Additional $30 million cut from State budget in anticipation of shortfall

after passing the budget, such as the cancer programs, where Lynch called the remaining budget "seed money," and a workforce housing pilot project, whose 2009 budget was quartered and left at $100,000.

Advocates decried the loss of the cancer funding, which was supposed to pay for 2,400 screenings throughout the state and in an anti-tobacco campaign. "With the drastically reduced funding levels for both this year and next, the vital objectives of the New Hampshire Cancer Plan are on hold while, unfortunately, the burden of cancer is not," said Peter Ames, of the American Cancer Society, in a statement.

Sen. Kathy Sgambati said she was concerned about a $1.5 million cut to the budget of the Governor's Commission on Drugs and Alcohol, money that helps fight substance abuse. Drug problems take a heavy toll on the state over the long term, said Sgambati, a Tilton Democrat. At the same time, she praised the governor for averting service cuts, and Lynch noted that the drug program would still receive more funding than it got in the previous two-year budget.

The legislative fiscal committee swiftly passed Lynch's plan on a party-line vote, with Democrats for and Republicans against. The lights were off and the shades removed in the committee's meeting room yesterday - a nod, said Chairwoman Marjorie Smith, to the legislative branch's share in belt-tightening.

Republican Rep. Neal Kurk protested that the cuts did not go far enough because, he said, they left in place the governor's previously approved plan to borrow money if needed to balance the budget. The Legislature this month granted Lynch permission to bond up to $40 million in each of the two years of the budget to pay for school building aid.

"The problem is what is not here," Kurk said. He added: "This is $40 million short of what this needs to be."

The cuts are the latest in a series of moves by the governor and legislative branch to confront revenue shortfalls expected to total $180 million to $200 million for the $10.3 billion two-year budget. States across the nation face similar or worse quandaries.

Earlier this year, Lynch proposed and the fiscal committee approved about $50 million in cuts in fiscal 2008, which ends this month. Lynch and lawmakers have passed plans to seek new revenue, including taxing charitable poker games, charging bigger nonstate stores more money for wine and increasing the cigarette tax by 25 cents if cigarette sales don't meet a fall sales target.

Yesterday's trims hit every department. Some were easier than others: The Department of Administrative Services' budget was cut $3 million, money that Commissioner Linda Hodgdon said will come from the state's health insurance, where rates aren't climbing quite as quickly as anticipated.

The Department of Education's budget was sliced by $4 million. About $2.5 million came from the fund for court-ordered student placements. An additional $1 million of that came from the catastrophic aid program, which helps schools pay for expenses of students with extreme special needs, and $500,000 comes from the budget for tuition and transportation at the state's regional career technical centers.

Commissioner Lionel Tracey said he expected no service reductions to result from the cuts, although he said that under state law the state may prorate both catastrophic aid and technical education funding based on what it is able to fund.

"We feel good about the integrity of the governor's budget reductions, where he tried to stay away from direct services to the schools and focused more on large amounts of money in grants . . . and that's a theme he's continued to drive," Tracy said.

At the University of System of New Hampshire, administrators are delaying hiring and putting off replacing equipment in order to scrape together $2.5 million to give back to the state, Chancellor Stephen Reno said. That's on top of a $2 million check the system wrote the state in 2008.

The plan also calls for the state to receive $1 million back from Healthy Kids, which covers health insurance for low-income children, in dollars the program did not spend in fiscal 2008. When the budget was passed, budget-writers vowed to add 10,000 children to the program in years to come.

Executive Director Tricia Brooks said that commitment is unchanged and said Healthy Kids is close to meeting its 2008 enrollment target for Healthy Kids Silver, a state-aided health insurance program for children from lower-income working families. But many of those new enrollees joined the program near to the end of the year and, therefore, did not incur any costs in fiscal 2008.

Brooks said new federal rules that require parents to provide more identification for their children than just a birth certificate had thwarted many applicants and taken a toll on enrollment.

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