BUDGET BATTLE

MPBN - One of the issues that the Appropriations Committee will take up next week are proposed reductions to mental health services. The Baldacci administration says it is looking at cutting close to $20 million for adult and child mental health care. Consumers and advocates alike say that if the state keeps cutting funding for services, people will end up in emergency rooms and jails. They're recommending that the state find savings in other areas, ranging from administration to hospital beds. . . A new report by the advocacy group NAMI Maine . . . questions, among other things, whether the state can afford its two psychiatric centers, Riverview in Augusta and Dorothea Dix in Bangor.

MPBN - The Legislature's Appropriations Committee was deluged with complaints about the Baldacci administration's plan to cut more than $1.25 million from the state's natural resources agencies. Critics derided it as a thinly-veiled attempt to consolidate Agriculture, Conservation, Marine Resources and Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. Under the governor's $438 million supplemental budget, a working group would be charged with finding savings and the group would be largely drawn from the governor's staff. . . "We've discussed this with our members and with other people, and it's really the first step of consolidation, which we're very much opposed to -- regardless of what is being presented here, this is the first step of consolidation of the natural resources departments," said Jon Olson, Executive Secretary of the Maine Farm Bureau Association. . . "I really kind of resent the way this is going around," Cousens said. "As I looked at that list of people that were going to be on the working group, I didn't see any industry people, and I didn't see any natural resource people. That's like me coming in and telling you how to do something, when I have no clue about how your agency works. I don't think that's the way to go. I look at that as kind of blackmail -- 'you do it or we'll do it for you.'"