As the state’s newspapers reported this past weekend, business as usual at the State Capitol was interrupted last week with yet another press conference to present yet another bond bill to yet another enthusiastic crowd of supporters. This particular one proposed to borrow money to fund restoration of cultural landmarks in Maine’s towns and cities, but it could just as easily have been promoting bonds for jobs creation or land preservation or pollution cleanup. The sentiment, you see, is always the same: look at all the wonderful things we can do with bonded money, with a sudden infusion of cash that we don’t have to fit into the state budget and don’t have to pay for. At least not right away.

Bond fever has struck the State House in a big way. So central to legislative life has it suddenly become that the Appropriations Committee is taking a few days away from budget matters this week to hold hearings on the countless bond proposals being put forward by legislators and the governor. The mood in the building has suddenly brightened. Here, at last, is the chance to spend money without tax increases, without cuts to popular social services, without exhaustive negotiations and compromises on the budget. This week, for a while at least, everything is possible again.

And why not? The state’s bonded debt is low by national standards, interest rates are low as well, making borrowing more attractive, and having gone through the last legislative session without a bond issue we can afford to borrow more than usual. The governor, in fact, proposes to borrow nearly $200 million. Republicans, a bit feverish themselves, have signaled a willingness to negotiate.

Bond fever may be broken, however, by a bracing dose of reality delivered by the sharp mind and pen of state senator and State House sage Peter Mills, an 11-year veteran of the Legislature. In a memo delivered to colleagues last week, Sen. Mills laid bare, in four clearly written pages, the truth about Maine’s debt problem. State debt is only 4 percent of revenue? Guess again.

Most people equate the state’s total debt with the state’s bonded debt, which is the long list of proposed borrowing that voters are asked to approve at the polls every so often. The state owes some $400 million in such debt, but as Mills makes clear, that is only a portion of the money the state owes.

There is, for instance, the issue of the money owed to the Maine State Retirement System. The state has made contributions to the state’s pension plan every year, but not at the pace that the liability has grown. The state, in fact, owes the pension system $3 billion on top of what it pays annually. In the late 1990s, budget surpluses allowed a more aggressive payment schedule on this debt, but the Baldacci administration, in both the last biennial budget and this one, has cut current spending on this debt by lengthening the payment schedule to its constitutional limit. The extra cost of this longer payoff is well over a billion additional dollars over the next 23 years.

The state is also well behind on its payments on the health insurance liability for state employees and teachers, who have a portion of their health insurance premiums paid for them by the state in retirement. The state set up a fund to begin paying off this additional debt, estimated at $1.2 billion, back in the flush 1990s, but the Baldacci administration drained the fund, which had accumulated $88 million, in order to balance the last biennial budget.

Then there is the Government Facilities Authority. Never heard of it? You should have, because in the past six years it has borrowed, without your vote, nearly $200 million. Established to fund the construction and renovation of courthouses and government buildings, it has become an all-purpose deficit spending tool which is proposing, in the current budget, to borrow another $9 million, this time for repairs and maintenance of government buildings, an expense which, until now, had always been paid for as a regular budgeted item.

Last, but not least, is the governor himself, by now an old hand at paying tomorrow for spending done today. In the last budget, he sold off the 10 years of $30 million-a-year revenue from the state’s liquor business for a one-time payment of $125 million. He now proposes to bond out 10 years of $40 million-a-year revenue from the state lottery, for a one-time payment of $250 million. In sum, if he succeeds, the governor will have given up for a decade $700 million in future revenue for one-time payments of $375 million. The liquor store money, by the way, has already been spent.

There’s more (we owe the state’s hospitals another $70 million for reasons too complicated to go into here, for instance), but that is probably enough make fiscal reality a bit more clear. By Sen. Mills’ calculations, the state’s total debt “exceeds 20 percent of annual revenue, five times the amount commonly publicized.” Is it any wonder that Moody’s Investors Service is debating a downgrade in the state’s bond rating out of concern for our poor fiscal health? With this level of debt, and a looming $700 million deficit, how likely would you be to invest in Maine’s troubling fiscal future?

Within the thick walls of the State House, though, insulated from fiscal reality, bond fever continues un-checked. For elected officials, bringing home to the people wondrous new projects without having to raise their taxes or cut favorite programs is simply too good a deal to pass up.

How to pay for it all? Well, we’ll deal with that down the road, once the fever has broken.

Rep. Stephen Bowen represents Camden and Rockport in the Maine House of Representatives and serves on the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee.