Maine Senate President Mike Thibodeau says he’s confident that a state agency responsible for mapping services is fully funded, countering claims from the LePage administration that the recently passed state budget mistakenly zeroed out its state allocation.
LePage’s finance department notified lawmakers earlier this week that the budget contained a mistake that stripped the Maine Office of Geographic Information Systems and the Library of Geographic Information.
The mapping agency is used by municipalities, state officials, real state professionals, land surveyors and developers. And its data are also used commercially by consumer products such as Google Maps.
According to the Department of Administrative and Financial Services, funding was eliminated because lawmakers rejected the governor’s plan to move the mapping agency to a new Department of Information Technology without changing its funding source.
The LePage administration said the agency is now running on funds carried over from the last budget year and that it will soon run out of money.
But Republican Senate President Michael Thibodeau said the budget did include funding for the agency, which operates under the umbrella Office of Information Technology, or OIT.
“So my understanding is that OIT got exactly what the funding request was originally from the administration. Therefore there should be plenty of funds to cover this, although there’s some question about language,” he said.
Thibodeau said he’s hopeful that the language issue can be resolved administratively and without the Legislature.
LePage suggested on Portland radio station WGAN Thursday that the problem could shut down state government. Thibodeau brushed off that scenario.
“Yeah, I don’t anticipate any government shutdowns over $1 million. You know, this is about one specific initiative that they do in the OIT office, which is about $1 million out of a $50-ish million department,” he said.
Thibodeau said administration officials, lawmakers and the Legislature’s nonpartisan budget office will meet next week to resolve the issue.
This story was originally published August 4, 2017 at 3:17 p.m. ET
