AUGUSTA, Maine — Maine could soon have a statewide system for tracking rape kits, after lawmakers made late funding decisions on dozens of bills Tuesday evening.
The proposal from Rep. Valli Geiger, D-Rockland, to track the kits containing potential DNA evidence from alleged sexual assaults was one of 80 bills the Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee recommended to fund during what was likely its final meeting before lawmakers meet Friday to handle vetoes from Gov. Janet Mills and then break for the year.
An additional 165 bills awaiting funding received no such recommendations from the committee, meaning they are likely dead for the year. Lawmakers were considering about $11.4 million in unspent money after approving a two-year budget addition last month.
Department of Administrative and Financial Services spokesperson Sharon Huntley said the committee passed about $12.3 million in new spending but took roughly $3.7 million from other special accounts, such as the Fund for a Healthy Maine, a “budget gimmick that the governor warned them not to do because it simply raids other accounts.”
Mills, a Democrat, and Finance Commissioner Kirsten Figueroa warned lawmakers that funding the additional 80 bills could push the state budget to “the breaking point.”
The Senate will need to give final approval to the funding decisions Friday, when each chamber is also not expected to reach a two-thirds majority to override any of Mills’ vetoes of eight bills covering issues such as a bump stock ban and farmworker pay.
Geiger’s measure will ensure Maine is no longer the sole state that has not adopted any of a national sexual assault survivor advocacy group’s recommendations on testing and tracking rape kits. It will cost about $350,000 this fiscal year, roughly $361,000 in fiscal year 2025 and nearly $375,000 in fiscal year 2026, with the money helping to create and operate the statewide system as well as hire two forensic chemists and one DNA forensic analyst.
It will require the Department of Public Safety to set up and maintain a tracking system for rape kits and task law enforcement agencies with reporting to the state an inventory of all kits in their possession by June 1, 2025. Police must store all completed rape kits for 20 years and all completed strangulation kits for six years, regardless of whether victims reported the alleged offense to a law enforcement agency, under Geiger’s bill.
Health care providers, district attorneys and crime labs must have access to using and viewing the system, and alleged victims also would have access on an “anonymous and secure basis.” The Department of Public Safety will annually report data and any recommendations surrounding the tracking system to the Legislature beginning in 2026, per the legislation.
Police chiefs, prosecutors and sexual violence survivors suppported Geiger’s measure, which the Legislature unanimously approved in April. Advocates noted it will add Maine to the 33 states with tracking systems and help tackle a backlog of untested rape kits, though the bill does not further deal with testing. The most recent estimate from a 2018 report found Maine had 530 untested rape kits.
Cumberland County District Attorney Jackie Sartoris said earlier this year she was seeking a pilot project to track rape kit processing in Maine’s most populous county, with similar pilots underway in Kennebec and Penobscot counties.
Carlie Fischer, the Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault’s systems advocacy coordinator, said giving victims updates on their rape kit’s location “communicates to survivors that their case is being taken seriously.”
“Particularly after such an invasive evidence collection process, many survivors want reassurance that their evidence is handled with care,” FIscher said.
Other measures the budget committee funded Tuesday night included everything from a measure sponsored by House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross, D-Portland, to create a civil rights unit in the attorney general’s office to a proposal from Rep. Poppy Arford, D-Brunswick, to require private insurers to cover all federally approved birth control pills, a bill from Rep. David Boyer, R-Poland, requiring the chief medical examiner to use forensic genetic genealogy testing on the remains of people who have been unidentified for at least 45 days and a plan from House Majority Leader Mo Terry, D-Gorham, pushing back the state flag referendum to 2026.
Proposals needing to wait at least another year for funding include a measure from Talbot Ross to create an Office of Tribal-State Affairs and a bill from Rep. Matt Moonen, D-Portland, to speed up criminal trials.