GOP criticizes lack of budget bill data

AUGUSTA – The spirit of cooperation that defined much of last year’s legislative session appeared to be evaporating Wednesday as House Republicans accused the governor’s office of intentionally delaying the release of important budget information.

Gaveling lawmakers to order on the first day of the new legislative session, House Speaker Patrick Colwell reminded the representatives that they had passed three budget bills last year.

On the strength of that collaboration, Colwell said all parties should be able to act on Democratic Gov. John E. Baldacci’s pending $109 million supplemental budget request.

“We worked together in bipartisan fashion to get the job done, and we will again,” predicted the Gardiner Democrat.

The administration has slated a series of public hearings on its supplemental budget request before the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee beginning Tuesday, Jan. 13, with the goal of wrapping up late Friday, Jan. 16.

No draft bill was available Wednesday detailing how the $108,597,060 gap in the current fiscal year budget would be closed.

Although the governor delivered a balanced budget to lawmakers last June, a series of bookkeeping errors at the Department of Human Services that went undiscovered for years was identified through an external audit during the summer, forcing the governor to recalculate the state’s two-year tax-and-spending package.

Baldacci has proposed using about $52 million in surplus from other accounts and federal relief funds to help eliminate the deficit, but lawmakers remain uneasy about the administration’s plans to slice another $57 million from the state’s various Medicaid programs and other state departments.

Despite promises by the administration to deliver the detailed supplemental budget bill by Friday, GOP legislators were angry they did not have at least a draft version of the plan in hand Wednesday.

Rep. David Trahan, R-Waldoboro, attacked Baldacci’s financial team for failing to provide specific budget information in a timely manner.

“Nobody even knows what’s in that bill and we’ve already scheduled a public hearing – that’s not good process,” he said. “We need to slow things down, see the bill, comprehend it for a few days, and let the public have comment. This strategy is being used to stifle the public comment process and, as a legislator, I do not like it.”

House Republican Leader Joe Bruno of Raymond agreed with Trahan and suggested the Baldacci administration should accept much of the responsibility for the discontent among GOP members whose votes will be needed to pass the supplemental budget with a two-thirds majority.

The two-thirds vote is needed for the measure to take effect immediately. Without the supermajority vote, the supplemental funding could not be made available until after the end of the fiscal year, which is June 30.

“We’re very concerned,” Bruno said. “This is a different session than the last time around. It seems like the administration is now not releasing bills in a timely manner so that we don’t know what’s in them to ask questions. It’s all about what they ‘think’ things are going to be like. The Legislature is a separate branch of government and we need to be able to ask the right questions, so people have a right to be concerned.”

Lee Umphrey, Baldacci’s spokesman, dismissed much of the Republican criticism, emphasizing there was “nothing unusual” about the time frame envisioned for printing and distributing the bill or scheduling its necessary public hearing.

“It’s been an open process and there’s been no attempt to circumvent the process, and to suggest there is any intent to do so is incorrect,” Umphrey said.

Sen. Karl Turner, R-Cumberland, sided with the governor’s office, saying he did not believe the public hearing on the bill would be affected adversely by the legislation’s release Friday. A member of the Appropriations Committee, Turner said the administration must be sure of its budget calculations before releasing details on remedial recommendations.

“Putting a bill together does take some time,” he said. “There’s not enough detail in some of the top line figures [already provided by the administration] to ask spiffy questions. At this juncture, I plan to defer questions until I have more detail.”