Budget bill OK expected today

AUGUSTA — Gov. Angus King’s $6.4 million supplemental budget and state employee reduction plan received all but final approval Tuesday night after affirmative votes in the House and Senate.

The budget bill is slated for final enactment this morning in both houses after debate that is expected to reveal minor opposition to the proposal. The bill gives King new powers to achieve $45 million in savings by eliminating up to 1,000 state jobs.

Assistant House Floor Leader Elizabeth Mitchell, D-Vassalboro, predicted most members in the House will support the latest compromise creating King’s Productivity Realization Task Force, a panel of public- and private-sector management consultants who will scrutinize state employee functions for greater efficiency.

Because the budget bill is an emergency measure, it will require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature — 101 votes in the House and 24 in the Senate. The Senate gave the bill all-but-final approval Tuesday night in a 25-6 vote. Mitchell believed that a House decision to support the bill will follow today with 101 votes.

“We see this as a unique opportunity to responsibly reduce the number of state positions in a process that will be new to everyone,” she said. “It will allow us to reshape government in a more efficient manner.”

Under a compromise worked out by King’s staff, the Attorney General’s Office and members of the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee, the governor could cut spending unilaterally during the next fiscal year after submiting his proposal to the Legislature for approval. Lawmakers would then have three days to either accept King’s plan or come up with a suitable alternative. All programs and departments would be subject to the governor’s budget ax under the plan, with the exception of General Purpose Aid and municipal revenue sharing funds.

Much of the debate that stalled the plan for several weeks centered on the constitutional issue of whether the Legislature can delegate its powers to the governor. Maine Attorney General Andrew Ketterer said the Legislature is constitutionally barred from allowing the governor to eliminate agencies or programs on his own authority.

The bill’s new language approved Tuesday by amendment in the Senate prevents the governor from eliminating programs, but enables him to shrink state expenses through the curtailment of spending allotments. The practice has been used by governors in the past when tax revenues have not met budget predictions.

Sen. Susan Longley, D-Liberty, was not comfortable with the perception that the Legislature may be voting some of its delegated responsibilities away, and sought unsuccessfully a motion to request a “solemn occasion” from the Maine Supreme Judicial Court to interpret the bill’s constitutionality.

“I believe it’s a conservative move to err on the side of caution,” she said. “This is our one chance as a legislative branch to fast-track this bill as amended to the high court for a decision on its constitutionality. Maybe it’s not a constitutional crisis, but I say err on the side of caution.”

Sen. Sean Faircloth, D-Bangor, later said there was still considerable confusion over what the bill would do. He characterized the Senate’s majority vote as a decision reached for “political reasons” that amounted to an “abdication of basic legislative authority.”

“The power of the purse is the fundamental constitutional power of the legislative branch,” he said. “Next time the governor will ask for carte blanche over $90 million to $100 million.”

The criticisms were dispelled by Sen. Dana Hanley, R-South Paris, who said the Legislature must assume part of the responsibility for the creation of the bill in the first place. As co-chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Hanley reminded the Senate that his panel had requested all of the Legislature’s joint committees to return with flat-funded budgets for their respective departments of oversight.

“Unfortunately, the committees came back and said `we can’t cut,”‘ he said.