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AUGUSTA Democrats in Maines Legislature are moving to pass a baseline state budget by the end of next week to prevent a possible government shutdown this summer a move that would still leave room for future debates over whether to cut taxes or increase spending amid historically high revenues and surpluses.

The Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee announced Thursday that they plan to divide Gov. Janet Mills $10.3 billion two-year budget proposal into two separate bills. The first bill would include the baseline budget for each existing program and a subset of new spending proposals, which would essentially ensure existing services and programs carry forward beyond July 1. Details of what would be included in the second budget bill are not yet known.

The announcement from the Democratic co-chairs of the committee shows the party is intent on passing a basic operating budget before the end of next week, either with or without Republican support, to avoid the brinksmanship of a possible government shutdown like the one that occurred in 2017 under Republican Gov. Paul LePage.

Sen. Peggy Rotundo, D-Lewiston, said in a written statement that the baseline budget would continue funding commitments for education, property tax relief and health care. The second budget bill would include any new spending initiatives from legislators and the governor.

Rotundo said the approach would provide stability to businesses and residents.

Passing a targeted continuing services budget now will provide our families, schools, municipalities and business community with the stability they deserve, building on the bipartisan work Democrats and Republicans continue to do on this Committee, Rotundo said. It will also give the Legislature the space and time to continue working in a collaborative and productive manner on any new initiatives and programs in the coming months.

Republicans leaders in the House and Senate did not respond to interview request about whether they support the approach announced the Democratic co-chairs.

Spokespeople for Mills did not immediately respond to questions about the announcement.

Passing a budget before next week could be done with a simply majority, which the Democrats have in both the House and Senate. Such a budget would take effect 90 days after passage, so it would need to be done by April 1 to ensure the funding of government operations when the next fiscal year begins on July 1.

Budget approval after April 1 would require the support of two-thirds of the Legislature to avoid a shutdown. Reaching that threshold would allow the budget to take effect immediately after the Legislature adjourns.

Republicans, who have made tax cuts a top priority this session, have become increasingly concerned that Democrats would use their majority to push through a partisan budget.

Senate Minority Leader Trey Stewart, R-Presque Isle, said Tuesday that all signs were pointing towards Democrats passing a majority budget, saying that such a move would be a tremendous blow to the institution that is the Legislature and the process we are supposed to be utilizing.

The move to divide the budget has recent precedent. Democrats passed a majority budget during the pandemic, while lawmakers continued working on a change package to allocate additional revenues that ultimately won bipartisan support.

The 131st Legislature session began with a confrontation over a winter heating and energy relief plan, which included a round of $450 checks to certain taxpayers. That bill was negotiated by income leaders from both parties with the governor before lawmakers were seated, but was delayed when Senate Republicans withheld support, citing a lack of a public hearing.

After that hearing was held, a few Republicans joined Democrats to approve the bill, without any changed.

While the bill passed, it was seen as a harbinger of the biennial budget negotiations that are now taking place.

Mills, meanwhile, has said she would like to provide stability to those in the state and avoid drama, especially any threat of a government shutdown. She is facing calls from her own party to increase spending on services and programs, but she has expressed an interest in working with Republicans on a bipartisan budget. She has also ruled out any tax increases.

Mills convened a meeting of legislative leaders and budget negotiators from both parties in each chamber on Tuesday to discuss the status of budget talks.

Lawmakers were tightlipped about what was discussed in that meeting, with some joking that they were sworn to secrecy.

Rep. Sawin Millett, R-Waterford, suggested there was at least some agreement about future steps.

I think we made a lot of progress in terms of agreeing to work together, rather than separating, said Millett, a longtime lawmaker and the lead Republican on the budget-writing committee. The parties kind of outlined the first step and then well talk about the next step and keep going.

Mills was also optimistic, according to a spokesperson.

The Governor felt the meeting was positive and productive, and she appreciated the engagement from leaders of both parties and both houses, Goodman said. She will continue to work with them in the coming days to discuss potential avenues to move the budget forward.

This story will be updated.

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Democrats move to pass baseline budget to prevent chance of state ... - Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel

Wisconsin reverted to a draconian anti-abortion law from 1849 after Roe was dismantled.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) and Democratic lawmakers in the state legislature introduced a bill earlier this week that would restore abortion rights in Wisconsin to where they stood before the overturn of Roe v. Wade last summer.

