Gov. Michael S. Dukakis is under sharp attack from critics at home, who say he ignored warnings of a state budget crisis because they came just before key presidential contests. Dukakis, the Democratic front-runner, has made a string of balanced state budgets a big selling point in his presidential campaign. This week, though, he announced that state revenues were more than $240 million below projections included in the budget. ``We're all aboard the government Titanic and instead of women and children first it's the captain and the crew first,'' House Taxation Committee Chairman John Flood said Tuesday. ``They will be rolling on across the Potomac River while the ship of Massachusetts goes down with the rest of us on it,'' said Flood, one of the few Democrats in the Legislature who criticizes Dukakis publicly. Dukakis' top budget aide dismissed the criticism, saying the governor told lawmakers a year ago the budget was based on revenue projections that might turn out to be overly optimistic. The critics acknowledged getting that warning when Dukakis used his veto power to slice $88 million from the budget. But they say the governor should have curbed spending beginning in January, when the administration conceded revenues for the first half of the fiscal year were lagging by $200 million. But the Dukakis administration said it expected revenues to improve, and meet targets. That soothing forecast came days before the Iowa caucuses, the first big test of the campaign year. ``If anybody tells you any of this stuff is not related to presidential politics, either they are naive or they think everyone else is,'' said Flood. Republicans among the Dukakis critics vowed to continue their attacks and predicted Vice President George Bush would pick up their themes during his expected fall campaign against Dukakis. ``They had to see the problem but they chose to ignore it and delay acting because it was not favorable to the governor's campaign,'' said House Minority Leader Steven Pierce. ``As he campaigned across the country it was his `Massachusetts Miracle' but now it's our deficit.'' ``They have known that the budget situation was worsening daily,'' said Republican Rep. John C. Bradford. He accused Dukakis of sidestepping his gubernatorial duties while ``fantasizing about moving to that white building halfway down the Atlantic coast.'' The figures released Monday showed the state was $243 million short for the fiscal year that ends June 30, forcing Dukakis to tap reserve and other funds to balance the budget. That figure is $166 million more than the shortfall projected by the governor's Revenue Advisory Board on April 12. By the campaign calendar, that's a week before the big New York primary, and two weeks before the Pennsylvania primary. Dukakis won them both, tightening his grip on the nomination with followup victories in Indiana and Ohio. The $243 million shortfall is in addition to $233 million for planned budget expenditures that have been canceled because of the fiscal crunch. ``Add that up and this state is $470 million out of balance,'' Flood said. ``They had to know it but they just ignored it for political reasons.'' Secretary of Administration and Finance Frank Keefe scoffed at the criticism, pointing to the vetoes last year and the legislature's rejection of a $255 million Dukakis-filed tax enforcement and fee package. ``I'm a little bit amused by folks who want to rewrite history,'' Keefe said Tuesday. ``It was the legislature that fully believed the future was going to be just like the immediate past, which was a period of enormous good fortune.'' Keefe said Dukakis had instructed him as far back as September 1987 to put together contingency plans to cut $185 million in spending and at several intervals since has told Keefe to look for further cuts. The administration considered the Revenue Advisory Board's April projected shortfall of $77 million conservative, but did not say so publicly because that might have hurt the state's credit rating, Keefe said. ``We weren't about to say absolutely that things were horrible when we had no concrete evidence that was the case,'' said Keefe.
