
MECEP report: The High Cost of Undervaluing Direct Care Work
MECEP report: Closing the Gap: Maine’s Direct Care Shortage and Solutions to Fix It
Increased Dependent Tax Credit for Families with Young Children
We can double the amount delivered through the Dependent Exemption Tax Credit for families with children or dependent adults while keeping the total cost of the program revenue neutral by better targeting the credit to working- and middle-class families.
Learn more:
MECEP explainer: The Child Tax Credit
Accountability for Multinational Corporations
We can pass laws in Maine that help level the playing field for local grocery stores, making sure there is more competition for better prices when Mainers go shopping for food. We can also require more information from companies that receive corporate subsidies, making it easier for the public and the legislature to determine which ones are working and which ones need to go.
Learn more:
MECEP brief: Are Tax Giveaways Worth the Money?
Equal Rights for Farmworkers
For nearly a century, farmworkers in Maine have been explicitly excluded from some of the most basic labor laws, including minimum wage. It is a legacy rooted in racism and today means agricultural workers are far more likely to live in poverty. The people who power our agricultural economy deserve the same rights as everyone else. Maine needs to include these workers in our minimum wage and labor protection laws.
Learn more:
MECEP explainer: Farmworker Rights
MECEP news clip: Minimum wage for Maine farmworkers
MECEP blog: Farmworkers deserve the same rights as all workers
Access to Health Care for Immigrants
Mainers’ immigration status shouldn’t get in the way of receiving care when they get sick. MECEP supports efforts to remove restrictions in the MaineCare program that bar access to certain immigrant groups. This year Senator Talbot Ross will introduce legislation to remove these restrictions for older Mainers and those with certain major health conditions.
Learn more:
MECEP blog: Worker wins and setbacks in the 2023 legislative sessions
Tribal Sovereignty
MECEP stands with the Wabanaki Nations’ call to reform the 1980 Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act and the Maine Implementing Act which limit their inherent rights to self-govern. When the Wabanaki Nations have the tools they need to thrive, all who live within Maine borders benefit.
Learn more:
MECEP explainer: Tribal Sovereignty
MECEP news clip: Tribal sovereignty in Maine *featuring Penobscot National Ambassador and MECEP board member Maulian Bryant
Stronger Worker Protections
We can ensure fair work is rewarded with fair pay by passing bills that push back against gender- and race-based disparities in pay and ensure workers are not deprived of overtime pay or reporting pay when asked to spend more time away from their families and their lives.
Learn more:
MECEP report: State of Working Maine 2024: Gains and Gaps in a Strong Economy
