Appropriations panel OKs more access to budget deliberations

AUGUSTA — Pressure for more rank-and-file involvement in state budgeting brought members of the newest legislative committee face-to-face with members of the traditionally most powerful committee on Tuesday.

And in a tentative compromise, Appropriations Committee members agreed to a Rules Committee request for more access to the budget panel’s deliberations.

Without guaranteeing more than advisory status, Appropriations panelists said they would welcome joint budget hearings at which various other committees would sit in to receive departmental presentations.

The Rules Committee is expected to discuss details of the plan more fully later this week.

Several lawmakers have urged the Rules panel to consider expanding the size of the Appropriations Committee and the role that other committees have in shaping portions of the state budget.

Rank-and-file pressure for Rules Committee action is one of numerous efforts to bring about changes in the Legislature’s operations.

Advocates characterize the proposals for change as overdue reforms. The creation of the Rules Committee itself was one of the first responses by House and Senate leaders this session.

However, Appropriations panelists made clear Tuesday that they had a somewhat different motive for acceding to at least parts of the demands.

Democratic Sen. Michael D. Pearson of Enfield, a co-chairman of the budget committee, said he hoped more grass-roots involvement would generate broader acceptance of any budget package that Appropriations puts up for passage.

Legislative budget negotiators have grown “tired of going upstairs and getting beat on” by senators and representatives unfamiliar with how difficult spending or cutback decisions were reached, he said.

The plan to solicit more input from other committees has “really got some possibilities, I think, because there’d be some ownership in some of the decisions,” Pearson said.

Pearson’s analysis was echoed by Republican Rep. Judith C. Foss of Yarmouth, another Appropriations Committee member, who agreed that currently it is members of that panel who get most of the criticism for unpopular budget decisions.

“Pretty much now there are 13 bad guys,” Foss said, citing the number of Appropriations panelists. “This is going to 186 bad guys,” she added, suggesting that blame would be spread over the entire House and Senate membership.

Meanwhile, as the Appropriations panel began its deliberations on a plan for bridging a $50 million budget gap through June, Gov. John R. McKernan’s top finance adviser conceded that legal or technical problems threaten to leave it at least a couple of million dollars out of balance.

Budget chief Sawin Millett told the committee that McKernan was prepared to rely on a recurring remedy — tightening up an intermittent freeze on hiring — to produce savings to offset some of the potential shortfall during the last months of the current fiscal year.

The Appropriations Committee is hoping to complete its work on McKernan’s supplemental budget plan by Feb. 1.