Raise or raid

Maine lawmakers certainly made budgeting simpler last week by approving just the first part of the state’s two-part biennial budget. But even as they spent down the state’s savings account, eviscerated its technology fund for students and created a larger funding gap for the next legislature, they left tough questions about funding for ongoing programs, taxes, health care and education.

No one likes Maine’s high taxes, and the Senate this session had an opportunity in its opposition to new ones to give Maine leadership in making careful but needed program cuts. Instead, it led the charge against the Rainy Day Fund – Maine’s savings account – and against the politically vulnerable technology fund. Rather than providing Maine with long-term structural savings that would lead to a more attractive business climate, these one-time cuts merely delayed the problem. Delayed it and allowed it to grow over the next two years.

That limits what lawmakers can do with the second part of the budget. New programs fall under Part 2 but so do existing ones that have been promised money or have existed on one-time funding. So, for instance, the reclassification of corrections guards, security changes at Maine’s courts and new collective bargaining agreements for state workers are in Part 2. So are such basic costs as lease space for the Conservation Department and an unfunded liability in the state’s retiree health insurance.

The attorney general’s civil rights teams are in there and so is a National Guard scholarship program begun by the Legislature last year. And the second year of General Purpose Aid for local schools needs to be accounted for in the Part 2 budget along with funding for the university system. Together, these programs and others like them add between $30 million and $45 million to the budget.

But that’s not all. Some of the new bills still to be funded include a $4.5 million appropriation to expand access to Maine’s technical colleges, which provide training and retraining to meet a large demand for skilled workers. Another would commit $10 million for Maine’s growing biomedical industry, which is expected to leverage $170 million in outside funds and create 250 jobs. Yet another would fund a broad scholarship program to provide opportunities for college students to remain in Maine.

All of these new proposals lead to better jobs and an improved tax base for Maine, but all of them cost money and Maine can’t pay for the programs it already has. The remaining projected balance after the Legislature finished with Part 1 was essentially zero. Just to fund the existing costs means new taxes, a return to Part 1 to cut already approved programs or gimmicks.

Gov. King, who was left out of the budget debate as it bounced between the House and Senate, warned loudly that the course being taken by the Legislature would put Maine in a financial corner. That’s where the state is now. A debate over the remaining options could be positive for lawmakers, but it would have been better if they hadn’t put Maine in this position to begin with.