AUGUSTA — Maine’s budget is facing another huge shortfall for the fiscal year ending June 30, a shortfall that must be addressed before any other business can be dealt with.

Leading the way is another nearly $100 million shortfall, nearly half the total, in the Department of Health and Human Services budget, caused in large part by overly optimisitic budgeting for MaineCare.

Last year, the Legislature under-budgeted for MaineCare needs, believing, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the federal government would allow them to cut MaineCare to nearly 36,000 people, including young adults and parents of MaineCare child patients making above 100 percent of the federal poverty limit. When permission for these cuts didn’t happen, the MaineCare program found itself in the red.

Mary Mayhew, DHHS Commissioner, said that 20 percent of all MaineCare patients account for 87 percent of MaineCare spending. Unlike the healthy young adults and parents who were slated to be cut from the program, most of these patients are the elderly in long term care facilities, and younger disabled people living in institutions or group homes. The cuts Mayhew had envisioned would have been unlikely to deal with these growing costs in any event.

Another large chunk of the shortfall is the anticipated hit to revenue projected in October. Then, revenues in the form of corporate, sales and income taxes were off by nearly $27 million. That number grew as revenues continued to slide in the second quarter of the fiscal year and now stands at more than $35 million.

When the tax cuts for the top income tax bracket are added into the mix in the new year, that number could skyrocket before July 1 to nearly $128 million in revenue shortfalls alone, according to the Consensus Economic Forecasting Commission. Over the next 30 months, that figure could amount to almost $400 million in revenue loss.

Other underbudgeting occurred in state spending for the poor, specifically in the General Assistance program administered by the municipalities but partially funded by the state, which is about $5 million over budget.

Many smaller amounts occurred in other state programs, for a total of about $37 million in non-MaineCare and nonrevenue-related shortfalls.

The new Legislature will have to develop a supplemental budget to cover between $150 million and $200 million in January.

Gov. Paul LePage said that he is mulling a spending curtailment order for $35 million to cover part of the shortfall. A curtailment order would slash spending across the board for all departments. However, with Democrats in control of both houses of the Legislature, it is unlikely to go through without a fight.

The new Senate majority leader, Justin Alfond, D-Portland, and the new House Speaker, Mark Eves, D-North Berwick, said that if the curtailment order comes down, the Democratically led Legislature would instead press a yet-unnamed Appropriations Committee into service as soon as possible in January and produce a counterproposal to the governor.

GINA HAMILTON, of Bath, is editor of the New Maine Times. She welcomes emails at [email protected].