Residents sending Baldacci suggestions for budget cuts

AUGUSTA – Maine residents have suggested combining departments, selling state land and across-the-board spending cuts in response to Gov. John Baldacci’s call for ideas on eliminating a projected $1 billion budget shortfall.

In his Jan. 8 inaugural address, Baldacci encouraged people to submit their ideas for budget cuts. Dozens have responded with an e-mail or a handwritten letter to the governor, said Baldacci spokesman Lee Umphrey.

Baldacci, who must submit his 2004-2005 budget to the Legislature by Feb. 7, has said he wants to close the estimated $1 billion gap without raising taxes.

Baldacci has talked about merging the Department of Human Services and the Department of Behavioral and Developmental Services. And the governor said last week that he wants educators to find ways to shift money in their budgets from administrative costs to classroom instruction.

There has been no shortage of ideas from regular Mainers, either.

A Republican from North Waterboro told the governor to visit Maine’s Christian schools to learn how to operate an educational system on a shoestring. A Saco man said spending and revenues over the last 10 years should be reviewed because too much was spent in the boom times of the late 1990s. And another writer suggested abolishing county government.

Someone else suggested combining the departments of Agriculture, Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, and Conservation.

Other suggestions included reducing the size of the Legislature by a third and selectively selling off state-owned land.

A Biddeford man proposed a seemingly simple solution that carried not-so-simple political implications. “To balance the budget, it is very simple,” he wrote. “Cut the budget of every account equally.”

Next week, the administration plans to launch a new Web-based, interactive tool that will make it easier for people to send in their ideas and give them updated information on the deficit, Umphrey said.

The governor wants to create an “electronic town hall” to provide a forum for budget debate. It will be designed in such a way that those who get on the computer can make their own “cuts” from specific departments and watch the deficit shrink, Umphrey said.