MORE IS AT STAKE in the ongoing budget discussions on Beacon Hill than the fate of local aid, Medicaid, and the Metropolitan District Commission. In the jockeying over whether to raise taxes to cover an estimated $3 billion gap in next year’s fiscal budget, Governor Mitt Romney, House Speaker Tom Finneran, and Senate president Robert Travaglini are vying for power on Beacon Hill. It’s no small exercise. The person who has the most to say about which priorities shape next year’s budget will push the state down a path it’s likely to travel for years to come. Depending on the outcome of the current debate, Romney could become much bigger than anyone ever imagined — or his influence could resemble Jane Swift’s in the last weeks of her term. Finneran could find himself knocked off his pedestal, or more firmly entrenched than ever before. And Travaglini could emerge as a top power broker, or find himself with little more influence than that of your average House dissident. Here's a look at each player's position in the unfolding three-way power struggle.

Governor Mitt Romney

Romney kicked off his governorship with a strong one-two punch. First, he convinced the legislature to grant him emergency budget-cutting powers to balance the 2003 budget. Then, with great fanfare, he unveiled a budget that was, by Beacon Hill standards, among the most daring and imaginative fiscal proposals ever presented by a governor. But now that he has thrown his heavy punches, it’s unclear where the governor will turn next. He lacks House and Senate support to uphold his vetoes and appears on the cusp of failing to push his reform agenda through the legislature.

With the passage of time, Romney’s 2004 budget plan has taken on the cast of a Lewis Carroll novel: it looks like a grand work of fantasy. Embedded in his plan were broad strokes at reform, such as reorganizing the University of Massachusetts system (in such a way, of course, that UMass president William M. Bulger would find himself out of a job); eliminating the Metropolitan District Commission; merging the Massachusetts Highway Department with the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority (in a separate action); and dramatically altering the structure of the Commonwealth’s social-services providers. Romney’s attempt to, in effect, fire Bulger, the former all-powerful senate president now under scrutiny for his relationship with his fugitive brother, James " Whitey " Bulger, accented a theme he has pushed since the 2002 gubernatorial campaign: that only Romney, as an outsider and former businessman, has the skills and independence to " reform " pockets of corruption on Beacon Hill. To augment this perception, his budget struck another theme: no new taxes. During his State of the State address in February, when he publicized his budget, Romney emphasized that it saved $2 billion by getting rid of wasteful inefficiency and that it preserved core state services. That he could implement such a program was a constant refrain of his campaign and something few experts believed possible.

Most insiders immediately doubted Romney’s claim that he could save $2 billion through reform and reorganization. And, indeed, two days after making the claim, Romney backed off, saying, " I’m not telling you that there’s $2 billion in waste and inefficiency that I’ve found. " But now the public also seems to be taking note of that contradiction — thanks to an aggressive campaign led by Finneran and one of his top deputies, State Representative John Rogers, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee. In a " Dear Colleague " letter written last month and made public, Rogers mocked Romney’s budget plans by using the governor’s own words against him. First Rogers reminded his colleagues of the governor’s claims by quoting his State of the State address: " ‘When I ran for office, I said I’d find $1 billion [in waste and inefficiency]. I was wrong. I’m proud to report that our team has found $2 billion.’ " Then he picked apart Romney’s assertions: " In the days that followed, we learned that this figure was not entirely comprised of reforms that eliminated ‘every speck of waste and inefficiency’ but instead, it relied heavily on new tax increases in the form of fees, depletion of one-time reserves and theoretical proceeds from land transfers. " Rogers and other House members later identified $949 million of purported savings and/or revenues in nine different areas of Romney’s budget that were entirely hypothetical. For example, the budget listed $75 million in revenue to be paid by casinos in other states, in return for not legalizing gambling in Massachusetts. Counting on such revenue without having worked out a plan with Connecticut, Rhode Island, and their casinos seemed optimistic at best and irresponsible at worst.

The governor also estimated a savings of $180 million by shifting surplus property to the state’s pension board in lieu of making a cash deposit to the pension fund — a plan of questionable legality, as some House members argue that the pension plan is not authorized to own property that does not earn income. But even leaving such objections aside, the transfer could not be made nor the property sold in time for the resulting revenue to be spent in fiscal year 2004.

Although Romney appears unskilled at bitter inside-the-building combat, he has not yet been reduced to a tangential figure on Beacon Hill, as were previous Republican governors Jane Swift and Paul Cellucci. He still appeals to the broader electorate that voted him into office in 2002, and therefore he can play to the crowd beyond Beacon Hill. (The State Republican Party announced Tuesday that it would run radio ads to push Romney’s reform agenda, and the governor has thrown himself into an all-out media blitz, co-hosting the Howie Carr radio program on WRKO last week and appearing on WBZ’s David Brudnoy tonight.) That ability was also on display last Thursday, when he delivered the opening address to the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council — a statewide advocacy group for the industry — at the Sheraton in downtown Boston. The audience, filled with the kind of tech-business types who many thought had vanished in the economic downturn, jammed a conference room. Following his introduction by two high-profile members of the business community — Cynthia Fisher, president of BioMed 20/20 Technologies, a Newton-based biotech and medical-information company, and Bill Lee, managing partner of white-shoe law firm Hale and Dorr — Romney, a former venture capitalist, pitched Massachusetts as still the best location for biotech companies. He also took credit for the recent House budget proposal that included no new taxes and some government reforms. " We have to have a taxation structure which is competitive, " the governor said. " We proposed a budget that didn’t raise taxes. We imposed certain cuts on local aid, they adopted those. There are a number of reforms which they adopted, and that’s encouraging. "