AUGUSTA, Maine — Governor-elect Janet Mills will take the oath of office next Wednesday and is promising to immediately start work on several key issues.
The biggest is Medicaid expansion. Mills says she may not be able to get expansion started on day one because she isn’t certain what steps the LePage Administration has not taken.
“The current administration is under court order to file a state plan amendment,” Mills told NEWS CENTER Maine. “(I’m) not sure what that looks like, we’ve asked for it, but haven’t seen it.“
Mills says if she cannot begin the process on her first day, it will start as soon as possible after that.
Mills says she plans to immediately take action to expand treatment and prevention for the opioid drug epidemic. She says Medicaid expansion will also help get more people into drug treatment. The Governor-elect says she has plans already being prepared for expanding opioid treatment and education.
She plans to take immediate steps on an even bigger issue— climate change.
“To do prevention and mitigation regarding climate change is huge, “Mills said.
She says Prevention will include making coastal communities more resilient to rising ocean levels and finding ways to help the fishing industry cope with those changes. Mills says she will also push for steps to deal with the vehicles people drive.
“I’m very, very interested in expanding community use of electric vehicles, charging stations,” Mills said.
“Fifty percent of our carbon footprint is transportation sources so that’s a huge thing to address in prevention.”
Many of those issues will depend on the new state budget. Mills said today her team is hard at work creating a new budget which needs to be ready by the first of February.