MPBN: Maine Democrats Not Satisfied with Budget Deficit Explanation

By AJ Higgins

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The LePage administration is offering more detail today on what’s driving a projected $119 million shortfall in the state budget. But Democrats on the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee say the presentation by the governor’s finance chief left them with more questions than answers. A.J. Higgins has more.

Some Republicans contend that Maine’s budget problems are the result of simply too many people relying on healthcare services from MaineCare, the state’s Medicaid program. But that’s just partly true, according to Sawin Millett, who serves as Gov. Paul LePage’s finance commissioner.

“MaineCare members continue to shrink slightly here in Maine – very slightly,” Millett said. “We show the decline in the childless adult waiver program and its termination. And yet, there is an increase in utilization, and it is coming in at an increased rate.”

Millett told members of the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee that while the actual numbers of MaineCare clients are down, those who rely on the program are exceeding the costs originally projected by the state Department of Health and Human Services.

And he said those expenses break down across a wide spectrum of services: “Hospital outpatient care, laboratory services, pharmacy services, residential services, rehabilitation services including remedial training and home and community-based waiver services,” Millett said. “The department is watching these areas, as well as other object codes, very closely as we continue to move through 2014. As in the case of any forecast, the ability to forecast accurately is improved based on the addition of more data showing actual expenditures.”

More data is exactly what Democrats on the panel would like to see from the administration, and Millett told lawmakers that precise details would be coming from DHHS, which is currently in the process of refining those numbers.

Although the administration estimates that about $108 million of the shortfall can be attributed to MaineCare, some of the deficit has nothing to do with healthcare delivery, but rather the administration’s goals for cost savings, which Millett says clearly did not meet targets.

Sen. Emily Cain, an Orono Democrat, says those explanations are closer to the truth than the too-many-Mainers-on-welfare mantra that has been repeated by Republicans in recent days.

“Well, what we learned today is the $119 million is not all shortfall,” Cain said. “The $119 million that’s being brought forward by the administration represents some shortfall based on extra expenses, or under-performance of savings initiatives, but also some needs or priorities that the administration is setting for increased spending this year and next year. So it’s not all shortfall.”

Appropriations Committee House Chair Peggy Rotundo, a Lewiston Democrat, said she and other members of the panel are preparing a list of questions that will help the budget writers form a clearer picture of where the real spending overruns are taking place.