Lawmakers are drawing lines in the debate that they say pits corporate welfare against municipal welfare. Maine Senate President Justin Alfond says state government won’t save a dime by cutting revenue sharing.

“This is a classical false choice,” Alfond said. “If we break our promise of revenue sharing, we will simply be shifting the costs to our towns, to our homeowners and to our business property owners. They will pay the price. I don’t believe anyone here wants to do that, no matter which political party you belong to.”

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AUGUSTA – The Legislature’s Democratic leaders have told Gov. Paul LePage that they will pass his plan to pay back Maine’s hospitals but they want it directly linked to the state’s participation in a federal program to expand health care coverage for low-income Mainers.

LePage blasted the proposal Friday, saying Democrats had “reneged” on their agreement to pay the state’s 39 hospitals for overdue Medicaid reimbursements.

House Speaker Mark Eves, D-North Berwick, and Senate President Justin Alfond, D-Portland, told the governor their plan Thursday during a closed-door meeting in the governor’s Cabinet Room. It marks a shift in the debate over paying back more than $484 million to the hospitals and a separate policy to expand Medicaid to about 55,000 Mainers.

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Sen. Justin Alfond (D-Cumberland), the Ranking Minority Member on the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee, to talk about the two school choice bills from Gov. Paul LePage. The bills had a public hearing last week.

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Sen. Justin Alfond, D-Portland, said he feared that it could be difficult to follow the law.

“Are we making sure this fits all of our CTECs?” he asked, pointing out that Portland Arts and Technology High School has 22 sending schools. “What if they can’t get their calendars to a point where they have five dissimilar days?”

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The Legislature’s Education and Cultural Affairs Committee spent more than four hours Wednesday afternoon hearing from dozens of stakeholders on both sides of the issue. At one point, Sen. Justin Alfond, D-Portland, called the measure “the ultimate penalty for teachers,” while Education Commissioner Stephen Bowen told the committee that “no other bill you’ve heard this session has the potential to have the positive impact on education in Maine that this bill does.”

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The first bill removes one sentence from state law that says public dollars cannot be used to fund private, religious schools. Bowen and LePage said removing that sentence simply provides another opportunity for students who want a certain type of education. Any students can go to a religious school currently but they must pay tuition.

Sen. Justin Alfond, D-Portland, who sits on the education committee, has criticized that bill.

“Using taxpayer money to pay for private schools is another example of short-sighted policy that chooses ideology over what’s best for Maine people,” he said “We should be doing everything we can to strengthen our public schools, which is an investment in our future work force. Anything less cheats our children and our economic future.”

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Sen. Justin Alfond, D-Portland, said the administration had demonstrated a pattern of delaying hearings on controversial bills.

“These bills come out, they’re complicated and contentious, and all of a sudden the input from the public and from the committee will be limited,” Alfond said. “There’s a very short period of time before these bills have to be sent before the full (Legislature).”

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