What to expect from Janet Mills’ first two-year budget proposal

Mills promised in her campaign she wouldn’t raise taxes. Progressives have only pushed her a bit so far. The Maine Center for Economic Policy released a budget framework calling for spending $782 million more over two years with a $518 million tax increase Mills ruled out that would be paid by people who earn more than $100,000.

The framework is aggressive, but it illustrated the fiscal hurdles that lawmakers will have to jump to fund three key initiatives — $320 million to fund a never-met threshold of 55 percent of essential K-12 education costs, $219 million to restore municipal revenue sharing and $110 million for Medicaid expansion.

Click here to read the full story, published February 7, 2019, in the Bangor Daily News.