They seriously doubt it

In politics, doubt is the minority party’s gratifying obligation. While serving the party’s interests, it also serves the public’s by forcing the majority to explain what it had been content to assert. Take two of Democratic Gov. Baldacci’s recent assertions: Maine benefits from raising $250 million through the sale of lottery proceeds for the next 10 years, and it can afford to bond $197 million in new debt. Republicans this week doubted both using an unexpected argument.

Actually, no one who looks closely at the lottery deal likes it; its support, including mine, is drawn entirely from liking the alternative less. The alternative is to chop the $250 million from the budget. You may think another alternative is to raise taxes, but that’s not easy. Without that lottery money, the budget collapses, the Democrats’ plans for passing any budget by simple majority fizzles – meaning they’ll depend on agreement from Republicans – and all the deserving and needy agencies that were hoping to raise taxes (just a little!) can forget it.

Knowing this, the Labor Committee this week voted unanimously against the lottery idea anyway, followed by a 7-5 vote in opposition by the Legal and Veterans Affairs Committee. The votes probably hurt the governor worse than his slip off those icy porch steps last week. Certainly he responded as if in pain – with three fractured ribs from the fall and a severe case of laryngitis, he whispered hoarsely that no matter what the votes were he would neither raise taxes nor cut more programs, effectively removing himself from further debate.

The Republicans’ doubt of the $197 million bond request is simple: Maine can’t afford it. It can afford, perhaps, $100 million, they say. Republicans always say Maine can’t afford whatever level of bonding Democrats introduce, but this time they have a novel way to express their alarm.

You may not know it, but a lot of people walk around the State House with two numbers in their heads: $120 million and 4.5 percent. The $120 million is the state’s debt service cost. It amounts to 4.5 percent of general fund and highway fund revenues. Maine sensibly tries to keep those payments under 5 percent of revenues because letting them grow larger worries the bond markets and restricts the state’s ability to react to new spending demands.

Here’s where the Republicans come in, specifically Rep. Sawin Millet of Waterford and Sen. Peter Mills of Cornville. Rep. Millet is a former state finance commissioner; Sen. Mills just seems to like numbers. Earlier this week, they said doubtfully, “But what about …?” And off they went counting up in a creative way other debts of state government, including the unfunded liability to the retirement account, the future costs of the retiree health insurance, the sale of the liquor business, workers’ comp costs, all kinds of budget items that previously had not been considered debt.

One serious debt that has received almost no attention is a pip, literally. Provisional Interim Payments are estimations of what Medicaid owes Maine hospitals. Starting in 1994, increased use of Medicaid left the state behind on these payments, which now amount to about $200 million, federal and state, plus the added cost for the next biennium. The governor has included the costs for the last two years and for the next biennium in his budget. The hospitals, meanwhile, are winning a lawsuit over the previous administration’s PIPs, which Maine should count on as another debt of $60 million.

In sum, the two legislators say, Maine’s annual debt payment is closer to $600 million, or about 20 percent of revenues. Some of what they counted were not general-obligation debt, which is normally what’s counted. Others, such as the sale of the liquor business, were debt in a tortured sense. Combined, they seemed to really irritate the administration, but, played well, they could do the governor a substantial favor because they are examples of what he has been trying with limited success to tell his own party. When he recovers his voice he may want to crow a little.

The governor’s message has been this: Taxpayers can’t pay more and the federal government won’t send more. On spending, Maine’s achievement with its billion-dollar Medicaid program has been to constrict it from a crippling 11 percent annual growth to a merely unsustainable 8 percent. Together, two non-frill departments, Education and Health and Human Services, account for 80 percent of revenues. The governor can now add that the state has some major debts to pay, and then he can watch the Legislature squirm for a while as it tries to solve the $250 million budget puzzle.

Without the lottery revenue, lawmakers must start to fill in the hole they’ve created. A few Democrats may be confident they can tax their way out of the problem, which they could try as the final act of their political careers. Optimistic Republicans may think they’ll find programs no one really minds cutting, and then they will learn otherwise. Several things could happen next, including a return to the lottery plan, but the doubt expressed by Republicans will already have served the state by forcing legislators to think beyond their committees and make the total budget balance. This is an unattractive exercise but it should not be avoided.

“Who never doubted,” Ambrose Bierce wrote, “never half believed. Where doubt is, there truth is.” Truth would be too much to expect, but a little understanding of the tightening squeeze on Maine’s budget would be welcome.

Todd Benoit is the editorial page editor of the Bangor Daily News.