AUGUSTA (AP) – Trade associations whose representatives met Thursday are expected to go ahead with a referendum challenge to new taxes for Maine’s Dirigo Health program.

“I don’t think there’s any question they’re going to do it,” said Maine State Chamber of Commerce President Dana Connors.

There was no filing with state election officials yet, however.

“Nothing today,” said a spokesman, Newell Auger, for the fledgling coalition that he said includes associations representing grocers, restaurants and the beverage industry, among others.

Auger said potential people’s veto applicants have until business closing on Monday to file.

Last month with the support of Gov. John Baldacci, the Democratic legislative majorities pushed through a bill to bolster Maine’s Dirigo Health program in part by broadening beer and wine taxes. The financing package also imposes new wholesale taxes on soda and syrup.

One people’s veto proposal backed by the Greater Bangor Young Republicans already has been filed.

To meet Dirigo’s roughly $50 million annual operating budget, the pending law replaces an indeterminate savings offset payment targeting insurers with a 1.8 percent surcharge on paid claims. Imposing new taxes on beer, wine and soda at the distributor level, it also taps surpluses from the Fund for a Healthy Maine, the state’s repository for tobacco settlement money.

The Maine Legislature created the savings offset payment in 2003.

Under current law, the Dirigo board of directors would file with the state insurance superintendent its estimate of measurable cost savings under the program, and the superintendent would make a final determination of savings in the state’s health care system.

According to a Maine State Chamber of Commerce analysis, a 2008-2009 savings offset payment of $32.8 million would be replaced by a 1.8 percent surcharge on health insurance claims that would generate $33 million in fiscal 2009 and $36 million thereafter annually.

New excise taxes on beer, wine and soda would raise $16.7 million in fiscal 2009, according to the analysis.

A tax on beer currently set at 25 cents a gallon would rise to 54 cents a gallon, amounting to a total of 30 cents on a six pack. Brewers producing 100,000 barrels or less a year are exempt. A 30-cents-a-gallon tax on wine would go up to 65 cents, with vitners producing 20,000 gallons or less exempted. At the wholesale level, soda would be taxed at 42 cents a gallon with simple syrup taxed at $4 a gallon.

According to Baldacci administration officials, the pending law would allow limited new enrollment in the Dirigo Health program, perhaps by late summer or early fall.

According to the director of the administration’s Office of Health Policy and Finance, Trish Riley, program participation would probably remain in a range of about 17,000 or 18,000, including 5,000 or more MaineCare parents and 12,000 or more DirigoChoice policy holders.

The enacted measure calls for market reforms including a reinsurance program through which Dirigo, which offers full-cost and subsidized insurance, would pay for some major claims.

To force a statewide people’s veto vote, organizers would have submit about 55,000 petition signatures within 90 days of the April 18 legislative adjournment.