Majority budget begins to unravel House speaker tells Maine lawmakers to go home until Monday

AUGUSTA – Grumbling over the Democratic majority budget began Thursday during a morning meeting of the party’s House members, and by 2 p.m. legislative leaders had to throw in the towel.

“We think we have the votes, but we don’t know that we have the votes,” said House Majority Leader Glenn Cummings of Portland.

With a significant number of 33 House budget amendments still to be printed and the outcome of his party’s budget vote in doubt, House Speaker John Richardson, D-Brunswick, sent the representatives home for the Easter weekend and told them to return to work at 10 a.m. Monday.

Ever since the $5.8 billion, two-year budget proposal was passed 8-5 in the wee hours of Saturday morning by Democratic members of the Appropriations Committee, it has come under mounting criticism from House Democrats. Three days of meetings culminated Thursday with Democratic leaders conceding that two comparatively small but high-profile issues within the tax-and-spending package would have to be abandoned.

A proposed $10 fee on canoes and kayaks that would have generated about $2.5 million for the state will be stricken from the majority budget, according to Cummings. And a purported oversight that increased the minimum fine for failure to wear a seat belt from $60 to $212 also will be tossed overboard after the Maine Chiefs of Police Association complained the increased fine was too high for a first offense. As a result, the Democratic budget will be amended to include a new scale of fines for seat belt violators that will remain unchanged for a first offense, increase to $125 for a second offense and to $250 for a third infraction.

Whether that’s all of the changes likely to take place with the Democratic package remains to be seen. Another key component of the majority budget is its dependence on a state revenue bond allowing the state to borrow up to $450 million to balance the state budget and pay down debt on the state retirement system. One Democratic House member told her fellow lawmakers Thursday that many people in her district did not like the idea of the state borrowing large sums of money to pay its bills. At least two Democrats on Thursday were vowing not to vote for the current budget proposal.

Democrats hold 76 seats in the House to the Republicans’ 73. The entire membership reaches 151 with the inclusion of one unenrolled member and one Green Independent, both of whom are more inclined to vote with Democrats than with Republicans. The loss of only three affirmative votes would imperil the Democratic budget plan.

“Therefore we can’t afford to lose any votes, and we seem to have two people who are really entrenched, and we have another member who is going to Paris, so we kind of have to work around that,” Cummings said. “That’s really how close it is.”

Rep. Eddie Dugay, D-Cherryfield, said the Democratic meeting he attended Thursday morning revealed the depth of dissension in the ranks. He was surprised to see normally timid freshman lawmakers stand up and try to cut their own deals.

“We’ve met quite a few requests, but, obviously, we’re going to have to sit back down with some of our caucus members and try to alleviate some of the issues they have with the budget,” he said.

If votes are of the essence for the Democratic budget, then so is time. Democrats want to pass their majority budget by March 31 and then adjourn to allow their bill to become law 90 days later in time for the start of the next fiscal year on July 1. Shortly after the adjournment, Gov. John E. Baldacci would call the Legislature back into “special or emergency” session to complete its work on various bills.

Although the “emergency” is self-serving, Democrats would prefer to bypass Republicans by using the maneuver than be forced to compromise with the GOP to reach the two-thirds majority vote needed after March 31 to have the budget take effect by the beginning of the new fiscal year. The House Calendar lists the statutory date for adjournment as June 15.

Lawmakers have been receiving increasing varieties of communications from constituents in the form of telephone messages, e-mails and personal contacts to influence their decision on the budget. The Maine Republican Party sent out press releases Thursday announcing the establishment of a MaineVeto.com Web site where residents can send a message to the governor detailing criticisms of the budget. Other online message boards such as those at www.asmainegoes.com are also stirring the pot in an effort to get the Legislature to tank the budget.

Republicans are urging Democrats to slow down on the budget proposal and enact instead a continuing resolution to pay for operating state government from July through September to allow for further discussion of several complex issues within the budget. Specifically, Republicans want Democrats to agree to begin a phased-in process to eliminate the structural gap in the budget that shadows each budget cycle. That gap is the difference between the anticipated cost of ongoing and expanding state services and the projected revenues required by the state to pay for them. The gap in the budget cycle two years from now is estimated in the $650 million range, and GOP lawmakers would like to eliminate $215 million of it in the budget that begins on July 1.

“We’ve worked on alternatives to try and make the structural gap disappear over time, and we had some very good ideas that we were never really allowed to present,” said Rep. Sawin Millett, R-Waterford.