After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to overturn Roe, several states reverted back to abortion statutes that were in place prior to that ruling. For Wisconsin, that meant a law passed in 1849 just one year after the state was established that almost completely bans abortion.

The law only allows abortions in the state prior to the ambiguous stage of quickening (the time when a fetus can be felt moving), and makes no exception for rape or incest. A person can only get an abortion after that point if a pregnancy threatens their life.

The bill that Democrats and Evers introduced on Tuesday would essentially repeal the 1849 statute and return abortion rights precedents to where they were in Wisconsin up until last year.

Im proud to join Legislative Democrats in continuing our fight to restore access to reproductive freedom in Wisconsin with a clean repeal our states 1849-era criminal abortion ban, Evers said about the bill.

Since the end of Roe v. Wade last summer, an abortion statute from 1849 has banned nearly all abortions in Wisconsin.

Rep. Lisa Subeck (D), the sponsor of the state Assembly version of the bill, celebrated the legislation for restoring peoples reproductive rights and ability to choose for themselves, with their doctors, the path that is right for them.

Every pregnancy and every situation is different, Subeck said. We believe in the rights of individuals to make our own reproductive health care decisions, in consultation with our families, our physicians, those we choose to involve, but without interference from politicians.

The bill, though lauded by Democrats, has almost zero chance of passing the Republican-controlled legislature, which is dominated by anti-abortion lawmakers. Although Evers and other statewide officials have been elected in two straight election campaigns, Republicans control nearly two-thirds of the seats in both the state Senate and state Assembly due to gerrymandered districts they drew in 2011 and 2021.

Republicans, perhaps recognizing that most of the states voters oppose keeping the 1849 law intact, have tried but so far failed to come up with a consensus on how to change it. A bill they introduced last week would add exceptions for rape and incest, and clarify definitions for when a persons life is at risk, but would keep other provisions of the law untouched.

In a Marquette University Law School poll from last fall, Wisconinites were asked whether they favored the overturn of Roe v. Wade. A majority (55 percent) said they opposed the action by the Supreme Court, while just over a third of residents in the state (37 percent) said they were in favor of it.

Evers recognized that Republicans would oppose the bill, in spite of the fact that most Wisconsinites would likely back the Democrats proposal.

We have a bill. Lets have a debate, the governor said. Republicans have their bill; the Democrats have their bill. The people of Wisconsin should be able to hear a debate about this issue. Not silence.

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Democrats in Wisconsin Introduce Bill to Restore Abortion Rights in ... - Truthout

Republicans are nearly four months into being in the minority in the Michigan Senate for the first time in about 40 years, and Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt of Van Buren County does not like how the year has started.

Ive been fairly disappointed on the way they just jammed through these partisan, left-wing progressive agenda items on their list, says Nesbitt. I was hopeful we could govern in the middle 70% and figure out broad bipartisan compromises.

He says majority Democrats have passed bills that he says arent good economically.

Even some of the tax reform issues that could have gotten bipartisan compromises, they shoved in with providing a half-billion-dollars a year in corporate welfare to some profitable, multi-national corporations, so Ive been disappointed on that.

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Nesbitt is in his second and final term in the Senate and was named the Republican leader after the November election.

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NAPA A Napa mechanic who was sentenced to nine years in federal prison earlier this month for plotting to bomb the Democrats Sacramento headquarters in retaliation for the election loss of President Donald Trump pleaded no contest to state charges on Thursday including possession of illegal firearms and destructive devices.

Ian Benjamin Rogers entered his plea in accordance with a plea agreement in Napa County Superior Court during a brief hearing on Thursday morning. The terms of the plea agreement were not immediately disclosed.

Rogers had been charged with twenty-eight counts of possessing destructive devices and illegal weapons in a complaint filed in January 2021. On Thursday, he pleaded no contest to four of those charges: two counts of possession of a destructive device, one count of conversion of a firearm to a machine gun and one count of owning an unregistered assault weapon. He also pleaded no contest to one new charge, conspiracy.

The remaining counts were dismissed. Rogers is scheduled to be sentenced on April 21.

Rogers pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiracy to destroy a building by fire or explosive in May and was sentenced to nine years in prison earlier this month. A former employee, Jarrod Copeland, was charged as Rogers co-conspirator and sentenced to four and a half years in prison. Copeland did not face separate state charges and a judge indicated that hed provided assistance to the investigation.

