Posted on 06/20/2002 8:47:36 AM PDT by SheLion
AUGUSTA — Although he once vowed he would never use “gimmicks” like state shutdown days to balance the budget, Gov. Angus S. King told reporters Wednesday he would be incorporating that very mechanism in order to offset a dramatic decline in projected revenues.
“I do this with the greatest reluctance,” King said. “I said seven or eight years ago that I would not do this and here I am doing this. I’m fessing up. I never dreamed I would be in this situation. I see this as the best of a series of unpalatable alternatives.”
The first of three state employee furlough days, or days off without pay, will take place on July 5, with the other two days to be decided later. The governor said the three furlough days provided about the same money as permanently laying off 100 state workers.
“I feel it’s just more humane and sensible to achieve the savings through days off,” King said.
Carl Leinonen, executive director of the 13,000-member Maine State Employees Association, said workers were becoming increasingly “cynical” and “disgusted” by the governor’s efforts to balance the budget on the backs of state employees.
“This was the governor pledging to eliminate gimmicks and furloughs,” he said. “He claimed to have done those things in the beginning of his term. Here we are at the end of his term and guess what? It’s deja vu all over again.”
King also announced he will cut $10 million from funding for local education, reducing the total amount budgeted for Maine school systems in the fiscal year beginning July 1 from $729 million to $719 million.
“The cut is $10 million,” he said. “To put that in context, the increase to (education) scheduled for 2003 was $30 million and $10 million of that will be reduced. So two-thirds of the projected increase will be made available to the schools. This is a cut in the budgeted amount, it is not a cut in the amount that was received last year.”
King emphasized his revised budget proposal did not include a broad-based tax increase or an elimination of eligibility under Medicaid or a major cut to education.
“There’s a lot here that everybody isn’t going to like — including me,” he said. “There’s no good news here when you’re cutting a budget. But what we’ve been able to avoid is as important as what we’ve done.”
Faced with a deficit originally estimated at $180 million over the current two-year budget cycle, King said Wednesday the actual figure would be closer to $171 million after adjustments to municipal revenue sharing accounts were made. The deficit took place in large part because the stock market’s poor performance over the last year failed to produce the level of capital-gains revenues originally anticipated by budget writers.
About $90 million of the current deficit is due by June 30. The governor was able to transfer a little more than $80 million from the state’s Rainy Day Fund to balance the current budget cycle. He made up the remainder by applying the bulk of $15.6 million in savings realized last month through hiring and travel freezes mandated under an executive order.
In addition to about $5.6 million remaining in savings from the executive order, King made other budget adjustments beginning July 1 that include about $60 million in funding decreases to state agencies and programs. He also was able to include about $11 million gained from unanticipated revenue increases from certain accounts such as the State Lottery.
Beyond that, King needs legislative approval to make $40 million in transfers from special revenue accounts. That includes about $10 million from the governor’s $25 million laptop computer program and $5 million from the Healthy Maine Fund. He will also require legislative approval to gain the remaining $45 million in proposed cuts that include delaying the state’s conformance with federal tax changes.
Just when lawmakers will be called back to give that approval, however, remained unclear Wednesday.
Speculation over the implications for the timing of a special legislative session, both practical and political, has run rampant in the State House since the governor made it clear last month that he believed lawmakers would need to be included to solve the budget dilemma. King continued to balk Wednesday at setting a date.
Before the session can be scheduled, the governor said it was important that the administration and lawmakers know exactly how much the executive order has saved and how much money has been received during the current fiscal year, which ends June 30. That won’t be clear until late July or August.
King said everyone needs to have a better idea of what the revenues will be in the next fiscal year as well. The Revenue Forecasting Committee is expected to shed some light on those numbers when it meets in August. Finally, the governor hopes efforts by Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan M. Collins to modify reimbursement rates for Medicare will provide an additional $56 million to Maine, although that expectation was not included in the latest budget proposal.
“So if there’s going to be a special session the earliest it would be is late in the summer or September,” King said. “It’s also possible to bring the Legislature back after the (November) elections when we’re not in midst of the election season, but prior to the new Legislature being seated. I can solve about half of this problem through executive action. I don’t think it’s possible to solve all of it because the cuts necessary would be so drastic — particularly in the areas of education and Medicaid — that I just don’t think it would be responsible when there are other options involving legislative action.”
Hoping that high profile arguments over heavy spending on social service programs will backfire on Democratic candidates for governor and the Legislature, Republicans are anxious to schedule a special session as soon as possible. Democrats would prefer to have the session after the November general elections or not at all.
House Republican Leader Joe Bruno of Raymond was obviously agitated Wednesday by what he perceived as too much politicking by Democrats to push the date of a special session past Nov. 5.
“At this point in time we should not be thinking about this as a political discussion — but that’s exactly what’s happening,” he said. “We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem.”
Assistant Senate Majority Leader Sharon Treat, D-Gardiner, said King made more sense than Republicans in reasoning that it was more important to hold a special session at a time when lawmakers had all the information needed to make a solid decision.
“There’s no point in coming in and making big policy changes and then having a different story two months later,” she said. “Besides if you look at [King’s] list, there are no quick fixes here. These are significant policy changes and it’s quite likely that any special session — before or after the election — will go on for some time.”
Anguish was always a fraud.
Gov. King needs "approval" to cut money from the Healthy Maine Fund, which formed the coalition Partnership for a Tobacco Free Maine." I say approval needs to be granted! And SOON.
Don't let the words Healthy Maine Fund scare you. They need to cut back on this group BIG time. It's not all about prescriptions, medicare and welfare.
The have formed coalitions under them that are wanting nothing but CONTROL of Maine. And using big bucks to do it. The "taxpayers" big bucks!
But doing away with a lot of "pet programs" would be a good start.
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