As a signer of the petition that initiates the “people’s veto” procedure for challenging the $447 million borrowing component of the fiscal year 2006-07 biennial budget approved last month by majority Democrats, I take issue with many of the assumptions relied on in the Sun Journal’s April 17 lead editorial, “Veto sets troubling precedent.”

First, the most troubling precedent – which the veto petition seeks to repeal – is the decision to use this credit card approach to borrowing nearly 7.5 percent of the total operating budget and to do so without voter approval. Such an approach to “balancing” an operating budget for the next two years – which borrowing will not be fully paid back until 2020 – is truly unprecedented in state government and for most Maine families.

The Maine Constitution prohibits “the use of proceeds from the sale of bonds to fund current expenditures,” yet more than half of the proposed borrowing is clearly designed to offset current operating expenses. As one who has repeatedly taken sworn oaths to uphold the constitution and laws of the state, I find this precedent-setting violation to be much more than “troubling.”

The Sun Journal editorial indicated that the differences between Democrats and Republicans are over only a “fraction” of the two-year budget. Yet, a conservative estimate of the cost of the spending elements contained in the Democrats’ budget that were rejected by the Republicans on the Appropriations Committee would easily exceed $600 million – a 10 percent “fraction” of the budget, but a rather sizable one nonetheless.

The editorial suggested that, if the people’s veto is successful, the result would be that budgets would be “written at the ballot box.” While that idea is not all that far-fetched, particularly given the fact that many of our school administrative district budgets are currently approved in referendum voting, it is highly misleading to suggest that the voters would be asked to design an alternative to the ill-conceived $447 million borrowing component. That responsibility, should the voters instruct us to do so, would fall to this Legislature, to go back to the drawing board and fashion a truly bipartisan alternative to borrowing to “keep the store open.”

I am confident that we can do so without imposing any serious hardship on those who are dependent on the state for one form or another of state support or assistance.

Finally, I must take issue with the assumption that our efforts to seek a decision of Maine voters as to whether it is a good idea to borrow $447 million to fund operating expenses would be viewed by the bond rating agencies. My experience in working with those folks is that their primary concern is that state operating budgets be balanced with ongoing revenues exceeding ongoing expenditures and that such budgets are adopted within a bipartisan environment that is based on sound long-term fiscal policy and planning. Using borrowed money to fund 7.5 percent of our operating budget in the face of a $700 million projected structural gap (read deficit spending) in fiscal year 2008-09, and as far as the eye can see, does not resemble those rating criteria.

Perhaps that picture is the real “troubling precedent” the Sun Journal editorial writer is seeking to describe.

Rep. H. Sawin Millett, R-Waterford, is the ranking member of the Legislature’s Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee.

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