Laptop plan may have received private funds

AUGUSTA – Efforts to date by the King administration to raise $15 million in private contributions for the state’s laptop computer fund have been somewhat anemic. But Gov. Angus S. King hinted Tuesday that the cash finally may be starting to trickle in.

“I’m going to have some announcements on that in the next week or so,” King said.

King’s Learning Technology Fund has taken its share of abuse from the Legislature, which last year slashed the account from $50 million to $30 million and also claimed an additional $3 million the fund had earned in interest. Now the governor has proposed withdrawing another $5 million from the fund to help close a projected $248 million shortfall in the state budget.

In addition to the state’s $25 million contribution to the fund, King is charged with raising $15 million from private sources to ensure that the fund remains an endowment, with the interest earned on the principal paying for his idea to provide each seventh- and eighth-grader with portable, Internet-capable personal computers.

In March 2000, King laid out a plan for creating a $65 million endowment – with $50 million from the state and $15 million from private sources – that would generate enough interest to provide all Maine seventh- through 12th-graders with their own portable, Internet-capable computing devices by 2007. In the original scheme, King would have given the machines to the students.

In the face of significant opposition, a laptop task force was convened. Composed of lawmakers, educators and technology experts, the panel concluded the most effective course was to target the machines at the middle school grades, starting with seventh- and eighth-graders, and then expand into high school if money permitted. The group also recommended that instead of giving the machines to students, the schools should control access and let students sign them out and take them home like library books.

In recent weeks, many legislators are starting to have serious doubts about a long-term commitment to the laptop program. Petitions are being circulated to build support for a raid on the fund in an effort to divert the money to health programs that were curtailed or eliminated under the governor’s most recent supplemental budget package.

During a joint meeting Tuesday afternoon with the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee, the Education Committee was supposed to offer its recommendation on King’s proposal to transfer $5 million from the fund to provide revenue for the supplemental budget. Sen. Betty Lou Mitchell, an Etna Republican who co-chairs the Education Committee, requested more time because the members of her panel were deadlocked over how to proceed.

“Half of the Education Committee members present supported the transfer of $5 million and the other half were unwilling to provide an implicit endorsement of the Maine Learning Technology Fund initiative,” she said.

Mitchell also said that some of her committee members wanted to wait until next week when members of the state Revenue Forecasting Committee are scheduled to reassess their initial state revenue projections. Many of the state’s leading economists are beginning to suspect that Maine’s economic outlook may not be as gloomy as originally thought. Should the panel revise its projections upward, there might not be a need to dip into the laptop account. Sen. Jill Goldthwait, an independent from Bar Harbor and co-chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, agreed to give the Education Committee an additional week or two to report its final decision on the laptop fund.