Maine Senate ’08 session opens with warning

AUGUSTA – Maine Senate President Beth Edmonds, welcoming colleagues back to the State House as the 2008 legislative session opened Wednesday, warned lawmakers “there is a very hard winter ahead” and that in rebalancing the budget they must recognize “we have cut all the fat” already.

Edmonds, D-Freeport, stopped short of advocating a specific approach for coping with heightened financial pressures. But she said that after years of trimming spending and holding the line on taxes, lawmakers now must “keep everything available and on the table.”

Just settling in for the first time since adjourning last June, panels of lawmakers face several pressing issues right away, including a budgetary shortfall and refinements to a fledgling school system consolidation.

In addition, a special committee formed to examine ways to promote sustainable prosperity for Maine still had to refine tentative proposals and complete work on what appeared to be at least two packages for consideration by other panels and the full Legislature.

The state’s latest snowstorm threw off the opening day schedule, prompting a delay in ceremonial activity from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and pushing back start times for Appropriations, Education and Criminal Justice and Public Safety committees, which will be looking at jail consolidation soon, as well as the prosperity panel.

On Dec. 18, Gov. John Baldacci issued an executive order directing state agencies to reduce the rate of spending in the current fiscal year by $38 million. He said the curtailment was designed to ensure that the state finishes the fiscal year with a balanced budget.

His action came after a decision by the state’s Revenue Forecasting Committee that General Fund revenue projections for the biennium had to be reduced by $95 million.

“Simply put,” Baldacci said last month, “the amount the state is slated to spend for the rest of this fiscal year exceeds the money we have coming in by $38 million. In fiscal year 2009, the amount is about $57 million. The revenue downturn is a serious challenge that we must begin to address now.”

Baldacci said the curtailment order was a temporary move to reduce the rate of spending until a supplemental budget can be passed to cover the revenue shortfall. His supplemental budget proposal is expected this month, perhaps in tandem with his State of the State speech next Wednesday.

According to an analysis by the Legislature’s Office of Fiscal and Program Review, the largest reductions in the curtailment order include $20.2 million, or 53.4 percent, from General Purpose Aid for Local Schools and $13.5 million, or 35.8 percent, from programs within the Department of Health and Human Services.

The staff analysis noted that “most of these proposals could be pre-empted by swift legislative action.”

On Wednesday, Assistant House Minority Leader Robert Crosthwaite, R-Ellsworth, responded to Edmonds’ opening comments by putting Republicans squarely against tax increases.

“In their minds, I think taxes are on the table. From our perspective, they certainly are not,” he said.

Lawmakers instead, he said, must re-evaluate if they can “handle what we’re doing.”

According to the Baldacci administration, uncommitted state reserves currently total $158 million.

On the consolidation front, Education Commissioner Susan Gendron said last month she had informed 85 percent of the state’s 290 school administrative units that the school district reorganizations they proposed in their Dec. 1 filings complied with Maine’s new law, which seeks to reduce the number of school administrative units to fewer than 80.

Now, the Legislature’s Education Committee is working on revisions to last year’s school consolidation law. An administration-backed initiative would allow districts to adjust to the law by letting them develop their own local cost-sharing agreements.

The committee also will review other proposed revisions put forth by individual lawmakers.