AUGUSTA – The state agency that oversees Maine’s Clean Election Act said it needs more money to ensure public funding for candidates in next year’s legislative elections.

In a memo to state lawmakers and Gov. John Baldacci, the Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices estimates that it will need $5.4 million for the 2004 campaigns.

That’s $1.5 million more than the $3.9 million the agency expects to have on hand next year.

The funding request assumes more candidates will run for the Legislature and that the number seeking public financing will go up. Experts believe three-quarters of State House candidates will seek public funding.

Baldacci is reserving judgment on the bid for more money, said spokesman Lee Umphrey.

And key lawmakers said it is too soon to tell how the Legislature will respond, although they noted that the public-financing program is well-entrenched and extremely popular in the Legislature.

“The governor believes that there are many competing needs, and because we have limited resources, we need to first establish priorities,” Umphrey said.

Adopted by the voters in a 1996 referendum, the Clean Election Act provides public financing for legislative and gubernatorial candidates who raise a specified number of $5 “qualifying contributions,” which go into the Clean Election Fund.

That fund, which the ethics commission uses to pay for publicly financed campaigns, gets most of its money from the Legislature, but lawmakers have raided the fund in recent years to pay for other programs.

The Legislature puts $2 million into the Clean Election Fund every year, and it is scheduled to do so again next January. Coupled with a cash balance of $1.7 million and other smaller sources of cash, that should provide $3.9 million for the 2004 campaigns.

The fund first became available to candidates in 2000. That year, only 33 percent of the general-election candidates for the Senate and the House relied on public financing.

That percentage almost doubled in 2002, when 62 percent of the candidates in legislative races got their money from the fund.

The commission projects that there will be more legislative candidates in 2004 than in 2002 and that 76 percent of the candidates running in 2004 are likely to use public financing.