UPDATE Occasionally, Democrats reflect their liberal heritage. In the last legislative session they gave birth to a modestly progressive tax-reform bill that also would have dampened the wild swings in state revenue that our narrowly based sales taxes produce. It was killed by one vote when Baldacci, allied with Republicans and business lobbyists, pushed Senate president Beth Edmonds to switch sides.
THE FUTURE? To avoid raising taxes, Baldacci also has tried to wring efficiencies from government by consolidating its elements. Last session, he pushed through a school-district-consolidation bill. In the coming session, he wants to consolidate county jails with state prisons. Democrats as well as Republicans are increasingly uneasy about his challenges to local control. He will have resistance on the jails issue.
In 2008 legislative Democrats could again attempt tax reform. There are no strong legislative leaders, however, and the governor has a veto. Still, Baldacci does not have deep support in the state. He was reelected with only 38 percent of the vote.
Dirigo Health
THE ISSUE Baldacci has failed to insure the many Mainers without health insurance — at present, 122,000.
THE STORIES In his first year in office, Baldacci made national news by getting the Legislature to adopt the Dirigo Health Plan, which would within a few years insure all the uninsured. It didn’t happen. DirigoChoice, as the insurance is called, now covers about 12,000 people, but most have switched from private insurance. There are close to as many uninsured Mainers now as in 2003, and as the country heads into an economic downturn, possibly a recession, the uninsured undoubtedly will increase in number.
Why has Dirigo failed? Put simply, it wasn’t funded, as I detailed in several stories. The working poor and many lower-middle-class Mainers can’t afford it. Maine politicians were not willing to reshape taxes to get more money to better subsidize Dirigo’s premiums.
UPDATE Dirigo policies have been sold by Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, a for-profit company with no incentive to promote a competitor. Baldacci recently announced that Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, a Boston nonprofit, would take over Dirigo sales.
THE FUTURE? One would think that because a nonprofit doesn’t require a profit, Dirigo prices would decrease. But Baldacci aide Trish Riley says that under Harvard Pilgrim premiums may go up, just less than if Anthem still ran the program.
It gets worse: DirigoChoice is now not accepting new subscribers. It is starved for money. It was Baldacci’s sop to liberals, and it looks like a fraud.
Heating oil and the poor
THE ISSUE State government bends over to powerful economic interests.THE STORIES In 2006, I wrote about how oil-dealer influence on the Maine State Housing Authority had kept prices high on Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) heating oil. The federal government provides money for 50,000 poor people to buy some of the oil they need, and the housing authority administers the program.
For 30 years, oil dealers charged LIHEAP recipients considerably more than the price they asked of their payment-plan customers, despite the large purchases the housing authority made. Housing director Dale McCormick, a rare true-blue liberal in the Baldacci camp, was trying to obtain discounts. Lower prices would mean more oil to divvy up. But McCormick got push-back not only from the well-connected oil dealers but also from her own politically appointed board, whose members seemed more solicitous of the dealers than the poor folks they were supposed to look out for.
