That Augusta Melody

If, as one staffer suggested, the fight this week over the Legislature’s own budget was a dress rehearsal for the larger debate over the state budget, the possibility of a stinker of a show this spring – The Capeman comes to Maine – is a real possibility. Or lawmakers could salvage that unhappy performance by taking a couple of good ideas from both political sides and develop them together, demonstrating leadership while lowering the cost of running the government.

Rather than pick a fight with the Legislature, Gov. John Baldacci left it alone in his larger state budget, and allowed House and Senate members to confront the fact that their budget was scheduled for a 12 percent increase while the rest of state government was flat-funded or worse. Legislative leaders solved the problem Tuesday by squabbling, a couple of minority Republicans walked out of a meeting and majority Dem-ocrats passed a Democratic House version of a new budget that cut the increase to 1.5 percent.

The final cuts to bring the $53 million two-year budget down to $48.9 million included cutting two House jobs, eliminating longevity raises, cutting (we hope only delaying) an office that would look for ways to improve government efficiency and eliminating a cost-of-living raise for lawmakers. And two interesting ideas, neither entirely new, emerged from the caucuses.

Republicans asked whether most legislative staff could work only 10 months, taking the summers off and saving millions. Democrats naturally said this would be impossible; it would drive good people out of government; it would delay too much of the badly needed work that is accomplished; it would make hiring new people for these much harder. All of that might happen, or it might be that these 10-month jobs would become uniquely attractive to, say, parents of school-age children who could afford to lose a little salary to gain a lot of time in the summer. That would make it family-friendly and attractive to many, even Democrats. Or a part of the summer could be used, as it is for teachers, as a time for training and further education, which would make these jobs attractive to the more ambitious. Such a large change shouldn’t be made in the course of a single legislative meeting, but it is well worth considering further.

House Democrats, for their part, are floating a way that could make the GOP idea work, and it too deserves study. They are considering a change from the current system of fully formalizing bills before committees see them to concept bill drafting, which, as the name describes, would present only outlines at first. The committees could then ask that the bills be further developed or vote to kill them outright. Currently, bills are fully researched, checked against statutes for conflicts and put into language that meets a legal standard before being considered, costing an average of $10,000 a bill, according to supporters of the change.

Then approximately 70 percent of those bills are killed in committee. Concept drafting would save time and resources; it would allow legislative committees to indicate whether they had interest in a bill before staff put a lot of effort into preparing it. It would reduce the number of bills that were filed simply to make a point or for lawmakers to satisfy a single constituent or see their names in print.

Many states use concept bill drafting and there are several ways to do it. New York, for instance, sends it through a special committee and then to a legal-services unit. Maine could pick the process that worked best here. The point is that it would be an attempt to reduce government costs by actually reducing government work, not simply demanding that employees do more with less. It might make possible the 10-month schedule proposed by Republicans.

And the spectacle of two parties cooperating on ways to make government more efficient would get boffo reviews.