AUGUSTA – Dick Grotton thinks Maine diners deserve a break today.

So when the chief lobbyist for the Maine Restaurant Association attends this afternoon’s work session of legislative budget writers, he will argue vehemently against a King administration proposal to hike the state sales tax on meals in many restaurants by 2 cents.

On Friday, members of the governor’s staff met with the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee to briefly discuss their solution for plugging a $48.7 million hole in the administration’s proposed two-year, $5 billion state budget. Kay Rand, chief of staff for Gov. Angus S. King, said the governor planned to adopt a meal tax increase approved by the Legislature’s Taxation Committee.

In his initial budget proposal, King wanted to raise the tax on meals and lodging in Maine from 7 cents to 7.5 cents on the dollar to raise about $7 million a year, half of which would be dedicated for tourism promotion in the state. The increase would affect all motels, hotels and inns as well as restaurants where alcoholic beverages are served. All other restaurants that do not serve alcoholic beverages would continue to impose a 5-cent sales tax.

But in an effort to bolster declining revenues by an additional $14 million over the budget cycle, King has abandoned the half-cent food-and-lodging tax increase on establishments that sell alcohol in favor of an alternative requiring all restaurants, including fast-food and take out restaurants, to assess a 7 cent tax on meals, regardless of whether they have liquor licenses.

Grotton said the governor’s decision to adopt the unanimous recommendation of the Taxation Committee was designed to help tourism, but he insisted the majority of the additional revenues were aimed at supporting the Business Equipment Tax Rebate program and the Municipal Revenue Sharing Program.

“Both programs are worthy, but their cost should not be borne by adding 40 percent to the tax on Happy Meals, Whoppers, fried clams, roast beef sandwiches or pizza,” Grotton said. “The cost should fall on all businesses through funding from broad-based general tax revenue. … So our board of directors isn’t too damn happy about either plan. Which side of my industry does he want to crucify?”

King said he wasn’t surprised at Grotton’s objections to the tax hike and emphasized the idea really originated with the Taxation Committee – not the administration.

“So we decided to go along with that,” King said.

Citing data presented at this year’s Governor’s Conference on Tourism, Grotton argued that if King really wanted to help tourism, he would raise the state sales tax since retail sales account for 37 percent of all tourism spending, or $1.9 billion. But King reasoned that boosting the sales tax to reach the level of revenue needed would probably amount to less than one quarter of 1 percent, too small to justify an across-the-board increase. A half-cent on the sales tax, he said, raises about $60 million annually, which would be excessive.

“This proposal submitted Friday wasn’t our first choice,” he said. “The new proposal is to accept the Taxation Committee’s recommendation.

In addition to the $14 million raised under the new meals tax, King plans to resubmit a $9 million transfer from the Fund for a Healthy Maine offered in an earlier emergency supplemental budget proposal that was rejected by the Appropriations Committee. The remaining $25.7 million needed to balance the budget, he said, was identified through departmental and program cuts, reprojections of Medicaid costs and lower than expected expenditures.