AUGUSTA – The Baldacci administration’s plans to tap $8 million from the state’s school renovation fund to expand Maine’s laptop computer program received some harsh scrutiny Monday from senior members of the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee.

The proposal to extend the laptop program to the state’s 160 secondary schools surfaced during the administration’s presentation on minor changes to the governor’s $160 million supplemental budget request scheduled to take effect July 1.

The laptop expansion plan is the brainchild of Education Commissioner Susan Gendron, who was unable to attend Monday’s meeting. Rebecca Wyke, the governor’s finance chief, was left to try to respond to legislators who had pointed questions related to the way the proposal had made its way to the Legislature as well as to the rationale behind the plan.

Sen. Mary Cathcart, an Orono Democrat who serves as Senate chair of the Appropriations Committee, was unusually direct in her criticism of the administration’s method of presenting the proposed $44.4 million lease-purchase agreement with Apple Computers. The language in the financial agreement could not be offered in the form of standalone legislation, Wyke said.

Maine law requires a lease-purchase agreement to be included in a state budget document to ensure that the Appropriations Committee is identified as the committee of jurisdiction in the event of future liability issues.

Under the proposal, $8 million needed to cover the program’s wiring infrastructure costs would be taken from the state’s school renovation account. Gov. John E. Baldacci has offered to replenish the renovation fund with an additional $6 million through a bond proposed for this year’s ballot.

Assuming the proposed Apple contract is authorized, Maine’s ninth-graders would begin receiving their laptops this fall, but the state would not be obligated to pay for them until the beginning of the next two-year budget cycle on July 1, 2005. The Education Department has proposed the state assume 55 percent of the laptop costs with the local school districts picking up the remaining 45 percent. The policy is not a mandate because local school districts would have the option of not participating if the laptops were deemed unaffordable.

“Given that one of the major arguments for starting this laptop program was that it was going to close the digital divide, it seems to me that if you’re shifting 45 percent of this back to the local schools and giving them an option of whether they’ll have laptops for their students, you’re right back to digital divide,” Cathcart said. “I’m just astonished that we would do that.”

Currently, the state pays the costs of more than 30,000 laptops for Maine’s seventh- and eighth-graders. Cathcart surmised that was what a lot of people had in mind when Baldacci announced he would expand the 2-year-old middle school program to the state’s high schools. The veteran state senator said the administration’s cost-sharing plan offer and the lack of a formal public hearing were simply “astonishing” so late in the legislative session.

“This is a major investment and a major shift of funds from what most of us who were working on building the renovation fund thought the money was going toward,” Cathcart said. “I would like the public to know that this is what’s being done and what the future plan is to obligate people to expand the program into the high school. I’m astonished we did not have a public hearing.”

Sen. Karl Turner, R-Cumberland and a member of the Appropriations Committee, wondered how he would explain taking $8 million for laptops from the $38 million in the school renovation account when other districts had pressing construction demands.

“We have documented a number of schools around the state that are suffering from mildew and other problems that make the learning environment very problematic for a number of individual school buildings,” Turner said. “It would seem to me that we ought to be taking care of those things first.”

In a telephone interview from their Washington, D.C., conference Monday afternoon, Gendron and Patrick Phillips, deputy state commissioner of education, responded to some of the committee members’ concerns. Phillips said the commissioner’s laptop expansion plan had the support of many school superintendents and that Gendron would be presenting more detailed information on the proposal Thursday afternoon to the Legislature’s Education Committee. He acknowledged, however, the meeting would not have the notice and formality of a public hearing.

Phillips said that the $8 million one-time withdrawal would not compromise commitments made under the school renovation fund and that the wiring infrastructure costs associated with the high school laptop program were a legitimate use of the money.

“Although I don’t know that it was ever imagined that there would be a wholesale use of the money across the entire state,” he said. “I think it was originally going to be considered on a case-by-case basis.”

Phillips said the expenditure from the fund and the planned bond initiative should not be viewed as an “either-or situation” and that the ballot measure would simply ensure that the renovation fund remains healthy in future years.

School districts are currently spending $17 million a year for instructional hardware, Phillips said, adding that Gendron believes the districts can simply redirect the money already being spent each year for laptop purchases. He said the commissioner is currently exploring every possible option for revenue assistance through grants and other resources to help school districts that may have difficulty raising their 45 percent of the laptop costs.