AUGUSTA (AP) – State budget negotiators are expected to regroup today, one day before University of Maine System trustees meet to consider a tuition increase.

A system budget proposal totals $499 million – up 5.2 percent from this year. The average annual cost to undergraduate students currently is $6,450.

Heading into Monday’s gathering of trustees, students could be facing a 12 percent hike.

“Over the past five years, state support for the universities has declined in inflation-adjusted dollars, and despite significant and ongoing cuts in administrative and operating expenses, some level of tuition increase will be necessary to both sustain and, where possible, improve academic quality,” UMS Board Chairwoman Margaret Weston and Chancellor Terrence MacTaggart wrote Friday in a Bangor Daily News op-ed column.

Some Democratic lawmakers signaled their support for higher university system funding Friday and on Monday other Democrats led by Senate Majority Leader Elizabeth Mitchell of Vassalboro plan to speak out in favor of MaineCare funding.

Earlier this month, a team of House Republicans led by Minority Leader Josh Tardy of Newport reiterated that new or higher taxes should be out of the question in developing a two-year blueprint for state government.

The Legislature’s Appropriations Committee took most of last week off from budget deliberations, hearing testimony instead on numerous other legislative proposals that will have a hard time securing funding.

In January, Gov. John Baldacci unveiled a $6.4 billion budget package that would increase state spending by an average 4.6 percent in each of the next two years.

Leaving the personal income and the sales tax untouched, the plan would raise the state tax on a pack of cigarettes by one dollar.

Among issues that remain to be resolved is how to treat the $136 million tobacco tax increase proposed by the governor and how to proceed with a school system consolidation plan that Baldacci is relying on for $36.5 million in savings.

AP-ES-05-19-07 1243EDT