Lawmakers struggle to finish budget by deadline

AUGUSTA – Striving to meet the governor’s end-of-the-day deadline for a vote on his proposed $5.3 billion state budget, members of the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee were finding it increasingly difficult Friday to reach consensus on the bill that seemed to change with each passing hour.

Members of the Legislature’s Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Committee surprised the eight Democrats and five Republicans on the budget panel Friday by submitting the third major revision to the IF&W department’s budget in less a week. Each of the three proposals was designed to restore jobs and services being cut under Baldacci’s budget plan.

The first IF&W committee proposal called for charging canoeists and kayakers a $6 registration fee for each watercraft. That idea was abandoned for a plan to create multiple licenses for activities that currently require only one permit. For instance, fishermen would have been required to buy three or four permits during the year instead of just one as they do now.

On Friday, IF&W committee co-chairman Rep. Matthew Dunlap, D-Old Town, ditched that initiative and instead proposed an across-the-board $3 increase on all licenses issued by the department. His measure also called for raising the annual registration fee on ATVs by $13 to $30.

The Appropriations Committee’s Democratic leaders, Sen. Mary Cathcart of Orono and Rep. Joe Brannigan of Portland, were expected to follow Gov. John E. Baldacci’s edict to hold all fee increases in the budget to an absolute minimum and were carefully weighing Dunlap’s plan Friday afternoon.

Throughout the day, Democrats and Republicans on the budget panel alternated meeting together and apart as they attempted to resolve a number of questions on major components of the administration’s two-year budget package. Those key parts include the administration’s plan to privatize the state’s liquor sales and its proposal to refinance the state pension fund. Both proposals have been advanced as cost-saving measures that could shave more than $200 million off the state’s $1.2 billion deficit between anticipated tax revenues and spending requests.

Another potential stumbling block was the administration’s failure to provide a specific timetable for closing an additional $48 million shortfall identified last month by the State Revenue Forecasting Committee. Republicans on the Appropriations Committee were seeking clear-cut language in the budget bill on that point and also wanted the governor to provide more details on his proposed budget stabilization fund. The stabilization fund was devised to ensure that in better economic times the state will use new revenues to more quickly pay back the debt on the pension fund, thereby reducing total interest and administrative costs. Republicans, however, have said that without stronger language, surplus revenues purportedly dedicated to that end could actually be used for some other purpose.

In almost every budget account, the Appropriations Committee has been attempting to maintain state services with department budgets that are no higher than those set by the Legislature in 2001. That goal has been particularly difficult for the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, which would be forced to lay off 27 employees from its staff of 320 under Baldacci’s original budget proposal.

Dunlap told lawmakers Friday that his committee’s proposals would generate $6 million over the budget cycle that could save 20 IF&W positions slated for elimination. The ATV registration fee hike to $30 – the same as snowmobiles – would generate $450,000 but the proposal does not include guarantees for increased enforcement of ATV laws by wardens.

The measure’s failure to address that point infuriated Jim Lane, a Fairfield officer of ATV of Maine, who said the Legislature was doing nothing more than launching a money grab for the state’s general fund at the expense of ATV owners.

“Matt Dunlap has finally put a knife between my shoulder blades,” he said. “And I’m tired of it. They’re going to destroy a major recreational activity because landowners aren’t going to stand for this unless there’s some additional law enforcement.”