In June, we exposed Janet Mill’s plan to give away new and recent-model used cars to people on welfare for pennies on the dollar. Maine People Before Politics led an effort, with your help, to make sure she knew this was a non-starter. The result? Governor Mills wants to now give up on that program and create a new cash benefit costing $1.4 million each year instead.
The Mills Administration launched the Working Cars for Working Families program last June, which had been authorized in the 2018–2019 biennial budget but not implemented under the LePage Administration. Its exceptionally vague statutory language allowed the Mills Administration to design the entire program in rulemaking.
DHHS rolled out a massive, bureaucratic and poorly planned program to use $6 million in taxpayer dollars to provide cars and handover the titles to people on welfare who had only paid about $600 into the program. DHHS had even already awarded the contract for the program’s management.
Many Mainers let DHHS and the Governor’s Office know that the car welfare program they designed was a lemon. Early last month, MPBP called upon the Legislature to repeal this and get back to addressing the problems Maine is currently facing. We thank Rep. Shelley Rudnicki for sponsoring a bill to repeal it.
Maine People Before Politics submitted a Freedom of Access Act request on December 2, 2020 to the Attorney General’s Office. We are looking to find out how this program was planned and where the rule was, since the contract had been awarded and was only waiting for the final rule to go into effect. We have been advised by the staff of the AG’s Office that our request will be fulfilled at the end of this month.
In what must be purely a coincidence, after we made that request, Governor Janet Mills decided to switch from trying to fast-track this program to repealing it. However, Governor Mills is not giving up on expanding welfare benefits.
Instead, she want to spend $4.2 million over three years for a new welfare program. It will pay 44 cents a mile to people who are working but don’t qualify for the existing “transitional transportation” welfare benefit. The mileage covers the commute to work and to childcare for the number of work days in a month. People would be able to collect this benefit for 18 months. For the first 12 months, the mileage payment would be capped at $20 a day, and capped at $15 a day for the last 6 months.
Well, there’s more. This new program would be a pre-payment, not a reimbursement. There is no requirement that the cash be used to pay for car-related expenses. Governor Mills is creating a new, cash welfare benefit totaling up to $6,600 over 18 months.
Maine’s safety net must be preserved for the most vulnerable. Thousands of people have lost their jobs in this pandemic and now need a hand up. The welfare rolls are expanding, as one would expect given what is happening in the economy. Now is not the time to create new welfare benefits.