The mayor of Lewiston, Maine, has called on the the state legislature to create a public online registry with the names and addresses of those on welfare in the state, as well as how long those individuals have been receiving benefits.
In a Thursday column in the Twin City Times, Mayor Robert Macdonald wrote that “the public has a right to know how its money is being spent.” He said that he would submit a bill to the legislature that would create the registry.
Macdonald lamented that there is not a list already, blaming “our liberal, progressive legislators and their social-service allies” for making welfare recipients “a victimized, protected class.” He did note that individuals’ personal information like financial and medical records would be “blocked from busybodies who seek it out of curiosity.”
The mayor also said he would propose two additional pieces of legislation that would put limits on General Assistance, Maine’s emergency benefits program. One bill would keep individuals from receiving General Assistance benefits for more than 60 days in a lifetime. The other would prevent the state from giving benefits to children born after an individual has already been accepted to the General Assistance program.
In an interview with the Portland Press Herald, Macdonald said he hoped his bill would keep people off of welfare benefits.
“Go into a grocery store. They flaunt it,” he said of people receiving benefits. “I’m not sorry. I hope this makes people think twice about applying for welfare.”
Macdonald also told the Press Herald that he hopes the list will help the state “go after all these people who are gaming the system.” And he acknowledged that the list may hurt some individuals.
“Some people are going to get harmed, but if it’s for the good of everybody, that’s the way it is,” he said.
He told the Lewiston-Auburn Sun Journal that he hopes the bill will stop people from coming to the state seeking benefits.
“It’s just killing the city,” he said. “The biggest thing here is the albatross around our neck that is welfare. If we can just bring that under control we could probably start really going. Start really prospering and bring the tax rate down.”
The mayor would need a member of Maine’s state legislature to sponsor the bill, and lawmakers must submit bills by Friday for them to be considered in the second half of the legislature’s session. Macdonald told the Sun Journal that he has given the three bills to state Sens. Eric Brakey (R) and Nate Libby (D). The mayor said that Libby does not support at least one of the bills.
Brakey, the Senate co-chair of the legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee, told the Sun Journal that he may support the bill to create a welfare registry.
“I’m a strong supporter for welfare reform,” he said. “But I’m also a big advocate for privacy rights, so I would really need to study this more before saying whether I would support this or not.”
Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) has signaled that he may not support Macdonald’s bill to create a registry.
“There is no plan to submit this as a governor’s bill,” Peter Steele, a spokesman for LePage, told the Sun Journal.
Macdonald, who is up for re-election in November, is a longtime opponent of welfare and ally of LePage on welfare issues, according to the Portland Press Herald. The mayor’s column appears in the Twin City Times, which is owned by Laurie Steele, the wife of Lepage’s communications director, Peter Steele, according to the Press Herald.
