Over the past month, the Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee has received some positive financial news that will greatly help us as we finalize our recommendations to the budget.

As many of you know, Maine revenues for December and January were better than expected and recently, the Revenue Forecasting Committee reported that General Fund revenues were nearly $51 million higher than anticipated. The Committee also received notice that Maine would be getting $26.7 million in federal Medicare funding.

This increase in revenue and added federal funding spurred Governor Baldacci to release changes to the supplemental budget that would eliminate some of the cuts that were originally proposed. This would shrink the budget gap from $438 million to $360 million.

The Governor’s “change package” proposes to restore $37 million in Health and Human Services, $20 million for K-12 education, $8 million for higher education, and $6 million in municipal revenue sharing. It also eliminates a proposal to delay processing payroll for state employees by one day at the end of this fiscal year and essentially “push” it to fiscal year 2010. This would have resulted in a one-time savings of $8.1 million, but this proposal would have put a greater burden on next year’s budget.

Changes to the Governor’s supplemental budget also included $2.6 million for a “job creation” bond package that the Governor’s office will release the details of this week. The Presiding Officers of the Legislature, however, already announced their own $99 million jobs bond package that has garnered bipartisan support.

This bond package would go toward many job building projects here in Maine. $47.5 million would be for highway reconstruction projects, to lessen the backlog of projects at MaineDOT and would create or save approximately 1,600 jobs in the construction industry. A little over $2.1 million would help the Drinking and Waste Water State Revolving Loan Funds by restoring our water treatment facilities that are in disrepair. This investment would also draw a federal match of nearly $26 million.

The bond would invest $15 million in making Maine schools more energy efficient, as well as $5 million to create competitive grants for higher education institutions to make energy improvements. Another $1.5 million would go toward keeping our lands and waterways clean through the overboard discharge program, the removal of underground oil tanks & replacing culverts.

Investing $25 million in Maine’s rail infrastructure is another piece in the bond package. $5 million would help to develop passenger and freight rail service in the Lewiston-Auburn area, while $20 million would go toward purchasing the northern Maine rail line currently in the process of being abandoned by the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway. This rail line supports more than 20 businesses that employ 750 people. Losing this line would greatly impact Maine’s economy through the loss of business revenue and jobs.

The goal of this $99 million bond package is to create jobs, save jobs and put some of Maine’s unemployed people back to work starting this summer.

With about a month to go in this legislative session, we will soon be taking up this bond package, the Governor’s bond package and of course, the supplemental budget. Things will start to move quickly here. If you have questions, need assistance or want to share your thoughts, please don’t hesitate to contact me by calling my office at the State House, 287-1515 or by visiting my website, www.mainesenate.org/diamond, to send me an email. You can also sign up for my weekly email updates from the Legislature to learn more about what is going on at the State House.

Senator Bill Diamond is a resident of Windham, and serves the communities of Casco, Frye Island, Raymond, Standish, Windham and Hollis as Senator of District 12.