AUGUSTA – If the state is ever going make budget shortfalls a thing of the past, it needs a spending cap holding any budget increase to no more than 75 percent of personal income growth, Republican gubernatorial candidate Peter Cianchette said Tuesday.

In a State House news conference, Cianchette said he would impose such a cap if elected governor.

Just last week, members of the Maine Consensus Economic Forecasting Commission predicted the state’s personal income would increase by no more than 4 percent during the fiscal year that will begin July 1, 2003.

If those projections are on target, Cianchette’s formula would not approve any budget that carried an overall increase greater than 3 percent.

Emphasizing that state government spending has grown by nearly 80 percent since 1992, Cianchette said his cap would have saved taxpayers about $2.4 billion if it had been in place during the last decade.

Cianchette blamed the growth in the state budget on majority Democrats who have held control of the House and Senate for most of the past 10 years.

“It’s unacceptable to have state spending increase at a rate that not only exceeds inflation, but also the annual growth in Maine’s personal income,” Cianchette said. “For too long, the thinking at the State House has been that the budget can be all things to all people at all times with little regard to the people who are paying the bills: the Maine taxpayer.”

As the Legislature prepares for a special session to confront a $200 million-plus budget shortfall, members of the Appropriation Committee will meet today to review the latest budget developments.

Cianchette, a former state representative from South Portland, said the biggest part of the state’s spending problems stemmed from past legislatures that treated Maine taxpayers as if they were contributing to the lawmakers’ “own personal ATM machine.”

“Maine people work hard to pay their taxes, and Maine government has to work just as hard to spend their money efficiently and wisely,” he said. “A Cianchette administration will set priorities and we will make no assumption that something ‘has’ to be funded, and we will demand greater accountability for the money that’s being spent. We will control state government’s budget so that Maine people have more control over theirs.”

In addition to calling for a hold on the expansion of the budget by linking the increases to personal income growth, Cianchette said Tuesday he is also forming a cost-containment task force to establish priorities for state spending. Although Cianchette would not identify which areas of state spending he thought should be reigned in, he insisted that education and health care would be “priorities” in his administration.

Both areas represent more than 75 percent of the total budget.

“I’m pleased to announce that Jinger Duryea, president of C.N. Brown, and Kevin Hancock, president of Hancock Lumber, have agreed to spearhead this effort for me,” he said.

Cianchette happened to run into Gov. Angus S. King during the news conference and took a few moments to explain his budget cap to the independent, who is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term. King said he had made similar proposals during his administration, only to be rebuffed by the Legislature.

“Some limit needs to be found and some mechanism, such as Peter is suggesting, I think makes some sense,” King said. “How can I say it doesn’t make sense? I proposed it twice.”