AUGUSTA – Backed by dozens of their rank-and-file colleagues, Democratic House and Senate leaders sketched out a broad but vague “action plan for social and economic prosperity” on Thursday at a new conference in the State House Hall of Flags.

Professing support for everything from healthy families and a clean environment to lower property taxes and honest government, the Democratic leaders put emphasis on the importance of public education and government efficiency without addressing the merits of school system consolidation proposals put forth by Gov. John Baldacci and others.

The leaders – Senate President Beth Edmonds, House Speaker Glenn Cummings, Senate Majority Leader Elizabeth Mitchell and House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree – also did not take up the future of the Dirigo health insurance program that Baldacci has championed in the face of Republican and business community criticism, nor did they detail what a fairer and stable tax structure might look like even as they espoused one.

Their approach, instead, was general.

“We believe that prosperity is interrelated,” said Cummings, D-Portland.

Nonetheless, the Democratic presentation received no sharper response than a shrug from one ranking Republican who stood by watching, Senate Minority Leader Carol Weston of Montville.

“There were no specifics,” Weston said. The Democratic goals seem aimed to answer “what we all heard as we were out talking to our constituents,” she said.

Mitchell, D-Vassalboro, promoted bipartisanship expressly but also indirectly played to her partisan base.

She favorably cited the previous day’s accord among Appropriations Committee Democrats and Republicans on a supplemental budget bill.

“We know that we can work in a bipartisan manner” – while taking a jab at a Republican-sponsored bill to curb in-state voting by college students from out of state, she said. “We want young people included in the democratic process.”

GOP working

Weston said House and Senate Republicans had set to work a handful of policy groups to develop standards by which to judge the pluses and minuses of specific pieces of legislation.

“That work is about finished,” she said as Democrats broke from their formation on the main Hall of Flags stairway after the news conference concluded.

On Wednesday, the Appropriations Committee voted unanimously in favor of budget revisions that address funding in several departments of state government, most notably funds owed to Maine hospitals stretching back to the last decade.

The voting bill before the Legal and Veterans Affairs Committee seeks to prohibit students who live in college dormitories from claiming residency for voting purposes. Current Maine law allows college students to use a dorm as their residence when registering to vote.

Pingree, D-North Haven, expressed optimism Thursday that Democrats and Republicans could unite behind a borrowing plan to address in part transportation system upgrades and more money to support research and development.

Bond packages of that type require two-thirds majorities in both the House and Senate before being sent out to referendum voters.

Edmonds, D-Freeport, sought to highlight the desirability of conserving open space as a way to maintain Maine’s positive image.

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