The recent charge by lawmakers that they were deceived by the governor’s office over the leasing of the wholesale portion of Maine’s liquor business is silly and destructive. This is a well-worn debate in Maine, a 30-year tradition of lengthy discussion on a subject all lawmakers should know well by now. Any legislator who didn’t understand the trade-offs in the debate generally or get specific numbers for the agreement in the current budget wasn’t paying attention.

Reps. Joseph Bruno and Peter Mills, both influential, five-term Republican lawmakers, are aghast that the plan they approved has occurred. “We’re not going to let him get away with these promises anymore,” Rep. Bruno said of the governor’s assurance that he would get a good deal on the lease of Maine’s wholesale business. Rep. Mills heard a radio reporter’s taped notes from last Feb. 17 on the governor’s assurance and called him “astonishingly ill-informed.”

Discussion of whether to sell the state’s liquor business began in the early 1970s; through the typical pace of government, the final portion of the retail business was sold last year. The wholesale side, instead of being sold, will be leased for 10 years. The Martignetti Co. of Massachusetts had the winning lease bid of $125 million immediately – the amount booked by the governor and the Legislature in the current budget – and several million dollars over the next decade based on sales. The current annual net profit of the wholesale liquor business in Maine is approximately $26 million.

The governor’s office has been clear that leasing the wholesale business was primarily intended to bridge a budget gap without raising taxes. What lawmakers had to determine in voting for this measure was whether the benefit from having $125 million up front was worth the loss of 10 years worth of revenue, which was expected to total of $260 million over the time period. But the value of money changes with time. The governor’s office reports that it assumed a 6 percent discount rate, making the annual payments worth in net present value $191 million and the up-front funding worth nearly $224 million, for a benefit to the state of $32.5 million.

The 6 percent rate seems high considering the current prime rate. But even if the discount rate is lower, the calculation remains a net benefit to the state, and there are some other factors as well – Martignetti will locate in Maine and pay business, sales, payroll and alcohol taxes here, worth approximately $27 million over the decade. The difference is not a loss of $100 million, as has been reported, but an expected gain of about $60 million.

These are not difficult numbers and they are easily obtained. Any legislator with a telephone could have had them before voting. Any of the legislators could have suggested an alternative way of filling the $125 million hole in the budget if they had wanted to hold onto the liquor business. None did, so their criticism now is entirely misplaced.

This whole debate, inflamed by the press, is a distraction to the much larger challenges described last night by Gov. Baldacci in his State of the State address. Playing politics with a decision made nearly a year ago is divisive and harmful when the real budget work has only begun.