Governor Janet Mills has vetoed three bills passed by the Maine Legislature, including measures that would have set a minimum wage for farm workers in Maine and allow them to engage in certain labor-related activity. She also rejected a bill that would have required the state-owned Juniper Ridge Landfill to treat water discharge so that it does not exceed the drinking water standards established by the Maine Department of Health and Human Services.
In all, Mills has vetoed five bills that passed this session. Two of them already have been sustained. Lawmakers will have the chance to vote on the other three later this month, and possibly more. Overturning a veto requires two-thirds support in both the House and Senate, and none of the three bills vetoed Tuesday passed with that margin.
Mills explained her reasoning in veto letters to lawmakers. Referencing L.D. 2273, the agriculture workers minimum wage bill, Mills said she objected not to the higher wage but to language added by lawmakers that allows for “privately initiated litigation over alleged violations.”
“In other words, if someone believed their employer was violating labor law, they could obtain a private lawyer and sue their employer, in this case a farm owner,” Mills wrote, adding that she doesn’t “believe it is appropriate to authorize a private right of action carte blanche, particularly in the case of farms, because I am deeply concerned that doing so would result in litigation that would simply sap farmers of financial resources and cause them to fail.”
In vetoing L.D. 525, which would create a new legal framework governing labor relations in Maine’s agricultural sector, Mills wrote that farmers shouldn’t have to deal with new regulations.
“Unfortunately, farmers are now facing a multitude of serious threats to their livelihood ranging from the severe weather that is likely to become worse as the effects of climate change intensify, to PFAS contamination, to inflation, to price pressures, and so much more,” she wrote. “These serious challenges are taking a terrible toll, with Maine having lost more than 1,100 farms since 2012, including 564 farms accounting for 82,567 acres of farmland since 2017. Against this background, I cannot subject our farmers to a complicated new set of labor laws that will require a lawyer just to understand. Now is not the time to impose a new regulatory burden on our agricultural sector, and particularly not family-owned farms that are not well positioned to know and understand their obligations under a new such law.”
Mills also sent back L.D. 2135, which would have authorized the state’s Bureau of General Services to negotiate a new operating agreement with Casella, the operator of the state-owned Juniper Ridge Landfill in Old Town, but also would have required treatment of leachate for forever chemicals, also called PFAS, to match regulations that exist for drinking water.
“There is no question that PFAS contamination poses a threat to the health of our people, our wildlife, and our environment, but applying drinking water standards to the treatment of landfill leachate is not appropriate,” she wrote.
