AUGUSTA (AP) – Weeks after the presiding officers of the Legislature issued an unusual memorandum to lawmakers emphasizing compliance with Maine’s freedom of access legal standards, budget negotiations are still dominated by private meetings behind closed doors.

As in years past, the Appropriations Committee has been gathering in public at irregular times. Long lulls find Democratic and Republican members disappearing into partisan offices. The extent of contact between the two groups is unclear.

Ranking Democratic and Republican panelists confer now and then, and representatives of both sides meet with Baldacci administration officials or the governor himself.

Sometimes joining discussions are some House and Senate leaders.

“We represent our constituents and that’s how they know we’re representing them,” Senate President Beverly Daggett, D-Augusta, said Friday afternoon in outlining her support for open decision-making.

Republican Rep. Sawin Millett of Waterford, who handled fiscal matters in the executive branch during the McKernan administration and who now serves on the Appropriations Committee, said freedom of access standards are interpreted to bar majorities from making final decisions in private.

“It normally does not happen,” he said. “We discuss and get a sense of where people are on issues and then come out and discuss and vote in open session.”

Daggett said the demand for public decision-making needs to be understood and honored by lawmakers, despite the potential operational awkwardness.

“It’s hard to learn and hard to be comfortable with it, the open freewheeling discussion of an issue. … Doing business in public is an acquired skill,” she said.

As deliberations continued into the night Friday, prospects for bipartisan accord were uncertain.

Democratic Sen. Mary Cathcart of Orono, the Senate chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, said she hoped the panel could conclude its work by Saturday night.

Members resumed moving line items of the Baldacci administration’s budget-balancing package in or out of a committee revision, with a proviso spelled out by Cathcart that “any line in here can be reconsidered.”

For Maine lawmakers concluding the second half of their two-year terms, it’s the short year at the State House. Final paychecks have already been issued.

Maine lawmakers, who were paid $11,384 for the so-called long session last year, made $8,131 for their duties this year, according to legislative administrators.

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