The Pain Caused by the Maine Legislature

The Maine Legislature's Appropriations Committee is getting ready to tackle a new round of budget cuts in the next few weeks. As members of the legislature speak to the public about the pain and difficulty of these cuts, I think it is important to remember who put the public in the position to feel this pain. With years of allowing state expenditures to grow at an unsustainable rate, the members of the Maine legislature apparently thought the economy would sustain growth forever.

A Bangor Daily News article from 13 July, 2009 reports that the Appropriations Committee believes that it may need to cut $50 million from this years budget. Representative Sawin Millet (R-Waterville) believes that the two year budget may need to cut more than $100 million. Under state law the committee is already required to cut $30 from the second year of the current budget. Governor John Baldacci has already issued an executive order that freezes state hiring, overtime expenditures and travel.

When trying to figure out how the State of Maine got into this budgetary mess, one only has to look at the history of state expenditures. According to the Maine.gov website, Maine general funds expenditures have increased from $2.153 billion in 1999 to 3.083 billion in 2008. As recently as 2007, state expenditures increased at a rate of 7.1% over the previous year. These spending increases were well above the rate of inflation and represented a serious expansion of state government. This type of state government growth is a foreseeable outcome when a state is run out of single party rule.

The legislature will have to make the coming cuts mostly in the areas of education and human services as these expenditures make up 80% of the state budget. By allowing these programs to grow so rapidly over the years, the legislature has made a significant portion of the population dependent on these programs for support. As the people of Maine feel the pain in the coming months, I hope that the voters can remember who is responsible for this problem. While state Republicans are not innocent in this situation, a little party diversity in Augusta would have been extremely helpful in controlling the growth of Maine's expenditures.