Maine: Emily Cain

AUGUSTA, Maine — Legislative budget writers settled down to business Monday after key Republicans tried to settle a partisan spat over how details of a new $65 million Medicaid shortfall were released by Gov. John Baldacci’s administration.

Rep. Sawin Millett, R-Waterford, and Sen. Richard Rosen, R-Bucksport, ranking Republicans on the Appropriations Committee, absolved the Democratic governor’s budget chief Ryan Low of withholding information about the shortfall. They noted that any delay in disclosing it to lawmakers was at least partially due to legislative scheduling.

Not all Republicans, however, seemed satisfied. Committee member John Robinson of Raymond, said he was “more than a little disturbed” by some of the latest numbers.

AUGUSTA, Maine — Lawmakers will begin hearings this week on more than $1.3 billion worth of bond proposals to fund everything from land conservation and home weatherization to repairs of college buildings and historic meetinghouses.

But with the country in the grips of a major recession and Mainers cutting their own budgets, legislators will have to carefully weigh how much debt voters will be willing to stomach when the bond proposals appear on the ballot.

“These are not normal times and we can’t treat this as just another bond package,” said Sen. Kevin Raye from Perry, who is the Senate Republican leader.

Leading the lengthy list of proposals is a borrowing package by Gov.

AUGUSTA, Maine — Lawmakers overwhelmingly approved an emergency measure Tuesday to bring the state budget out of the red for the fiscal year that ends June 30. The $166 million supplemental budget was enacted by votes of 120-22 in the House and 31-3 in the Senate.

“I want to congratulate the Legislature and the committees for their work on this,” Gov. John Baldacci said in an interview. “This was a difficult budget and now we have to work on the biennial budget, which will also be difficult.”

Leaders of both parties supported the measure, which was crafted and approved unanimously by the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee and had significant differences from the governor’s original proposal.

David Lemoine has been nominated by a joint House and Senate Democratic caucus for another term as state treasurer.

Lemoine was endorsed by Rep. Emily Cain (D-Orono), a member of the Appropriations Committee, who spoke of an incident last summer when the state reportedly lost $20 million dollars from an investment gone bad. Lemoine was blamed in the media for the bad investment and when he appeared before Cain’s committee many expected a “public hanging.”