Legislative Scorecard

132nd Legislative Session At a Glance

The 2025 legislative session gave us lots of reasons to celebrate. Advocacy, hard work, and persistence by MPA members, progressive Democrats, and allied organizations helped win some real victories. Thanks to this work, many Maine parents will see their child tax credit double, farmworkers will finally be paid the state minimum wage, and the wealthiest households will pay more in taxes to build more housing in Maine. And this year, we came out, joined together and pushed for change at a time when the Trump Administration and many on the far right are working hard to roll back everything we’ve won. That in itself is a major accomplishment.

At the same time, some of our work was slowed down by conservative narratives even among Democrats in the statehouse. This underlines the need for progressive leadership in the legislature and governor’s office as the 2026 elections approach.

Some of this year’s most important victories were in the arenas of tax (revenue) and the budget. After decades of steady work to undo the LePage tax cuts and fight harmful Reagan-era rhetoric about taxes, we’re finally moving toward the wealthiest Mainers paying what they truly owe to support the programs we rely on. 

Tremendous work by legislative champions and everyday Mainers led to the legislature voting to pass bills to tax millionaires to fund K-12 education, modernize Maine’s tax brackets so that a person making $60,000 per year isn’t paying tax at the same rate as someone making $900,000, and ensure that profitable corporations pay more in taxes. 

To avoid vetoes threatened by Gov. Janet Mills (who has historically been hostile to the idea of new taxes) for her signature, the legislature opted to carry those bills over to be considered next year, when the deep and painful cuts the federal government is making to programs including MaineCare and SNAP could make the need for new state revenue even clearer. 

While those may still be waiting in the wings, the budget that Gov. Mills signed into law does include two big tax wins: a real estate transfer tax on houses that sell for more than $1 million and a redistribution of Maine’s child tax credit to benefit the lower-income families who need it the most. 

Progressive legislators, MPA members and allies also fought back this year against efforts to take away vital protections and supports for child care, workers and trans kids.

In March, child care providers led a one-day strike with families to protest the proposed state budget’s cuts to programs supporting childcare workers. This, alongside thoughtful conversations with legislators, resulted in some vital programs for childcare workers and families being protected in the final budget. 

We also defended Maine’s new Paid Family and Medical Leave program against a dozen proposals to reduce, delay, and completely eliminate the program. Benefits will begin in 2026.

Your work and the leadership of organizations in the LGBTQ community also led to the sound defeat of no fewer than eight far-right bills aiming to strip trans Mainers of their rights. 

This year, MPA members and legislative champions continued the long fight to ensure every Mainer has a stable place to call home. People who live in mobile home parks – an important source of affordable housing in our state – won some important (if qualified) victories this year. The legislature watered down a bill that would have protected residents from rent gouging, but the bill Gov. Mills signed is a good start. Residents also won the right of first refusal to collectively buy their parks.

Legislative champions took major steps this year toward protecting Mainers against private insurers’ profit seeking practices, including a new law that prohibits medical debt (a leading cause of bankruptcy) from appearing on credit reports. And more Mainers gained access to the hospital “free care” program – regardless of immigration status.  

These are only some of the positives that came out of this first year of the session. There have also been frustrations. 

At a moment when ICE arrests are rapidly increasing in Maine, the legislature passed (mostly along party lines) a bill to limit law enforcement’s cooperation with ICE. Unfortunately given the urgency of the situation, Gov. Mills has opted to “hold” the bill, meaning that it could be several months until she takes any action on it. 

Gov. Mills also vetoed several bills which would have meaningfully improved Mainers’ lives, righted past wrongs and protected our constitutional rights. These included, among others, a bill to extend basic labor protections to Maine’s agricultural workers (LD 588), one that would have made it more difficult for the state to seize tribal lands under eminent domain (LD 958), and one to create culturally appropriate and trauma-informed recovery houses for people with substance use disorder (LD 1328). 

That having been said, we view this first year of the session as a victory. The fact that the legislature is now more receptive to revenue than it has been in decades could be transformational. Our social safety net is stronger thanks to the defense of PFML and childcare worker subsidies, and more Mainers will have stable homes thanks to the new mobile home park protections. 

In spite of increasingly aggressive attempts from the far right to marginalize them, trans kids are still free to play school sports. And while Mainers who came here from other countries are increasingly in need of protection against the federal government’s actions, the fact that the bill to limit local governments' cooperation with ICE passed both houses of the legislature is an immense accomplishment. We will continue the fight.  

Our greatest accomplishment, though, may have been that we joined together and worked to make change at a time when the far right is seeking to make it harder to take part in civic life. 

These are hard times for many people, but MPA members continue to work together for the things we all care about, and to build a world where everyone has what they need and contributes what they can, and no one is left behind. Let’s go!