Rogers owned British Auto Repair of the Napa Valley for years before his arrest. After the 2020 election, federal authorities received a tip that Rogers, who was angry about the outcome of the election, was plotting violence against political targets. Rogers was affiliated with the Three Percenter movement, which federal prosecutors characterize as an anti-government organization.

Federal law enforcement agents raided Rogers home and business in January 2021 and seized nearly 50 guns, including illegal automatic weapons, and five pipe bombs in Rogers possession.

Numerous text messages between Rogers and Copeland released by prosecutors showed them plotting to attack the Democrats, the governors mansion, and the offices of Facebook and Twitter.

Rogers has said that the text messages were sent when he was angry and drunk but he never seriously intended to act on them. During his sentencing hearing earlier this month, Rogers said that he regretted purchasing illegal weapons and building pipe bombs.

He said that after the 2020 election, many Americans felt disenfranchised due to the widespread notion spread by Trump that the Democrats had committed fraud to cost him the presidency. Numerous courts have found Trumps claims of election fraud to be unfounded.

I said a lot of silly, stupid things when sitting at home intoxicated, Rogers said. I can assure you I never seriously meant them.

While Rogers and Copeland had discussed a variety of potential targets, their first target was intended to be the state headquarters of the Democratic Party in Sacramento.

During Rogers federal sentencing hearing, California Democratic Party Chair Rusty Hicks addressed the court and said that Rogers had impacted the party through the fear and distress he caused the roughly 20 employees and volunteers who work at the party headquarters regularly, the financial burden of increased security, and the chilling effect it had caused for party members who wish to participate in the Democratic process.

Prosecutors previously connected both Rogers and Copeland to a faction of the Three Percenter movement called the Three Percent United Patriots, a nationwide group founded in Colorado. Prosecutors have said that Three Percenters are an extremist group that believes in armed rebellion against the federal government.

Court documents alleged that Copeland sought assistance in the plan from other Three Percenters as well as the extremist group the Proud Boys. Both the Three Percenters and the Proud Boys were among the groups who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

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For more than a decade, Western Michigans food and commercial workers union has been in a defensive crouch after Republicans made union membership optional in a state once synonymous with organized labor. The union shifted from expansion and organizing to just trying to hold down attrition as workers opted out of paying their dues.

On Tuesday, the newly elected Democratic-led State Legislature gave final approval to a bill repealinga so-called right-to-work law. It was the latest in a raft of legislation out of Washington and Democratic state capitals meant to reverse the decline of organized labor and bolster Democratic political strength in elections to come.

But John Cakmakci, president of the United Food & Commercial Workers Union Local 951 in Grand Rapids, warned that a rebound would take time as the states labor apparatus relearns how to organize workers and expand. That means the payoff to Democrats could be muted for now.

Do I think we can rebound? Absolutely, said Mr. Cakmakci (pronounced Cack-mack-ee). Are we ready now? No.

Since 1947, when a conservative Congress passed legislation allowing states to adopt right-to-work legislation, 27 states and the territory of Guam have passed laws or constitutional amendments that give workers the right to opt out of their union dues, even if wages, benefits and work rules at their place of employment are set by a union contract.

The ensuing free rider problem workers getting the benefit of representation without paying dues helped lead to a sharp decline in organized labor, as unions in right-to-work states tried, often in vain, to keep existing members signed up instead of organizing new workplaces. Nationally, union membership last year dropped to 10.1 percent of all workers, half of what the rate was in 1983.

When Michigans Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, signs the new legislation in the coming days, Michigan will become the first state in nearly 60 years to roll back the right-to-work rules, fulfilling a campaign promise Democrats made to unions before they swept control of both chambers of the Legislature as well as the governors mansion in November.

No one should be surprised that we are in this moment, Ms. Whitmer said in an interview. Weve done what weve said we were going to do, and were going to continue to live up to the promise we made to people and live our values.

But to unions, the damage has been done, afterRepublicans shocked a state where labor was king and passed right-to-work rules in 2012. Indiana passed the same law that year, and Wisconsin followed suit in 2015 over boisterous protests that led to an unsuccessful recall of the Republican governor, Scott Walker.

