If you are like me, you receive a half dozen to a dozen calls on a regular basis. Not from friends or family, not work related, but from spammers and telemarketers, hoping to deceive you into answering your phone.

A record-breaking 93 million robocalls were placed to Maine last year, according to data from call blocking company YouMail. Breaking that down per person, that’s about 73 calls to every person in our state — 73 each.

Nearly half the calls made to U.S. cell phones in 2019 will be spam, and 90 percent of those calls will have familiar caller IDs, according to a report by the Federal Communications Commission. That’s insane.

It’s not just annoying; it also impacts the productivity of businesses, and in some cases, scams seniors. The result is that these calls from spammers and telemarketers create stress and financial strain.

I’ve been told we have to wait around for the federal government to address this issue, an issue that impacts nearly everyone with a phone number. After all, the National Do Not Call List exists. It’s clearly not working, but what can Maine do when the U.S. government is having a hard time enforcing what we already have?

It’s my belief we must try to do something. Other states have staff specifically dedicated to going after bad actors — those who harass and spam your phone, and disguise numbers to get you to answer. No one should be spoofing real phone numbers of residents and businesses. This is why our Attorney General’s office should be given the tools it needs to enforce a new ban on robocalls.

The Legislature’s Innovation, Development, Economic Advancement and Business Committee voted unanimously to approve my bill to ban automated and prerecorded voice robocalls to residential numbers in the state of Maine.

LD 277, “An Act To Ban Telephone Solicitations Using an Artificial or Prerecorded Voice and Enhance Caller Identification,” gives the Attorney General the authority to enforce this ban on automated and prerecorded voice robocalls as an unfair trade practice, specifically on the grounds that the telemarketer’s intent is to defraud, cause harm, or wrongfully profit off the communication.

With passage of this bill, the Maine Attorney General’s office will finally have something to prosecute when going after those who spam your phone. You can’t enforce something if it’s not on the books. The AG’s office will work with the federal government to ensure proper coordination for investigations as they handle consumer complaints within the state of Maine.