2 weeks Ago
Maine Senate Democrats recently voted, quietly, to kill an attempt to eliminate an insidious tool of the Maine Legislature: the concept draft. Concept drafts are a tool at the disposal of Maine legislators that exists to let them duck scrutiny of their activities by the public. They’re blank-slate bills, with titles only, that allow legislators to throw in ideas and develop them later, behind closed doors.
They’re unethical and antithetical to democracy. We, the people, elect state legislators — who, by the way, just voted to give themselves an unearned pay raise — and they, in turn, do everything in their power to hide their activities from us. We’re their supervisors, so we should be able to see everything they do in the Statehouse, with no exceptions.
This is something that, fundamentally, Republicans in Augusta believe. That’s why they voted as a caucus in the Maine Senate to eliminate most concept drafts. Even that isn’t strong enough.
They should be eliminated completely, but it’s far better than the half-hearted reform to which Democrats reluctantly agreed. The Democrats’ so-called “reform” of concept drafts is merely an attempt to save them while diverting public and press attention away from the issue, and it’s nowhere near good enough. In fact, it’s symbolic.
It doesn’t do much of anything and contains enough exemptions to drive a truck through. All they agreed to do was make the language of these vague bills available to the public two days before a committee hearing. Two days.
That’s it. That’s all the time us mere peasants get to keep an eye on what our supposed representatives in Augusta are doing. For most people, that’s not enough time to even notice they’ve been posted, let alone draft testimony to submit in writing — never mind scheduling time off and child care to drive up to Augusta and testify.
It really doesn’t benefit the average citizen at all. This makes sense; the Democrats don’t worry about us. Instead, it really helps the fancy lobbyists in Augusta who bankroll their campaigns and their political action committees.
They’re the ones with staff who can sit around hitting refresh on legislative websites, then immediately draft testimony to reflect the views of the special interests they represent. Even grassroots political organizations with paid staff doing the same thing don’t have the time to mount a public pressure campaign in two days, because again, that depends on ordinary citizens reading, responding and at least contacting their legislators with an email. Democrats, you see, know who the really important people are.
It’s not the ordinary people who elected them. It’s the people who write the checks. That’s how they maintain their majority year after year — not because they have the better ideas, but because they have the most money.
That’s why they keep winning all of the close races. Contrary to the popular narrative — at least in Maine — even in years when Republicans win, they’re typically outspent. In 2020, when Susan Collins handily defeated Sara Gideon, Collins was outspent by 2-1.
In 2010, Eliot Cutler and Libby Mitchell both outspent victor Paul LePage, the eventual winner. Democrats routinely outspend Republicans in state legislative races in both chambers. It wasn’t that Democrats were particularly worried about the public or the press being outraged by the idea of shady concept drafts.
It was that they were worried that they were alienating one of their core constituencies: lobbyists. Without the money of lobbyists, Democrats and all of their PACs wouldn’t have as much money to spend attacking Republicans. Then they might actually find their majority in peril here in Maine because they wouldn’t have the money to throw around the state like they do now.
If you watched TV or used the internet at all last year, you know what I mean. The attack ads from state Democrats were constant. That’s exactly why they structured the rule change to help out lobbyists, but not grassroots political groups or the public at large.
Nationally, Democrats like to portray themselves as the party of transparency and government, but regardless of what you think of that, here in Maine the exact opposite is true. Democrats want to be able to get away with whatever they want in Augusta, with you — the taxpaying public, their bosses — none the wiser. It makes you wonder what they’re hiding, doesn’t it? We invite you to add your comments.
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