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Appropriations Committee Reaches 2015 Budget Deal: LePage Objects

The legislature's appropriations committee has found a way to balance next fiscal year's budget, but Governor LePage doesn't like it.
It's because the budget document reduces expenditures by 20-million-dollars by extending the medicaid payment schedule for health care providers by two weeks.  LePage said yesterday, "We spent three and a half years to get a plan so we could pay off the hospitals and now they're telling me well you will delay payments to the hospitals, that's unacceptable." 

We spent three and a half years to get a plan so we could pay off the hospitals and now they're telling me well you will delay payments to the hospitals, that's unacceptable

The governor's immediate leverage is limited.   The budget bill will need a two-thirds vote to pass.  Assuming it gets that, any LePage veto could be overridden.  But LePage yesterday warned if that happens, he'll call the legislature back into special session and keep lawmakers in Augusta until that delayed payment provision.