The second-best thing about Gov. Baldacci’s budget address Wednesday was its length. The speech clocked in at just under 45 minutes; tack on a few minutes at both ends for coming and going and little time was left in the one-hour broadcast for those immediate reaction interviews that are standard post-speech procedure.

Not that there’s anything wrong with airing the reactions of interested, informed parties, but if ever a speech was given that did not need immediate knee-jerk reaction, this was it. Filling a $1.1 billion hole without raising taxes will be just about the hardest thing this state, or any state, has ever done. It cannot, for the sake of this faltering state’s future, be impossible. It will, as the governor says, require everybody pulling together as they did during the Ice Storm of ’98.

There was, unfortunately, time in the broadcast (thanks to Maine Public Broadcasting for providing this valuable service) for one brief reaction interview. And what an unfortunate interview it was. Nearly all state spending will be flat-funded for the next two years, including Medicare reimbursements. A spokeswoman for the Maine Hospital Association quickly and testily pointed out that, given the rising costs of health care and the state’s aging population, flat funding for hospitals amounts to a reduction in funding and, of course, reduced services to the sick.

A better reaction would have been offered not three minutes after the speech but, say, a week from next Tuesday. After much thought, the MHA recognizes the dire situation Maine is in and intends to do its part in these times that demand austerity. The MHA is working with all Maine hospitals to identify every possible way costs can be reduced with the least possible impact on direct patient services – excessive administration, overlap and duplication will be rooted out; efficiency, collaboration and cooperation will be ushered in. The MHA knows that Maine’s aging population is not a condition unto itself, but a symptom of a larger problem – an excessive tax burden that kills jobs and forces young people to move away. We all have to pull together. Or something like that.

Flat-funding of municipal revenue sharing has towns and cities worried about their budgets; there are rumblings that the state will balance its books on the backs of local property taxpayers. Local property taxpayers should rumble right back about how towns and cities spend they money they already get.

For example, in Kennebunk, a local restaurant had, until last summer, outside tables with umbrellas that bore the words “Hebrew National Beef Franks.” Fans of this tubular food group know that Hebrew Nationals are world-class. All the town code-enforcement officer knew, however, was that the logo-bearing umbrellas were a possible violation of the town sign ordinance. He ordered the offending words covered up with paint or duct tape and, even after the restaurateur performed the ordered uglification, the town took him to state court for the violation, with fines of up to $2,500 per umbrella per day. For good measure, the town yanked the 25-year-old restaurant’s beer and liquor license. The restaurant now is suing the town in federal court.

It’s possible that, under the governor’s flat-funding plan, Kennebunk will get less revenue sharing than it deserves. It’s certain, however, that Kennebunk has way more code enforcement than it needs and, quite possibly, an excess of government in general. As a result, Kennebunk is likely to have one less taxpaying, job-providing business than it used to.

State aid to schools is one of the budget areas to increase, only slightly and, as schools point out, not enough to cover fully the costs of increased state and federal mandates. A fair point, but reality often isn’t fair. Consolidating central offices, cutting unnecessary administration, using the generous resources already provided by taxpayers in the wisest manner are the new reality.

A small but telling example of the opposite comes to you courtesy of the Maine Principals’ Association. This group manages the taxpaying public’s ownership of, among other things, the cherished high-school basketball tournament. Last year, MPA cut a new deal for televising the tournament.

And what a sweet deal it is. Bangor’s WABI had televised the Eastern Maine Class A tournament – quarterfinals, semifinals and the final – for 50 years and wished to continue this long relationship. MPA, however, didn’t like the commercial station’s need to air commercials and so awarded the entire tournament package to public TV – a contract that produced less money for the MPA, fewer games (no more quarterfinals) for fans and a fair amount of harm for a tax-paying, job-providing business. Now, public TV is facing a budget crunch of its own and may not be able to fulfill the entire contract. There may be even fewer games televised, but the good news is that they’ll be commercial-free.

This whole fiscal prudence thing is quite new for Maine and it clearly will take some getting used to. One of the many post-speech news stories quoted the South Portland city manager, who took four pages of notes and crunched the governor’s numbers, as saying, ” just don’t see where he gets anywhere near a billion dollars.” It’s not “he.” It’s “we.” This pulling together thing may not be new – Maine did it just five years ago – but the skills have gotten a bit rusty.

The best thing about the governor’s speech was its depth. No, it was not crammed with budget specifics – it was a speech, after all, not an accountancy lecture. The depth was in the assessment of how Maine, through careless spending without the expectation of value and a growing acceptance of high taxes, job loss and population flight as the natural order of things, got where it is today and how, by rethinking the way we do just about everything, tomorrow can be different – and better.

One quibble with the Ice Storm analogy, though. The problem in ’98 was purely meteorological. It was a chance collision of impersonal forces of nature. Nobody saw it coming.

Bruce Kyle is the assistant editorial page editor for the Bangor Daily News.