While Maine voters were roundly rejecting a plan for “Universal Home Care,” on Election Day 2018, the left-wing activist organization which spearheaded it, the Maine People’s Alliance, was collecting signatures for its next policy disaster: mandatory earned paid sick leave for all workers and businesses in Maine. Like most progressive ideas, this proposal would hurt many of the people it proposes to help. How many workers will be laid off in order for businesses to finance this utopian folly?

I am one of 32 supporters of The Maine Heritage Policy Center, from 19 different towns across Maine, who are not wasting any time finding out. We are researching the language of the proposal to find all the ways this plan will impact small business owners who would be forced to guarantee paid time for any employee (full-time, part-time, anyone with more than 90 days on the job) to take off work to care for friends or family members.

Our objective is to determine the facts and educate the people of Maine, so we can make informed choices when facing the continual onslaught of left-wing referendum questions which promise the world “for free” since “someone else” is paying the bill. Look at the results from the Universal Home Care proposal on this year’s ballot. When Mainers are given the facts, they make the choice to overwhelmingly reject more taxes and unaccountable programs at the ballot box.

We can do it again. Working Mainers support a safety net to care for those who can’t care for themselves. But the paid sick leave mandate proposed by the Maine People’s Alliance is yet another shell game that will hurt many of the workers it claims it will help.

And we’ll all be stuck paying for unemployment benefits when workers are laid off by businesses across the state facing this reckless new government mandate.

Terry Brown, Yarmouth

Director of Communications

The Maine Heritage Policy Center