Stop Rushing the Budget

Democratic and Republican legislative leaders are having trouble agreeing on whether they are having a disagreement. Democrats contend that there is bipartisan agreement on the overwhelming majority of Maine’s next biennial budget and no reason to wait much longer to pass it. Republicans say the budget is being rushed so they can be excluded.

The test for who’s right, however, is simple: Democrats can make their case by having the governor promise not to seek a special session this spring.

A little background: Legislation passed by a simple majority of lawmakers takes effect 90 days after the end of a legislative session. Legislation passed by two-thirds of lawmakers can take effect immediately. If Democrats, who are in the majority, pass a budget for the next biennium, beginning July 1, without Republican support, they will need to start the 90-day countdown by April 1. To do that, they must end the session. To complete all nonbudget work, the governor would then need to declare an extraordinary occasion and bring lawmakers back to work.

As Republicans pointed out last week, for at least the last 35 years, the typical time for passing the budget has been late April or early May, after a lot of deliberation, negotiation and compromise. Democrats have controlled both houses for almost all of that time. Putting passage of the budget into that post-April 1 time ensures more than one side of the political spectrum will be represented.

Democratic House Speaker John Richardson doesn’t see it that way, and wrote in a commentary Saturday that it was “curious that the notion of a ‘majority budget’ has become an object of derision in recent years, as if approval by the majority were a bad thing.” It is not a bad thing; it is a lesser thing, the thing you do when you can’t negotiate well enough to get a two-thirds budget.

Republicans last week reasonably offered a continuing resolution to give all lawmakers more time to work on the budget. They, of course, have a responsibility not only to talk about the budget but also to propose alternatives to what they do not like. They don’t like the lottery sale – $250 million in one-time funding – so the minimum duty they have is to find new money or cut programs by that amount.

The other big issue yet to be addressed is the Medicaid formula’s federal medical assistance percentage (FMAP). Like 23 other states, Maine will see its FMAP rate drop in the next biennium, in its case $80 million a year. The governor’s budget does not account for this drop. What’s more, it should anticipate the structural changes at the federal level that will make budgeting in Maine more difficult.

Maine has broad long-term challenges not only in Medicaid, rising at twice the rate of revenue growth, but in teacher retirement, the unfunded liability in state retirements and state health care costs. The current budget doesn’t prepare the state for any of these. Rushing the budget through on a simple-majority vote merely builds acrimony in the capitol and makes these issues harder to address.

Slow down, get it right and the votes will come.