Forecasters meet today on state budget picture

AUGUSTA – Two panels that direct state revenue projections are slated to meet today in hopes of providing the Baldacci administration and the Legislature with a heads-up on how dire the state budget picture could look by the time lawmakers reconvene in December.

Revised state revenue estimates are due by Dec. 1, just ahead of the seating of a new Senate and House of Representatives.

But administration officials, already looking for options to scale back state spending, hope joint discussions involving the Consensus Economic Forecasting Commission – headed by outside academic Charles Colgan – and the Revenue Forecasting Committee – which makes the actual revenue projections – will help them speed up their planning.

“Both General Fund and Highway Fund revenue were under budget in September and for the 1st quarter of FY 2009,” the Legislature’s Office of Fiscal and Program Review reported in its latest monthly newsletter.

“September seems to have marked a turning point, with consumer confidence at extremely low levels and recent economic growth driven by strong consumer spending evaporating. The Consensus Economic Forecasting Commission confirmed that turnaround at its meeting Oct. 16, significantly reducing projections of jobs and personal income in the short term.

“The difficulty of forecasting in the current volatile and uncertain economic environment was clear as shortly after its mid-October meeting the CEFC felt the need to convene a meeting through a conference call to further lower these growth assumptions in calendar year 2009,” the legislative fiscal office report said.

Gov. John Baldacci has directed agency heads to outline 10 percent reductions in their proposed spending. The state appears to be facing a gap of around $500 million for the two-year budget cycle that starts July 1.

Agencies also have been directed to self-fund any supplemental budget requests to address shortfalls in the current fiscal year, which has eight months to go.

“We want to get ahead of this as much as possible,” Administrative and Financial Service Commissioner Ryan Low said late last week.

Joining Colgan, who is a professor of public policy and management at the University of Southern Maine, on the Consensus Economic Forecasting Commission are Eleanor Baker, managing principal of Baker Newman Noyes; John Davulis, chief economist for Central Maine Power Co.; Michael Donihue, an associate professor of economics at Colby College; and Charles Lawton, senior economist of Planning Decisions Inc.

The members of the Revenue Forecasting Committee are Chairman Jerome Gerard, acting state tax assessor; James Breece of the University of Maine System; analyst Marc Cyr and director Grant Pennoyer of the Office of Fiscal and Program Review; State Economist Catherine Reilly; and State Budget Officer Ellen Jane Schneiter.

Schneiter called today’s special meeting of the two panels.

In its October newsletter released late Friday, the legislative fiscal office noted that the crisis in financial markets has adversely affected the Maine Public Employees Retirement System, “despite its relatively conservative investment portfolio.”

“In Maine,” the report stated, “the value of the State’s public employee pension fund has decreased by about 14.5 percent, or approximately $1.6 billion, through the first three quarters of 2008 to approximately $9.6 billion.

“Preliminary estimates indicate that the fund has lost an additional 8 percent to 11 percent in the first two weeks of October 2008, or between 22 percent to 25 percent year-to-date ($2.4 to $2.7 billion).”