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• The Governor’s Most Recently Revised General Fund Budget addresses a $1.4 billion loss of revenues over a three-year period for FY 2009, FY 2010, and FY 2011.
• The Governor’s Original General Fund Budget for the FY 2010 and FY 2011 Biennium [July 1, 2009 through June 30, 2011] addressed an $800 million funding hole.
• On April 28, 2009, however, the Revenue Forecasting Committee reprojected revenues downward by an additional $569 million as follows:
  • An Additional loss of $129.3 million in FY 2009
  • An additional loss of $443.7 million FY 2010 and FY 201
• As a result of the reprojected loss of state revenues, revenues projected for the 2010-2011 will be roughly the same as the revenues for the 2004-2005 Biennium, unless additional revenues, such as federal stimulus funds, are included in the budget.
• The Governor’s original General Fund Budget for the FY 2010 and FY 2010 Biennium was $6.1 billion. Now the Biennial Budget is expected to be $5.8 billion -$500 million less than the actual costs of current state programs with no new programs or program expansions.
• This budget totals the same amount as the 2006-2007 Budget.
• The 2010-2011 Biennial General Fund Budget reduces the number of state employees by 306, thereby reducing the state employee workforce to the same level as it was in 1983.
• Traditionally, K-12 Education, Higher Education, and health and human service programs have composed 80% of the budget. When public safety, law enforcement, debt service, the Judiciary, and the Legislature are included, the percentage increases to 93.2 percent.
  

  Positive Achievements in the Budget

  The 2010-2011 Biennial General Fund Budget as amended by the Appropriations Committee:

  
  Education

• Increases the State share in General Purpose Aid by $27 million to a total of $983 million in FY 2009 and by $18 million to a total of $1.001 billion in FY 2010.
• K-12 penalties assessed on school districts that have not consolidated or voted against consolidation are placed in a separate account to be distributed under the approval of the Legislature following the November 2009 General Election.
• Provides funding for tuition stipends, fees, and operating costs for the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Maine.
• Provides funding for medical school scholarships for eligible Maine residents attending a program sponsored by the University of New England’s school of Osteopathic Medicine, a joint projects between Tufts University and Maine Medical Center,
• Restores $960,000 of funding for Adult Education

Health Care

• Hospital settlements are paid-up through 2007,
• Provides for a new Medicaid payment system for hospitals known as Diagnostic Related Groups and Ambulatory Payment Systems that pay hospitals based on officially established rates for services as the basis of reimbursements to hospitals. Hospitals will no longer be owed settlements from the State, and the PIPS [prospective interim payments - based on estimated costs] will be eliminated.
• Critical Access Hospitals. Increases from 101% of cost as provided in the original budget to 109% of cost, reimbursement to critical access hospitals.
• Makes structural changes to Medicaid by:
  
  • Reducing beds in the PNMI system and standardizing rates for Children’s PNMIs into a 5 tiered system,
  • Streamlines the case management system,
  • Conforms durable medical equipment system to the Medicare limits and fee table,
  • Restructures the juvenile drug treatment programs
  • Increasing “Prior-Authorization” in children’s residential treatment, psychiatric hospitalizations, out-of-state hospitalizations, and adult mental-health PNMIs
    
• Constrains MaineCare pharmacy costs through aggressive utilization management, and multi-state purchasing.
• Third-Party Liability. Provides for an aggressive recovery of private payor payments when Medicaid is the payor of last resort.
• Patient-centered Medical Home initiative. Provides funding to expand primary and preventative health care by offering more comprehensive primary care physician services to Maine residents, and by raising community physician reimbursements.
• Children’s PNMIs. Reduces cuts proposed by the Governor to Children’s residential private non-medical institutions, residential mental retardation facilities,
• Health Infonet. Provides funding for Health Infonet that will receive significant federal matching funds to establish an electronic medical records system in Maine that will substantially improve the care and treatment of Maine residents.
• Dirigo Health. Provides for the continuation of Dirigo Health through June 2010, at which time, Dirigo Health will have fully paid back the Treasurers’ cash pool from which Drigo Health borrowed.

  
  Natural Resources

• Preserves and creates greater opportunities for Maine’s shell fish industry. Maine’s shellfish industry will not be sanctioned by the federal government, which threatened to prohibit the interstate sale of Maine’s shellfish. Three additional marine biologists will monitor Maine’s clam flats and shellfish areas for water quality and pollution.
• Dairy Stabilization Fund. Addresses the disposition of insufficient revenues in the Dairy Stabilization Fund and the payments to farmers in FY 2009 and FY 2010
• Maintains natural resource agencies’ programs through increases in permit and license fees.
• The Unorganized Territory is provided additional resources to deal with significant growth in numbers of permits and licenses for development projects.
• Restores a number of positions eliminated by the Governor in the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife to enable the agency to more effectively meet its mission and better carry-out such programs as tagging, and the enforcement of hunting and fishing rules and laws.

  
  Corrections

• Maine’s jail-State prison system continues to be streamlined for greater efficiencies [less transporting of prisoners, creation of short-term holding facilities etc] and the threat of over-crowding is significantly reduced.

  
  Judiciary

• An Independent Judiciary. Establishes the Judiciary as an independent entity for budget purposes in the same way as the Legislature is treated in the Budget.
• Provides for a $300,000 capital budget for repairs within the Judiciary’s facilities [boilers and other needed repairs in courthouses, etc] that was not funded in the original budget.
• Court House Rehabilitation and Construction. Provides funding in the form of revenue bonds to rehabilitate and construct needed court facilities in Dover-Foxcroft, Augusta [both the Superior and District Courts] and in Machias. Increased judicial fees and General Fund revenues will be used to pay-down the revenue bonds.
• Provides nearly $1 million for Indigent Defense
  

  
  Public Safety

• Provides additional funding for the Statewide Radio Communications Network
• Establishes four Regional emergency 911/Communications centers across the State.

  
  Other

• Provides for greater enforcement in the collection of back taxes owed to the State of Maine resulting in millions of additional dollars that will reduce the burden on Maine’s taxpaying citizens.
• Addresses the additional $569 million General Fund revenue shortfall without layoffs.
• Future Structural Changes. Provides for major structural changes in the future by
• Pursuing a federal Medicaid waiver to undertake risk-based contracting whereby DHHS contracts with Schaller-Anderson and APS will guarantee savings in health care for the chronically ill, complicated health problems in the Medicaid population, and aggressive streamlining for eligibility purposes.
• Directs the Appropriations Committee to study and recommend restructuring state government programs and agencies.
  

  For more detailed information about the budget please [click here]