Veto Coverage: List of vetoes considered and who in our coverage area voted to sustain or override.

AUGUSTA — The Maine House on Thursday sustained Gov. Paul LePage’s veto of a bill that would have expanded access to birth control and cervical cancer screenings for up to 13,700 low-income women.

The override failed when four Republicans changed their votes to support the governor.

The reason? Republicans said they were flipping their votes because they were angry over the process Democrats in the majority used to get the veto vote reconsidered after it failed earlier in the day.

House Majority Leader Seth Berry, D-Bowdoinham, later said he asked for the vote to be reconsidered and tabled because one Democratic lawmaker who wanted to vote on the issue was missing. On her way to the House to vote was state Rep. Lisa Villa, D-Harrison. 

In an impassioned floor speech before the second veto override vote, Villa urged her colleagues to maintain their support of the bill because ultimately, it was about helping poor women and families.

“Politics be damned,” Villa said. “Just do the right thing for the people of Maine. To change your vote at this time, under the guise of procedure, it’s embarrassing as an elected official to have had bipartisan support of a really good bill that works for the people of Maine, only to have people change their minds or their votes for the wrong reason.”

But the vote to override the veto failed to hit the two-thirds benchmark, gaining only 92 of the 98 votes needed.

In his veto message, LePage wrote that he opposed the bill because it would extend Medicaid coverage for a single service — family planning — for individuals earning up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level, which would be just over $23,000 a year for a single person.

LePage argued that those individuals would be eligible to buy subsidized health insurance under the federal Affordable Care Act for a very low price, and the law requires those policies to cover family-planning services.  

Republicans said Thursday that Democrats would use the vote in their fall election campaigns to gin up the narrative that the GOP was “waging a war on women.”

While some Republicans argued that the bill would expand access to abortion, the measure, LD 1247, did not include any taxpayer-funded expansion of abortion services.

The Legislature’s nonpartisan Office of Fiscal and Program Review estimated the bill would have cost the state between $215,000 and $538,000 to implement, but by 2017 it would save the state an estimated $1.9 million to $3.3 million because it would help catch earlier-stage cancer and prevent unintended pregnancies that would otherwise be paid for by MaineCare, the state’s Medicaid program.

Those switching their votes from support to opposition of the bill included state Rep. Amy Volk, R-Scarborough, who is running for the state Senate against incumbent Sen. James Boyle, D-Gorham.

Volk said she supported the bill but couldn’t vote to override the veto a second time Thursday because the process the Democrats used was unfair.

It was a similar argument to one state Rep. Jarrod Crockett, R-Bethel, made when he voted three times to support a Medicaid expansion before he voted to sustain a LePage veto of a Medicaid expansion bill in June 2013.

Crockett, who isn’t seeking re-election, said he stood by that switch in 2013 because he felt the integrity of the lawmaking process was more important than the objective of any single piece of legislation. 

During the floor debate Thursday, state Rep. Jethro Pease, R-Morrill, accused the Democrats of bending the rules to get two votes on the veto override.

“There was a vote and then we acted like sixth-graders and took our ball and ran home,” Pease said of the Democrats’ actions.

Volk, along with Rep. Matt Pouliot, R-Augusta; Rep. Tom Tyler, R-Windham; and Rep. Ellen Winchenbach, R-Waldoboro, voted at least two times previously for the family planning bill. All four then voted to sustain LePage’s veto Thursday, killing the bill.

sthistle@sunjournal.com