AUGUSTA – Lawmakers who dislike Gov. John Baldacci’s $38 million budget curtailment order are sure to complain when they get his supplemental budget proposed to fill the remaining hole in the two-year state budget.

“We will continue the cuts we have made in the executive order,” Baldacci said Wednesday during an interview. “There will be a lot of reorganizations and restructuring.”

The governor said he would include several proposals, including a plan to take over the county jails, merge the state’s natural resources-based agencies and merge the Department of Economic and Community Development with Professional and Financial Regulation.

“I will be putting these forward as an alternative to further cuts,” he said.

The state faces a $95 million revenue shortfall over the remainder of the two-year state budget. The curtailment order covers the nearly $38 million hole over the next six months.

“The supplemental [budget] will reduce state spending to meet our requirement that we have a balanced budget,” he said.

The restructuring proposals have proven controversial. The school administrative reorganization legislation is the subject of a citizen’s initiative petition calling for repeal of the law. The jail consolidation plan has yet to be completed, but has drawn opposition from the counties and some lawmakers in its draft form.

“We will definitely have to do a lot of work on this,” said Sen. Bill Diamond, D-Windham, co-chairman of the Criminal Justice Committee, earlier this week after a committee meeting which included an update on the proposal.

The governor proposed merging the departments of Economic and Community Development and Professional and Financial Regulation last January in his two-year state budget. The Appropriations Committee eventually removed it from the budget after mixed reaction from legislators.

“We just didn’t see where there would be any savings,” said Rep. Jeremy Fischer, co-chairman of the budget writing panel, after the vote last spring to remove the proposal.

The proposal to merge the natural resources-based agencies has been discussed for months, but no plan has been released to provide details. Even so, it already is drawing fire.

“That drastic a reorganization is going to be dead in the water,” said Sen. John Nutting, D-Leeds, co-chairman of the legislature’s Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry Committee.

He said putting Environmental Protection, Agriculture, Conservation, Marine Resources and Inland Fisheries and Wildlife into one agency would cause a firestorm of opposition from the various constituencies.

“The farmers will not want to be reduced to being a bureau in a huge agency,” he said, “nor will anyone else.”

He said the constituent groups like having a “seat at the table” with cabinet-level representation of their interests, and he predicted a strong backlash to a merger proposal.

“There are high-level positions that could be reduced in those agencies to save some money,” he said. “That’s what we should be doing.”

Senate GOP Leader Carol Weston, R-Montville, said Nutting is on the right track to propose the elimination of 50 upper-management positions in state government as part of the budget cuts.

“All we are seeing in the executive order is more of the same failed budget policies of the past,” she said.

Weston said lawmakers should review the spending cuts in the governor’s order and decide through the supplemental budget process whether they are appropriate. She said there needs to be cuts in state positions, but not front-line workers.

Finance Commissioner Becky Wyke said that while Baldacci has indicated what some elements of the supplemental budget package will be, the details are not final.

“Where we have proposed positions be held vacant, we will follow through and propose they be eliminated in the supplemental,” she said.

Wyke said the reorganization proposals would result in fewer upper-level positions, but she would not know how many until the budget is completed. She rejected Nutting’s assertion that the administration has not reviewed upper-level positions and has cut only front-line workers.

“We have looked at all positions,” she said, “and we are continuing to look. I think you will see us propose elimination of additional positions, but until the process is complete, I can’t say how many.”

Lawmakers return to the State House on Jan. 2, and Baldacci is expected to unveil his supplemental budget plan soon after that.