Task force lesson

It is amusing to read news articles reporting the growing frustration of Gov. King’s Task Force to Downsize State Employees. I was particularly tickled when the Bangor Daily News reported that the state commissioner of agriculture had to explain to the task force why it was that he could only cut less than a million from his $5 million budget. He had to give the task force a lesson in state and federal funding.

It was pointed out to them that 75 percent of the employees in the department were funded by the federal government or grants that were non-general fund revenues. The task force has also discovered that Department of Transportation employees are paid out of “dedicated funds” which cannot be used for other purposes.

Apparently when the task force was conceived the “conceivers” had very little knowledge of how and from what source many state agencies were funded, otherwise they would never have been able to estimate $45-$60 million in saving from downsizing the agencies.

Apparently no one on Gov. King’s staff or the State Personnel Office explained to him that it was not likely that his department heads could downsize their operations enough to raze that kind of money and still provide viable public services. Or perhaps Gov. King was advised about these problems and he decided that his priority was to get his budget through the legislature.

It was clear to most people in the state, including members of the Legislature, that Gov. King was pushing through a budget which could not be completely funded without taking Draconian measures that would cut public services. His position was that he had to come up with at least $45 million in order to provide for the first installment of a $70 million machinery tax give away to industry. The major beneficiaries of the tax subsidy (out of state paper companies) have experienced the highest profits of the decade during the last year and a half. In spite of this circumstance, Gov. King got his budget approved and the machinery tax is already law.

Now we see Gov. King’s task force of “can-do” people running around desperately looking for ways out of their self-made bog. They are now convinced that the state will have to do away with entire agencies in order to acquire the needed funds to balance the budget.

It is hard not to believe that Gov. King was not advised of the entire situation before he proposed his budget and that he made a decision that it would further his political aspirations more by providing the $70 million tax subsidy than it would to have either wholesale layoffs of state employees or a budget deficit. In either case, the losers in this game will be the people of this state. Paul Hanson Old Town