AUGUSTA, Maine — Without fanfare, Gov. Paul LePage on Tuesday signed a supplemental budget package that pays the state’s bills through June 30, the end of the current fiscal year.
The budget includes several million dollars worth of savings achieved through attrition and further departmental streamlining. It also includes new spending for court security and indigent legal services, among other things.
The bill signed by the governor does not include two line items that he vetoed on April 14, less than a day after the package passed overwhelming in the House and unanimously through the Senate.
The vetoed items were: funding of general assistance for the 2013 fiscal year and the “disproportionate share” funding to hospitals and psychiatric facilities, which offsets losses in federal funding.
Both items are expected to be put back on the table when lawmakers resume discussion of another supplemental budget that address a projected 2013 shortfall in the Department of Health and Human Services.
That budget is expected to cause a great deal of heartburn among lawmakers and the governor hinted at the impending battle in a statement issued Tuesday.
“While Maine now has a balanced budget through June, we must look ahead and address the fiscal challenges we face for 2013,” LePage said. “In order to make the systemic changes that are needed to put Maine on better financial ground we must work together.
“As members of the Appropriations Committee begin working toward common ground to resolve the shortfall, I encourage an open dialogue, which acknowledges the need for structural changes within government,” LePage said.
Although the governor signed the supplemental budget on Tuesday, it would have gone into effect Wednesday with or without his signature.
Follow BDN writer Eric Russell on Twitter at @BDNPolitics.
LePage is becoming irrelevant. Get him out!!
BDN seems to be devoting a lot of time and energy to him. Your posting about him seems to show that you have interest in him as well.
Actually LePage is doing a lot of damage–directly to human beings and also to the decency of our State.
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Whats the breaking news here? He line item vetoed certain parts of the budget last week, waited, and signed the budget like he said he would. Im failing to see the breaking news.
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“We must work together” goes both ways, Governor.
LePage said, “I encourage an open dialogue, which acknowledges the need for STRUCTURAL CHANGES within government.” Now that’s the first intelligent thing anyone has told him to say. Now all we have to do is fulfill the afore mentioned structural changes.
Step One: Remove every GOP/Tea Party member running for office out of office in November.
Step Two: Remove Mr. LePage from his position of embarrassment to our State in 2014.
Step Three: Gain back our self-respect and reputation as a people and a State. Which may be difficult after four years of Mr. LePage doing nothing but putting us down.
I’m hoping we can weed out a few more democrats in the next election. They like Maine to be poor, old and jobless and we have had more than enough of their incompetent leadership over the past 40 years. You choose to hate LePage for your own reasons but he has us headed down the right path. Take your blinders off, stop listening to Stephen King radio and MSNBC.
11 / 6 / 2012
Can’t wait. I hope Governor LePage runs again so I can vote for him again.
Then you and I may as well stay home.
I just wish he had vetoed the MPBN funding.
“Using the money of taxpayers and members, the president and chief executive officer of MPBN paid himself $187,021 last year, over four times what the rest of us make on average.”
Terrible!
Read more here…http://wot7.com/?p=14.
La Plague continues ALEC’s war on the people. Vote his support in the legeslature out come November. Cut him off at the knees since we can’t recall him. What a mistake that 39% made. What a mistake the other 61% made to let it happen.
He expected fanfare? He want’s dialogue? One sided, rant and rave?
You got to give it to LePage. He rants and raves about the hospital and psych facillities funding, and does so on behalf of his ALEC and Tea Party supporter’s, and at the same time makes the case for Public Option to the whole of Maine and the Country at the same time ! You got to love it when a plan comes together, even when it bassakwards !
A great leader, and a pillar of the community!!!!!!!
Keep it up Mr LePage!!!!