FORWARD-FACING BUDGET

The new budget for Maine, like the Legislature itself, represents a substantial and welcome shift in policy away from heavy-handed politics and toward more effective policies. It demonstrated that lawmakers could use their differences of opinion to produce a stronger document rather than simply produce greater division.

The next biennium’s budget spends $6.3 billion, an increase of $468 million over the previous budget. Of that increase, $248.6 million will go locally to kindergarten through grade 12 education. Another $40 million will go to teacher retirement and $47 million to higher education: the UMaine and community college systems and Maine Maritime Academy.

These education boosts account for more than 70 percent of the increase; all of the rest of state government shares the remainder. This was most dramatically seen in the $1.2 billion state Medicaid budget, which remained flat-funded for the next biennium and will count on managed care to maintain services amid rising costs. Though it did not receive most of the attention, this move was probably the largest spending risk taken by lawmakers.

Spending issues, however, weren’t nearly as controversial as the governor’s proposal in the budget to consolidate school district administration. Legislators split less along party lines for this debate than geographically or on the configuration of their local school administrative unit. The policy that emerged with overwhelming support from both Republicans and Democrats is considerably different from what the governor proposed and considerably better, which it should have been after all the work sessions and comments that modified it.

Most important among the changes is the increased responsibility given to municipalities, an appropriate change. In return, local leaders are obliged to prepare their communities for the state achieving 55 percent of school funding, which it will do by the end of the next biennium. After that, Augusta is unlikely to approve large increases in education funding and property taxpayers will feel the shock without greater efficiency within school districts.

District reform was just one of the reasons lawmakers were able to assemble a budget that places the state in a better position for the future. Instead of being forced to start discussions with what can be cut to make the budget balance, legislators will have the chance now to think more strategically about the state’s spending priorities.

A second reason for the budget success was the way the session began: Majority Democrats said they wanted to include Republicans in budget negotiations and so would avoid passing a simple-majority budget. Republicans, in turn, contributed to and supported a major bond plan, one that made large investments in Maine’s highways and bridges. And a bipartisan group on the Appropriations Committee worked with the Education Committee to jointly strengthen the original district administration savings plan.

Maine’s high tax burden, low job growth and below-average wages are not secret. The public and the Legislature know that state government could not sustain chronic shortfalls across numerous programs and still have the state play its essential role in promoting economic development and improving the quality of life here. In substantial ways this session, legislators from both parties began to work Maine out of that corner.