Maine Gov. Paul LePage’s administration has launched a new budgeting process that directs department heads to use a cost-benefit analysis when looking at their departments’ programs and expenditures, The Associated Press reports.
“Zero-base budgeting” directs state agencies to prioritize and justify all programs, activities and expenditures as if they’re starting from zero, Finance Commissioner Sawin Millett told reporters Wednesday in explaining the process. The current process, known as “incremental budgeting,” requires departments to justify only additions or deletions to their budgets, he said.
LePage and Millett met with departmental officials this week to go over the new budgeting method.
LePage wants state agencies to work up their future budgets from a clean slate, rather than from a baseline number, and closely examine the organizational structure and all programs and activities, Millett said. One goal is to help identify where resources might be reallocated to better meet the departments’ missions.
