BANGOR (AP) – Gov. John Baldacci is attempting to rein in spending by ordering a hiring freeze and placing limits on overtime, travel and other expenses over the next six months.

Baldacci signed a “special budget and expenditure order” on Nov. 24, the day before Thanksgiving, telling state agencies that only vacant positions vital to the state’s health, safety and welfare will be filled through June 30, when the current budget cycle ends.

When Baldacci presents his two-year budget to the Legislature on Jan. 7, it will propose the elimination of an undetermined number of vacant and filled positions to help erase a $733 million gap between projected revenues and the anticipated cost of state programs.

Lee Umphrey, the governor’s spokesman, said Baldacci’s hiring-freeze order isn’t as much about fiscal savings as it is about setting the tone for talks with legislators about tightening budgets and restraining spending.

“It’s not so much the savings but to keep people in the mind-set that these are tough times,” Umphrey told the Bangor Daily News.

Baldacci administration officials downplayed the hiring freeze by saying it’s a reinforcement of a policy that has been in place since Gov. Angus King left office in January 2003. Almost immediately after taking office, Baldacci signed an executive order continuing King’s hiring freeze and spending limits.

That freeze lasted six months, but a budget-constraint policy remained in place for state agencies that received money from the General Fund, said Rebecca Wyke, commissioner of the Department of Administrative and Financial Services.

Baldacci signed additionaly special budget orders effective July 1, 2003, and July 1, 2004, that contained spending and hiring limitations – but those orders were less restrictive than the ones signed in November and in January 2003.

Baldacci’s latest order calls for restraint in agencies that receive any state revenues with exemptions for public safety and health, and that any new positions need to be approved by agency managers.

Sen. Richard Rosen, a Republican from Bucksport and a member of the Legislature’s special committee on tax reform, said theoretically it is appropriate for a governor to impose short-term hiring freezes when spending surpasses revenues. But last spring, he said, Republicans attempted to put a hiring freeze in the state budget that Baldacci nixed.

“We were recommending a real hiring freeze, a fair hiring freeze, that only the governor could override,” Rosen said. “What (a hiring-freeze) order like that tells you is what we already know – that demands for funding are exceeding revenues.”

Rosen said that after Baldacci’s first freeze expired, state government began adding positions, including jobs created to implement some of the governor’s policies and programs

Rosen said that new hires include more than 20 positions at Maine Revenue Services to implement new aggressive tax collection policies approved by Democrats and up to 25 positions to manage Baldacci’s Dirigo Health program.

“They have been filling positions that are in line with their priorities,” Rosen said. “But now it’s coming to the point where the budget shortfall just demands action.”

In 2002, during Baldacci’s first year in office, 27,900 people were employed in state government, including the University of Maine System and the community college system, according to state figures. In September 2004, 28,800 people were employed.

John Graham, director of field services for the Maine State Employees Association, said the union is OK with the hiring freeze because there aren’t many job vacancies, but is concerned about any future cuts.

“We really feel that in many positions in many agencies we’re already at the minimum we can have to maintain quality service,” he said. “To come back now and say they need to cut more is going to be tough. State government seriously has shrunk. We’re at the minimum we can possibly have and still have these programs run.”