Supplemental appropriations took center stage Tuesday afternoon as lawmakers debated what has become a highly controversial piece of legislation. By early Tuesday evening, state lawmakers had yet to come to an agreement on how to move forward.

Later that night, lawmakers voted along party lines to allow the spending bill to advance without Republican support, a departure from Leadership’s original strategy for the proposal.

Although Republicans are a minority in both the House and Senate, their support was initially seen as crucial by those looking to allow state agencies access to supplemental funding before the late spring.

While the proposed spending bill can be passed by a simple majority, as is the case with most legislation — meaning that it could be approved along partisan lines — lawmakers had previously been pursuing support from two-thirds of the Maine State Legislature.

If successful, this would have given the bill an emergency designation, allowing it to take immediate effect instead of subjecting it to the typical waiting period.

Bills without this emergency designation are not able to take effect until 90 days after the Legislature adjourns for the session.

Without bipartisan support in both chambers, the funds included in this supplemental appropriations bill will not be available several months.

The Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee had previously appeared to have unanimously supported an amended version of this spending package, but Rep. Ken Fredette (R-Newport) was absent from the late night committee session when the vote was taken.

Although Rep. Fredette had wanted to vote against the bill, the rules in place at the time prevented him from logging his opposition. These rules have since been unanimously updated, but Fredette’s intended vote was still unable to be recorded.

During Tuesday’s floor debate in the House, Democratic lawmakers emphasized the importance making key sums of money available — including for MaineCare and a response to the impending Spruce Budworm outbreak — while Republicans focused on concerns over fiscal responsibility.

Democrat lawmaker Rep. Kristen Cloutier (D-Lewiston) also highlighted how the supplemental budget legislation would allow for tax conformity, arguing that “ensuring that our state tax laws align with changes at the federal level is just common sense.”

Referring to the Federal Disaster Tax Relief Act of 2023 — which allowed for the victims of certain disasters to deduct from their gross income any payments they received as compensation for losses or damages — Rep. Cloutier said that “if [they] fail to pass this supplemental budget in a bipartisan manner, real Maine people who have already suffered extreme losses from severe storms will be impacted once again, and they deserve better.”

Rep. Drew Gattine (D-Westbrook), the lawmaker who formally sponsored this bill, indicated that legislators on both sides of the aisle had previously decided to put off deciding on issues where there was less agreement in the interest of quickly passing a bipartisan supplemental budget.

House Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham (R-Winter Harbor) argued on the chamber floor that Republicans “won’t sign a blank check today without seeing some fiscal responsibility in the form of cost savings.”

“If that doesn’t come in the form of General Assistance reform or work requirements, we are open to suggestions form the other side,” Minority Leader Faulkingham said. “But we have yet to see any proposals that suggest a willingness to put cost savings into the budget.”

Multiple House Republicans indicated clear support for funding both MaineCare and the Spruce Budworm response but said that they felt supporting the proposal would not be prudent in the absence of certain reforms.

For example, Rep. Jack Ducharme (R-Madison) said that Republicans do not oppose funding these initiatives, but that they “simply realize that we have to be fiscally prudent.”

“We are charged with taking care of the people’s money,” Rep. Ducharme said. “The only way to stop spending is to put the brakes on.”

Proposed in Gov. Janet Mills’ (D) original version of the supplemental budget were welfare reforms that would have capped the use of General Assistance at 30 days per household, as well as limited usage of an emergency rental assistance program.

By removing these provisions, Democratic leaders in the Legislature created unanimous opposition from House and Senate Republicans.

Rep. Fredette encouraged House lawmakers Tuesday to send the supplemental appropriations bill back to Committee so that it could be more effectively workshopped to garner bipartisan support.

He suggested that there was “not a lot of work to be done” in order to get the supplemental budget to this point, but in his view, it would be difficult to get to that point without sending it back to Committee.

Faulkingham later backed this idea and formally moved that the House refer the bill to the Appropriations Committee, but this motion narrowly failed in a party-line roll call vote of 69-76.

In light of this, consideration of the supplemental spending bill was tabled and, shortly thereafter, lawmakers broke for lunch and caucuses but did not adjourn for the day. As of early Tuesday evening, the House had yet to reconvene.

Later that night, when lawmakers returned to the chamber, a party-line vote removed the emergency clause from the bill, paving the way for it to pass without Republican support.

Absent the emergency designation, however, the money included in the supplemental budget would not be made available until 90 days after the Legislature’s adjournment.

This is a developing story.