An Act To Ensure That Legislators Share the Sacrifice with Civil Servants in the Event of a State Government Shutdown
Be it enacted by the People of the State of Maine as follows:
Sec. 1. 3 MRSA §5 is enacted to read:
§ 5. Diminishment of salary due to State Government shutdown
1. Failure to enact budget. Notwithstanding section 2, the salary of each member of the Senate and House of Representatives must be reduced if a state budget bill under Title 5, section 1666 is not enacted into law by July 1st of an odd-numbered year and as a result a shutdown of State Government occurs.
2. Determination of amount of reduction. After any odd-numbered year in which a shutdown as described in subsection 1 occurs, the salary of each Legislator for the immediately following second regular session must be reduced by an amount that is proportional to the length of the shutdown as determined according to this subsection.
A. No later than 30 days following the end of the shutdown, the Executive Director of the Legislative Council shall determine:
(1) The number of days the shutdown lasted, not including weekends and holidays; and
(2) The average length of a second regular session in days for the most recent 5 second regular sessions.
B. The Executive Director of the Legislative Council shall divide the amount of salary that each Legislator is entitled to for the immediately following second regular session by the average number of days of a second regular session, as determined pursuant to paragraph A, subparagraph (2). The result of this calculation is the per diem salary for the second regular session.
C. The Executive Director of the Legislative Council shall multiply the per diem salary as determined pursuant to paragraph B by the number of shutdown days as determined pursuant to paragraph A, subparagraph (1). The result of this calculation is the amount of salary that must be deducted from each Legislator's salary for the immediately following second regular session.
SUMMARY
This bill requires the salary of all Legislators to be reduced by an amount that is proportional to the length of a shutdown that occurs due to a biennial budget's not being enacted into law by July 1st of an odd-numbered year.