AARP Maine Legislative Wrap-up for 2025

AARP MAINE 2025 LEGISLATIVE WRAP-UP:

AARP Maine advocates for what is important to our members and Mainers aged 50 and over. Strengthened by a team of dedicated volunteers, AARP Maine gives you a voice at the state and federal levels.

AARP Maine was busy this session and, after a significant amount of work, the first half of the 132^nd legislature (often called the long year) has adjourned. We thank all our lawmakers for their hard work in Augusta, and we also want to especially thank our Tuesdays At the State House (TASH) volunteers. These volunteer advocates spent many hours connecting with their elected officials, following bills, testifying, explaining policy positions that favor older Mainers and joining committee hearings — all to help make Maine an even better place to live for everyone.

We are excited to provide the summary below of some of the key legislation that AARP staff and volunteers advocated for, influenced and passed and/or defeated this session.

Home and Community Based Services

Paid Family Medical Leave: We were able to defeat all legislation that threatened Maine’s working caregivers’ access to Paid Family and Medical Leave (PFML). We were also able to pass LD 894 which makes important statutory changes so the Maine Department of Labor is better prepared and equipped to implement the Maine PFML program. Beginning in May 2026, working family caregivers will be able to access this paid time off to provide care to their loved ones.

Older Mainers’ Act and Respite: The Maine Part II budget includes $3 million that will be allotted to Area Agencies on Aging so they are able to continue their important work by meeting the increased demand for their key services. This includes managing the Meals on Wheels program, Medicare counseling, Adult Day programming and more. We were able to also codify eligibility for Maine’s caregiver respite program to match the eligibility levels established in the Respite for ME program from 2021. This means that more caregivers are eligible, and we were also able to allocate some additional funding for this caregiver respite program.

 Direct Care Workforce

- The Legislature passed LD 977, “Requiring the Maine Health Data Organization to Develop a Plan for Measuring Gaps in Home and Community-based Services.” This bill instructs the Maine Health Data Organization to analyze data to create a yearly “Care Gap” report which will help us understand how our efforts to increase the size of the care workforce have been progressing.

- The Legislature passed LD 210, the second part of the biennial budget. The budget includes a 1% Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) increase for our direct care workforce which is in addition to the 1.9% COLA approved in the ‘skinny budget’ enacted earlier this year. Importantly, the Legislature rejected language proposed in the Governor's budget that would have gutted the framework that has been built to create stability and predictability in funding for Maine's direct care workforce.

Utilities

Critical reforms to the Net Energy Billing (NEB) program have been signed into law by Governor Mills. AARP Maine has called for amendments to this program for several years now and proudly supported and advocated for the passage of LD 1777, “An Act to Reduce Costs and Increase Customer Protections for the State’s Net Energy Billing Program”. The reforms to the NEB program will save Maine ratepayers over $61 million on their electric bills next year and total nearly $1.2 billion over the next 16 years. This balanced legislation will allow Maine to stay on track to meet its clean energy goals in the coming decades while lessening the burden placed on Maine ratepayers to subsidize the cost of the transition to renewable energies.

Retirement Savings

Over 1 in 5 Americans have no retirement savings and this year AARP Maine was able to help defeat two bills that would have weakened, or entirely eliminated, the Maine Retirement Investment Trust (MERIT). MERIT provides employers who don’t already offer a workplace retirement plan an easy way to allow their employees to save for retirement through a Roth IRA. If MERIT had been repealed by the legislature, tens of thousands of Maine workers would have lost access to this savings plan that enables them to prepare for a more comfortable and dignified retirement.

Consumer Financial Protections

AARP Maine staff and volunteers worked on several pieces of legislation to provide much needed financial protections, notably LD 1339 “An Act to Regulate Virtual Currency Kiosks” and LD 1445 “An Act to Prevent Financial Exploitation of Vulnerable Adults”. Since 2020, there has been a tenfold increase in the losses involved in cryptocurrency kiosk scams (often referred to as “Bitcoin ATMs”), totaling over $189 million nationwide in 2023. Within the state of Maine, more than 200 individuals were scammed in a manner involving cryptocurrency, totaling nearly $6 million in losses.

Through the passage of LD 1339, there will now be a cap on the dollar amounts customers can withdraw from crypto kiosks in any one transaction, a mandate for refunds on transactions that are determined to be fraudulent and reported to the police for up to one year after the crime occurs, and a mandate for reporting of the physical location of these kiosks so police are aware of their presence.

LD 1445 will allow banking and financial institutions to place a temporary hold on transactions that are suspected of being fraudulent. The hold will allow the institution to reach out to a designated trusted contact or member of law enforcement to confirm the legitimacy (or illegitimacy) of the transaction. If everything checks out, the transaction will get the green light in an expedient manner, or, in cases of confirmed fraud, it will stop the transaction before it can be processed.

Housing

AARP worked to support LD 1829, which was recently signed by the governor. The bill allows municipalities to permit more dwelling units on a single lot, specifically mandating that areas zoned for residential use must allow at least three dwelling units per lot, and four units per lot in designated growth areas or areas with centralized water and sewer systems. The legislation eliminates certain restrictions on accessory dwelling units, allowing them to be constructed on lots with single-family or multi-unit structures without owner occupancy requirements. The bill also provides additional height allowances for affordable housing developments, exempts certain lot divisions from subdivision regulations, and requires municipal land use board members to attend training on land use planning. All of these changes will aid the state of Maine in making progress on its 80,000-housing unit shortfall.
 
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