AUGUSTA – Gov. John Baldacci told reporters Monday that tax reform will have to wait until after the state’s two-year budget is ironed out. He threatened to use his veto pen if lawmakers put a tax reform plan into the budget.

“We finished the bonds, we are on the budget, and we have to get the budget done,” the governor told reporters at an impromptu news conference. “I am not interested in any tax reform or any raising or lowering or anything in that regard until we get the budget done.”

The Legislature’s Appropriations Committee is at an impasse over the $6.5 billion biennial budget Baldacci proposed earlier this year. The current gap between revenues and expenses is about $120 million a year. The gap is basically the result of bipartisan opposition to Baldacci’s plan, which would double the tax on cigarettes from $1 to $2 a pack.

While the budget panel has been working to close the budget gap, the Taxation Committee has been working on a tax reform package that basically would raise some taxes in order to lower others.

The committee is looking, for example, at increasing the meals and lodging tax and expanding the sales tax to cover amusement-related goods and services, such as ski lift tickets, that now are not taxed. At the same time, it would approve legislation to decrease income and property taxes.

“If they try to do it [put tax reform in the budget], I will draw the line in the sand,” Baldacci told reporters. “It has to wait until the budget is done.”

He said any tax – other than the cigarette tax hike he has proposed – “is off the table” as far as he is concerned in the budget negotiations. He said the budget has to include “structural changes” that will keep costs from increasing faster than inflation in future years. The Medicaid program has been targeted by the Appropriations Committee for significant reductions in the rate of growth.

Sen. Joe Perry, D-Bangor, co-chairman of the taxation panel, said he thinks Baldacci “misunderstands” the goals of his committee, which does not want its reform package to be part of the budget.

“We are working on it, and we plan that it will be revenue-neutral while lowering the tax burden on Mainers by exporting more of the tax burden,” he said.

Perry said his committee cannot wait until after the budget is resolved to push a tax reform package that will significantly change the state’s tax structure.

“That’s a recipe for failure if we’re going to start addressing tax reform after the budget is done,” he said. “I think they have to move forward on parallel tracks.”

Sen. Richard Nass, R-Acton, the lead Republican on the taxation panel, also has served on the Appropriations Committee. He agreed with Perry that the two major packages have to move through the process “pretty close together” because the budget may well take longer to pass than expected.

“It may be we want the tax package to move first,” he said. “We could have a plan in a few days if we were pushed to get it out.”

Nass and Perry noted the Taxation Committee has been working for weeks to craft a bipartisan reform plan for lawmakers to consider this session. They also said there has never been a plan by the committee to include its proposal in the budget.

“But we have to keep working on our proposal and not put everything on hold until the budget is done,” Nass said. “We don’t know when that will happen.”

The taxation panel has no shortage of ideas to reform the way the state raises revenue. Earlier this year Nass and Sen. Ethan Strimling, D-Portland, introduced a package that would increase property tax relief programs, lower income tax rates and eliminate several sales tax exemptions to pay for the other programs.

“We are looking at that and a lot of other ideas,” Perry said. He hopes a plan can be completed in the next two weeks but acknowledged he has been saying that for a month.