Your April 7 editorial, “Our View: LePage’s General Assistance policies force Portland’s hand,” claims that the “governor’s bullying tactics” are causing the budget to increase. Your premise is wrong.

While the more-important-to-watch tax burden on Portland residents is increasing by $3,224,065 (4.3 percent), this increase is not “primarily a result of changes in General Assistance eligibility standards,” as you describe it.

Your claim that Portland “stands to lose ($10 million) from cuts in state aid” is ludicrous, in that the city does not even spend $10 million on GA services and we will still get some state funding for providing GA services. The FY 2016 proposed city budget shows the social services budget decreasing by $4.6 million. That is because the city has decided to operate a program that we as a city can afford.

Increases in other areas of government are the real budget drivers:

• A 645 percent increase in the contingency fund.

• A $641,000 increase in pension obligation bonds (a bad decision made in 2001 that is coming back to bite us with spiraling costs we cannot control).

• $100,000 to study sea levels.

• $335,783, Housing Safety Office.

• $130,254, parking department.

• $215,385, police department.

• $181,065, buildings department.

• $238,591, personnel office.

• $1,245,396, employee raises and benefits.

• $270,866, county taxes that we had no control over.

That is $4 million in expenditure increases.

Before making wild assertions that the governor’s policy proposals are causing the property tax burden to increase, you need to look at all of the elements of the budget to find out that the budget proposal is a smoke-and-mirrors deflection of the financial operations of Portland.