AIA Maine’s Advocacy Newsletter - January 27, 2022
Dear AIA Maine Members and Community,
AIA Maine is thrilled to announce that we have engaged the services of Pierce Atwood to help us strengthen AIA Maine’s legislative knowledge, voice, and clout.
We are so pleased to welcome you to the first edition of AIA Maine’s Advocacy Newsletter and its accompanying Legislative Database.
This week’s newsletter, written and compiled by Elizabeth Frazier of Pierce Atwood, will provide an overview of the current state of Maine’s legislature and introduce you to how to navigate and make use of the Legislative Database.
If you have any questions about the legislative process or AIA Maine’s advocacy efforts in general, feel free to reach out to me or Elizabeth at any time – she can be reached at efrazier@pierceatwood.com.
The Second Regular Session of the 130th Legislature convened in Augusta to open activities on January 5, 2022. Due to the state of the COVID-19 pandemic, legislators are resuming their committee work virtually, and are not scheduled to meet again in person. If COVID cases decline, legislators may move to a hybrid approach to consider bills on the floor in person and continue holding committee hearings virtually, or move to a fully in-person schedule. Much remains to be seen on this front.
For now, if you are interested in watching any legislative proceedings, you can do so as follows:
All Committee Work: Legislature’s YouTube Channel – note that committee hearings sometimes start a few minutes late and unfortunately there will be no icon to click until they have gone live – if you don’t see a scheduled hearing under a committee page at the scheduled time, keep refreshing – it should come up eventually!
House and Senate Sessions (not currently being held): Legislature’s primary website under “Senate Video” and “House Video” at the top of the landing page
The AIA Maine Legislative Database
This document serves as a one-stop-shop for AIA members to see what bills have been identified by our advocacy team as potentially relevant to our organization.
In the database, you will find the bills listed numerically by their “legislative document” or “LD” number. This is the standard reference number of items of legislation in Maine. The title, sponsor, and summary are also provided.
In the “Status” column, you can see the current procedural posture of a bill. The following notations and abbreviations may be used:
SAT Carry-over: bills carried over on the Special Appropriations Table. These are LD’s that have moved all the way through to final enactment but have not yet been finally enacted for consideration of their price tag (known as the fiscal note). Currently, there are about 237 bills on the Special Appropriations Table with an aggregate price tag of over $1 billion. We do not yet know how much money the Legislature will have to spend on these bills but in recent years the total has been as low as $10,000.
Carry-over; Concept draft: concept drafts are bills that were printed with no language, just a summary. Many of these bills will not have language presented until a public hearing has been scheduled. We watch diligently for language to be released by sponsors and committees.
Carry-over on unfinished business: bills that were moved through the committee process to the floor of the House and Senate but not finally enacted on by those bodies after having been placed on the unfinished business calendar. These will be taken up again by the House and Senate when they reconvene in person.
PH: public hearing date and time - when public input will be taken
WS: work session date and time – when legislators discuss the merits of a proposal and ultimately vote on the committee’s recommendation. Committee recommendations can be unanimous, or “divided.” When a report is divided, it means that the committee was not unanimous. Typically, one report will be the “majority report,” meaning it received a majority of support on the committee, where one or more additional reports will be “minority reports.” Both unanimous and divided reports take the following form, which can also be seen in the status column when a bill has been reported out of committee:
Ought to Pass – A supportive vote that the language of a bill as printed ought to pass to be enacted
Ought to Pass as Amended: A supportive vote that the language of a bill ought to pass to be enacted as amended by one or more amendments offered by the Committee.
Ought not to Pass: An opposing vote that a bill should be rejected by the legislature.
The “Position” column indicates AIA Maine’s position on a specific bill. The position may be one of the following:
Support with testimony
Oppose with testimony
Monitor/Support – indicates AIA Maine leans toward supporting but will not actively engage unless necessary (typically a matter of interest to members for business reasons but not necessarily specific to architectural professional matters).
Monitor/Oppose – indicates AIA Maine leans toward opposition but will not actively engage unless necessary (typically a matter of interest to members for business reasons but not necessarily specific to architectural professional matters).
We know this is a lot of information to take in at once, but we hope it can serve as a primer for the legislative procedure and a little introduction to the work that we will be doing over the coming months and years. Again, please feel free to reach out to me or Elizabeth if you have any questions!
We will be more successful with more members at the table, so please consider, joining our Legislative Affairs Committee.
We meet once every two weeks until June. Our next meeting is scheduled for: Wednesday, February 9, 2022, from 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM.
Jeannette Schram
Executive Director, AIA Maine