It’s been an eventful month here in Maine, considering November is normally a quiet month in off-year elections.

Medicaid expansion won the approval of Maine voters. The legislature will soon start working on how to implement this new law, but there are still may who have concerns about potential cost overruns that could plague the state budget.

Conservative estimates put the cost for Maine taxpayers at $54 million a year. This means that for every two-year budget cycle, we will have to set aside more than $100 million to fund health care for able-bodied Mainers. This could lead to reductions in funding for education, property tax relief, and other crucial state programs. In my time in the legislature, I have found hard to prioritize funding for these programs. I look forward to hearing from my Democrat colleagues about how we are going to fund this expansion.

By an almost four to one margin, Maine voters rejected a referendum question for a casino in York County. This comes as little surprise to many due to the numerous flaws in this proposal, including the questionable funding for it that led to an enormous ethics fine, and the fact that the developer, whose company is based in Saipan, was the only one who could have been granted the license for the casino.

Mainers have long exercised their right to gather signatures and put issues on the ballot for a popular vote. But the York County casino initiative demonstrates how the system has been hijacked and abused by special interests. In this case, backers of the proposal attempted to buy our support.

Ranked-choice voting is another example. Supporters of this system were told by the attorney general that ranked-choice voting was unconstitutional in Maine, yet they pushed ahead with their signature gathering, anyway. After they managed to get it passed at the ballot box, Maine’s Supreme Court confirmed the attorney general’s opinion that it was unconstitutional.

Since then, the legislature has temporarily suspended ranked-choice voting until backers can secure a constitutional amendment that will allow it. Despite all of this, ranked-choice voting supporters are planning to gather signatures to force a people’s veto to undo the legislature’s responsible action. If they are successful, it could spell disaster for Maine’s upcoming primary elections in June. Our secretary of state has indicated Maine does not have the resources to implement the system, even if it were legal. If we are forced to use ranked-choice voting in June, it could take weeks before we know who won and lost their respective races.

The Maine Legislature was back in session again, to wrap up business on the special session that was called last month. The major item on the agenda was to act on the governor’s veto of recommendations of the Marijuana Legalization Implementation Committee. After Maine voters approved recreational marijuana, the committee was appointed to work out details on recreational sales, how the drug would be taxed and other matters.

But the governor vetoed the recommendations and last week the House of Representatives upheld that veto, so it never made it to the Senate. So that means that we are essentially back to square one with the voter-approved recreational marijuana measure as the law of the land.

There doesn’t ever seem to be any end to the debate over Medicaid expansion, marijuana legalization, ranked-choice voting and other issues. But these are very difficult public policy issues and consensus on any of them is difficult to come by. I am certain that we have not heard the last of matters, as we will be dealing with all of them in the legislative session that begins in January 2018.

If you would like to discuss these or any other legislative issue, please call (207) 287-1505, or email me at Dana.Dow@legislature.maine.gov. Senator Dana Dow (R-Lincoln) represents Maine Senate District 13 and serves on the Legislature’s Taxation and Insurance and Financial Affairs Committee.