Vote to End Maine Budget Impasse Fails

The Republican minority in the state Senate failed to give up crucial votes necessary to pass a two-year budget and put 10,000 state employees back on the job.

A final Senate vote Friday fell three votes shy of the two-thirds majority needed to put the budget into effect immediately, matching a House vote that fell two votes short of the mark and killing the bill.

Maine shut down its state government Thursday for the second time in 11 days because the Legislature’s Republican minority refuses to vote for a new budget until it gets concessions on a workers’ compensation reform package.

Gov. John R. McKernan Jr. reiterated that he would veto the full two-year budget if it reached his desk without cuts in the cost of workers’ compensation, but Senate President Charles P. Pray shrugged at the threat.

“Our job is to get it to the governor’s desk,” Pray said.

Maine’s stalled $3.2-billion budget contains a package of sales, income and gasoline tax increases totaling nearly $300 million. McKernan, who proposed most of the increases, and his GOP allies have insisted that they will not support the higher taxes without significant workers’ compensation savings.

Budget impasses also continue in Illinois, Pennsylvania and Connecticut, but North Carolina headed toward resolution of its impasse with passage of a budget possible later today.

Pennsylvania lawmakers tried to resolve their budget dispute Friday as state workers rallied for faster legislative action and senior citizens marched to keep their medical benefits.

State workers’ checks could stop next week unless lawmakers agree on a budget. Legislative leaders met briefly Friday and are to return Sunday for additional negotiations. They still must agree on spending for youth programs and mass transit projects and then come up with a tax plan.

In Georgia, Gov. Zell Miller’s office said Friday that a once-a-month furlough program for state employees due to begin next week may last only a few months but that severe budget cuts--and possibly layoffs--will follow.

Miller already has said that he will ask the Legislature to cut $150 million to $400 million from this year’s state spending when it meets in a special reapportionment session next month. The new $7.9 billion budget is based on a predicted 6.2% growth rate, but growth for last year was just 1.1%.

In Iowa, union leaders on Friday denounced Gov. Terry E. Branstad’s plan for hundreds of state worker layoffs as Branstad warned that “the state of Iowa doesn’t have the money” and that layoffs are inevitable. A judge rejected the state’s effort to dismiss a lawsuit filed by unions representing state workers over a pay freeze Branstad imposed, setting the stage for a trial on the issue next month.