Union membership in Michigan dropped by almost 93,000, from 16 percent to 13 percent in 2021. Certain sectors were more pronounced. Union membership among government employees dropped to 45 percent from 55 percent, and because the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that government workers cannot be compelled to join a union, Michigan Democrats can do nothing to reverse that slide. Unionization at private employers in Michigan has reached 9.1 percent. The free-rider rate the number of workers covered by union contracts but not paying union dues has tripled, to 14 percent from 3.6 percent, weakening union bargaining power and draining union treasuries.

An analysis published last year by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonpartisan clearinghouse of academic study, looked at work force trends in the five states that have passed right-to-work laws since 2011 Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, West Virginia and Kentucky. The findings: States with these laws have unionization rates that are 20 percent lower than states without such laws, while wages in right-to-work states are 7.5 percent lower than states where union dues are compulsory for unionized workplaces.

Michigan Republicans who pushed through the labor law a decade ago said crippling the unions was never a goal. They wanted to see the kind of economic dynamism that right-to-work states in the South have shown, as Mercedes, Boeing, Hyundai, B.M.W. and other manufacturers opened plants there. Jase Bolger, a Republican who was Michigan House speaker at the time, said the economic renaissance in Michigan over the past decade was now at risk.

This was never about hurting unions it was about empowering workers, Mr. Bolger said. Workers are about to have their freedom to choose stripped away from them, and Democrats are underestimating how workers will respond to that.

The real question might be how the unions respond. Michigan Democrats actually passed two separate repeals one for the private sector and one for the public sector knowing the government repeal will not withstand a challenge under a 2018 Supreme Court decision.

There are going to be people who decide not to pay their fair share, said David Hecker, president of the American Federation of Teachers local in Michigan. We know that.

Ron Bieber, the president of the Michigan A.F.L.-C.I.O., said conditions were ripe for a union comeback. Unemployment is low, the job market is tight and wages are falling behind inflation.

Theres room to grow, he said. Theres always room to grow.

But the once-mighty United Auto Workers union has been in turmoil. It has beenlocked in a contested leadership election between the longtime chief, Ray Curry, and an insurgent rank-and-file electrician, Shawn Fain, whose core complaint is that the union has grown lazy in fighting to expand and to demand better wages and benefits.

Marick Masters, a business professor and expert on labor at Wayne State University in Detroit, said the U.A.W. represented less than 20 percent of the automotive work force, which makes up only about half of its total membership. Because electric vehicles take fewer workers on final assembly, the union must organize battery plants and other parts suppliers just to tread water, he said.

The U.A.W. has to organize, Mr. Masters said. I dont know if its ready, but its track record would suggest its not.

Mr. Bieber said the unions that were fairly devastated over the past decade were in the service industry, where employees are transient, wages are low and union dues are a difficult pitch.

Mr. Cakmakci with the United Food & Commercial Workers Union in Grand Rapids said his locals membership had declined to 28,500, from 32,000 before right-to-work. Fifteen percent of workers at unionized shops are not paying their dues. Instead of organizing, union leaders spend their time keeping existing workers signed up, filing paperwork to show dues arent being coerced and answering to Republican demands on compliance.

Their long game was to bankrupt us, he said. Their short game was to keep us so busy we cant organize.

There have been advantages. The unions have had to prove their value to members, through new benefits like training and education, scholarships and assistance programs.

When dues were compulsory, we got lazy, as far as Im concerned, and the fact that Republicans took advantage of that, thats partly on us, Mr. Cakmakci said. In the right-to-work era, the job itself became much harder, but it made our union a lot stronger, mentally, physically and intellectually.

I do think we will be putting together an organizing team again, he added, but I dont want to go back to ignoring our members.

With so many doubts lingering, it is not clear how the labor laws repeal will help Democrats. Michigans Democratic lieutenant governor, Garlin Gilchrist II, said he was not looking for a return.

Weve had historic investments in manufacturing, and advanced manufacturing, semiconductor manufacturing in different parts of Michigan, Mr. Gilchrist said in an interview. Were going to continue to build on that foundation, and thats what the state of Michigan is going to get. Its really not about what Democrats in the Legislature are going to get.

Union leaders are more transactional, acknowledging they are getting a return on the investments they made in Democrats last year.

Not just union members but working people in general are going to see the difference between what it means to have a worker-friendly administration and legislature and the worker-suppression attacks that we had before, Mr. Bieber said.

Katie Glueck contributed reporting.

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Michigan Democrats Set to Repeal Law That Hampered Unions - The New York Times