The first meeting of the Appropriations Committee on proposed 5 percent cuts to get rid of the borrowing in the state’s budget started badly, with Republicans saying the plan was disingenuous and the governor’s finance commissioner admitting her boss couldn’t support it.
“The governor’s plan would be very different,” admitted Finance Commissioner Rebecca Wyke, who had been asked Tuesday to present a list of cuts requested from all the state’s department heads by the Senate president and House speaker.
The exercise was designed to show just how difficult it would be to cut 5 percent off the top of the state budget – a plan Republicans have espoused as a way to get rid of $250 million in revenue bonds in the biennium budget that would be floated to pay state operating expenses.
The list, as predicted, was painful. It included cutting:
• Attorney General by $1.5 million, cutting 6 posts in the DA’s office
• Conservation by $2.3 million, including 8 forest ranger posts and all staff at 6 state parks
• Corrections by $13.5 million, closing one or more facilities and moving prisoners
• Economic and Community Development by $1.2 million
• Education by $92 million, including $85 million in general purpose aid
• Health and Human Service by $93 million
• Inland Fisheries and Wildlife by $2.2 million, cutting 14 posts
• Judicial by $5.5 million, closing 10 courthouses and cutting 40 posts
• Labor by $1.6 million
• Public Safety by $2.3 million
• Maine Community College by $4 million, cutting 60 posts
• Finance Authority of Maine by $1.2 million
• University System by $18 million, cutting 155 posts
“To put it bluntly, it’s not where I would go,” said Sen. Richard Nass, R-York, saying, “you leave a deputy commissioner in place while cutting all the forest rangers. You’re proposing to take out all the people who are on the ground. This is an exercise in futility.”
Rep. Jeremy Fisher, D-Presque Isle, said, “This is not what many of us want. I don’t believe it’s what the governor wants,” but it is the “meat axe approach” proposed by the Republicans.
“We’re confusing ourselves, and that’s deliberate, but were confusing the general public, which has no clue what we do,” said Sen. John Martin, D-Aroostook. He challenged the Republicans to come up with another plan – excluding cuts to general purpose aid to education, which nobody seems to support – and “present it tonight.”
Rep. Sawin Millett, R-Waterford, usually a voice of reason, said, “you know where you can take that demand.”
“After the lecture we just heard, I suggest we change direction,” Millett said. “I’m not here to discuss the 5 percent approach. I am taking the governor at his word that he, in fact, wants to remove the borrowing. I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and get to work…I’m awaiting guidance and direction.”
The committee did agree that after the last budget go-around, where bipartisan subcommittees met behind closed doors for a week, more work should be done in public this time.
“I think it works much better if there is more public than private discussion,” Millett said. “Let’s avoid that last-minute presentation of a done-deal. Not only does it make the public feel like they’ve been left out, it either violates the Right to Know law or violates its intent.”
Sen. Martin agreed.
“I’m uneasy about going back to the backroom to work this out. I frankly would prefer that it would be open, that we’d respect each other’s ideas,” he said, as long as those ideas, no matter how extreme, don’t get blown out of proportion and “get treated like it’s the end of the world.”
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