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Lawmakers and representatives of the insurance industry spent the most time mulling over the first initiative, the Home Resiliency Program, at the Thursday hearing. The program would be funded by a one-time transfer of $15 million from the Department of Professional and Financial Regulation, tapping into a pot of revenue from licensing fees charged to insurance agents and dealers operating outside of Maine.
After Insurance Bureau Superintendent Bob Carey testified in support of the bill, members of the Housing and Economic Development Committee clarified which homeowners would be eligible for the grants and questioned how the Bureau of Insurance would protect grantees from poor contracting work.
Carey responded that the state would do its best to publicize the grant across Maine, predicting that the program would first roll out in western and eastern Maine counties and would require specially certified contractors to complete the projects. To spread the $15 million fund out equitably, Carey proposed amending the bill to cap grant awards on a sliding, income-based scale, potentially limiting wealthier full-time Maine residents to $10,000 while offering lower income homeowners up to $20,000. That could result in assistance for more than 1,000 homeowners, Carey said.
Charles Soltan, an attorney representing the Maine Association of Insurance Companies, a consortium of in-state insurance companies, spoke in support of the bill. However, he and a separate attorney representing an association of Maine insurance agents who opposed the bill both raised concerns about how the Home Resiliency Program’s $15 million would be budgeted in the future. They stated that the bill doesn’t limit how much funding the Bureau of Insurance can draw from its licensing fee fund, which comes from the pockets of the insurance industry.
“The spigot of our fee money that's also built into rates is not going to be necessarily turned off and we have a concern about that,” Soltan told lawmakers.
The second initiative, the State Resilience Office within the Maine Office of Community Affairs, would be funded through a five-year federal grant. The office would support flood and storm damage prevention and public safety. In the future, the office would require an annual transfer of available balances from the Bureau of Insurance to the State Resilience Fund.
That federal funding, however, comes from a multi-million dollar grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that could fall victim to the massive spending cuts implemented by the Trump administration.
The New York Times reported earlier this month that administration officials informed NOAA staff members to search their grants for terms that include phrases like “climate science” and “environmental quality,” sparking concern among lawmakers and former NOAA officials that those grants are at risk.
Responding to questions from The Maine Monitor about the future stability of that grant, Jackie Farwell, a spokesperson for the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future, said the state has been drawing on the grant and that its funds are legally committed to Maine.
“The grant, which was supported by Maine’s full congressional delegation, is legally obligated to the state,” the administration said in a statement.
County emergency management officials and others criticized the bill for not specifically designating county governments as recipients for state assistance, despite their overall support. They implored legislators to add language that specifically identifies counties as assistance recipients.
“The current bill that you have before you does not include counties as an entity at all,” said Arthur Cleaves, director of the York County Emergency Management Agency and a veteran of both state and federal emergency management agencies.
Their recommendation will be one of many that the committee considers during a workshop on the bill, the next stop for the legislation.
“If there's one thing that my experience has taught me,” said Cleaves, “it’s that all emergencies happen at the local level.”
Bill sponsor Senate President Mattie Daughtry (D-Cumberland) said it’s more urgent than ever for Maine to strengthen its resilience initiatives before future storms strike the state.
The state needs to “prepare, not repair,” Daughtry told her colleagues at the Thursday hearing.
Daughtry’s remarks were followed by one of her co-sponsors, House Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham (R-Winter Harbor), who recalled the destruction that the winter storms wreaked on coastal communities in his district, washing away wharves and causeways and dealing a blow to the local economy.
“L.D. 1 won't stop storms like this in the future, but it will help towns, businesses and homeowners and their communities be better prepared,” Faulkingham said.
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