AUGUSTA – Maine lawmakers enacted a $6.3 billion state budget package Wednesday night, setting spending priorities for the next two years and mandating sweeping changes in how school administrative systems have been organized for decades.

Final passage in the House of Representatives came on a vote of 112-29. The Senate followed suit, 28-7.

“Sustainable and structural reform,” hailed Democratic Rep. Jeremy Fischer of Presque Isle, the House chairman of the Appropriations Committee that unanimously brought the package before the full Legislature.

Bipartisan endorsement of the measure made for “a better document,” declared Republican Sen. Karl Turner of Cumberland, another Appropriations panelist.

Uncertainty over the measure’s chances in the Senate had persisted through the day and introduction of the bill was put off until after caucus gatherings and a dinner break.

To win final approval in a fashion to take effect by the July 1 start of a new two-year budget cycle, the budget package needed super-majorities of at least two-thirds – at least 24 votes in the 35-member Senate and at least 101 in the 152-seat House.

Democratic lawmakers had expressed confidence that they could count on all but one of their slim 18-member Senate majority.

But there were different reads on how members of the 17-member Republican caucus were lining up.

Earlier, the House of Representatives adopted an amendment to alter the bill to address concerns by a bloc of lawmakers from rural districts.

Rejection of amendments that addressed narrow issues in the budget proposal set the stage for debate on consolidating Maine’s school systems to reduce 152 school administrative systems to 80.

By a 114-27 vote, the House approved the compromise amendment, which drew Appropriations Committee backing, and sent the bill on to the Senate.

Gov. John Baldacci said the budget would “set the priorities that will guide Maine for the next two years and beyond.”

He added: “We are reducing unnecessary administration in K-12 education and focusing our resources on the classroom where they belong while providing property tax relief. We are streamlining state government, especially in human services, and we’re investing in higher education and innovation.”

As part of closing their agreement last week, Appropriations panelists approved a final round of expenditures totaling about $20 million.

Of the total, $5 million is to go to slightly temper a pending tuition increase at the University of Maine System. Another $3 million is earmarked for a 500-student expansion within the Maine Community College System.

According to a Democratic analysis, the additional $5 million for the University of Maine System brings the total increase in system funding for the upcoming biennium to $19.3 million, while the additional $3 million for community colleges brings the total funding increase there for the next two years to $11 million.

About half of the funding for the final add-backs would come from subjecting enterprises known as captive insurance companies – usually a wholly owned subsidiary of a corporation not in the insurance business, according to state tax officials – to the state corporate income tax.

Service cuts, funding transfers and numerous other budgetary initiatives are designed to balance the overall package while dispensing with a Baldacci proposal for $136 million in new tobacco levies.

According to Democratic House leaders, it is the first biennial budget enacted by two-thirds majorities in the House and Senate since 2003.

“Were glad that both sides of the aisle came together in good faith to set in place a budget that not only will provide effective management of the state for the next two years, but also establishes a new and sustainable path for the long term,” House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, D-North Haven, said in a statement. “At the same time we protected health care for people who need it most and boosted funding to higher education.”

On Jan. 5, the governor unveiled a $6.4 billion spending package that contained no broad-based tax increases and was designed to increase the state’s share of basic local education funding to 55 percent by state fiscal year 2009.

A major component of the original package, since scrapped, was a proposal to raise the state tax on a pack of cigarettes by one dollar.

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