The Legislature’s Appropriations Committee has the near-impossible job of making the state budget balance while meeting the many obligations Maine has imposed on itself. The committee is wondering whether the state’s publicly funded gubernatorial campaign, approved by voters through referendum, really needs the money allocated to it. That is a policy question that deserves public hearings and plenty of comment from those who lead the public-financing effort before any decision is made.

Lawmakers have borrowed from the Maine Clean Election Fund repeatedly since voters approved it in 1996, often leaving the fund short of money and in need of either advance payments or transfers from the state General Fund. State statute demands a $2 million annual payment to the fund, in addition to a tax checkoff, qualifying contributions and interest that produce about $4.8 million in the fund each biennium. The money is then used to support legislative and gubernatorial candidates who forgo private funding.

In 2006, the Maine gubernatorial race needed $3.5 million in public funding; by 2010, the Maine Ethics Commission estimates candidates could qualify for a total of between $4 million and $5.4 million, depending on whether three or four candidates run. A proposal to take $1.3 million from the fund’s 2009 General Fund contribution would cause the fund to fall short when the governor’s race arrives in 2010.

With a shortfall, Maine would have several choices – underfund all the candidates, thereby encouraging the use of privately funded campaigns; raise the standards for qualification, thereby excluding more candidates; allow for partial private funding; or cancel the public funding altogether. A final option, however unlikely, is that legislators pay the fund in full (and repay the $3 million borrowed previously).

These options change the policy of Maine’s public-funding system, a system that has been held up as a model in other states and was used recently in a congressional bill to begin public funding at the federal level. Experience suggests that the funding has produced more candidates for office, with better races against incumbents.

Before the committee takes that away, it should give the public a chance to comment, to support the proposed cut or insist the funding be restored. Given a chance, they could well come up with suggestions for funding the program more affordably.