Maine lawmakers settle on 2-year budget for just less than the $8 billion Mills proposed

Early in her tenure, she doubled down on a 2018 campaign pledge not to raise taxes in her first budget proposal. It meant that there would not be enough money to meet statutory goals of funding 55 percent of essential school costs and giving 5 percent of state tax revenue to cities and towns, though Democrats took votes on largely symbolic measures to do so.

In a statement, Garrett Martin, the executive director of the progressive Maine Center for Economic Policy, which proposed $518 million in tax hikes for higher earners in January, said the budget’s “failure to un-rig our tax code means these core commitments will remain underfunded.”

Click here to read the full story, first published on June 12, 2019, in the Bangor Daily News.