When the Legislature gets out of town, finally, news coverage plummets. That was no doubt Gov. Paul LePage’s intent when he vetoed one of the five bond issues lawmakers passed, and announced it at 5 p.m. on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend. The story was effectively buried.

But it was the budget Republicans forced through earlier, on a unusual party-line vote, that really needs a second look. Because it came in what was just a two-day wrap-up after a month’s layoff, the supplemental budget resembled a magic trick. Now you see a program, now you don’t. And we hope you won’t be asking any questions.

There are a few, though.

One concerns tax cuts. The budget added insult to injury by larding another $28 million in cuts for the 2013 tax year – that would be after a new Legislature is elected and seated – on top of the $360 million in unfunded cuts from the previous year.

Let’s face it. Lawmakers love to make promises some future Legislature will have to deal with, but this goes beyond anything we’ve seen before.

When confronted with anything that spends money on Mainers who earn much less than average – health care, housing, food assistance – LePage insists on “structural reform,” by which he means paying everyone less, often a lot less. He says we can’t “kick the can down the road” and burden future taxpayers with these “unsustainable” programs.

But when it comes to tax cuts, he’s eager to kick that can. How next year’s unfortunate lawmakers will find $388 million in new spending cuts to pay for all these promissory notes is anyone’s guess.

Give the man credit, though. He forced unwilling Republican lawmakers to make budget cuts they had no stomach for when a “current services” budget passed earlier by the usual two-thirds, with Democratic support. Back then, Sen. Richard Rosen, co-chair of the Appropriations Committee, said budget-writers “ran out of time” to consider the $28 million in tax cut add-ons, but when push came to shove in May, they were suddenly willing.

Among corresponding spending reductions, one small cut went where no previous Legislature was willing to go, and that was a $2 million whack from Head Start, the federally funded program that has helped pre-school kids from poor families since the 1960s. Maine is one of many states that boosts the now-inadequate federal funding – far more children are eligible than are enrolled – and the $2 million represents half the state’s contribution.

Sen. Roger Katz, the other Republican senator on Appropriations, offered a weak defense by arguing that it amounted to a 7 percent cut in overall funding, when state and federal contributions are totaled. Katz must know this is misleading. State funds – as they do for Medicaid – match a much larger portion of federal dollars Maine will also lose.

And to what purpose? Head Start, part of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, has survived when most programs from that era – Urban Renewal, Model Cities, Richard Nixon’s revenue sharing – have long since disappeared. Head Start endures because it unquestionably works – poor children, who usually trail their peers in academic achievement, can bridge that gap by the time they enter first grade.

If we’re committed to equal opportunity, why would we cut the state’s small contribution? An online poll of Maine business leaders asked exactly that question. An amazing 93 percent said it was a bad idea to cut Head Start. Lawmakers may not have noticed before they did their drive-by.

Those who still have questions might focus on a key decision taken early last year that may have caused a significant part of the Department of Health and Human Services shortfall, a gap that’s never been satisfactorily explained.

After years of trying, the outgoing Baldacci administration finally constructed a plan to shift Medicaid spending to managed care, which pays providers for keeping individuals healthy rather than reimbursing for every procedure they do.

It saves taxpayer dollars – lots of them – but providers like hosptials hate managed care, because it forces them to make major changes. So it was no surprise that in one of her first major decisions, Mary Mayhew, former Maine Hospital Association lobbyist and now DHHS commissioner, canceled the managed care plan outright.

There are probably other reasons why insuring virtually the same number of people through Medicaid cost a lot more than it was supposed to, but this may be the biggest.

Budgeting is all about priorities, and this much is clear. In the end, the GOP Legislature’s were exactly the same as the governor’s.

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