For 30 years, for no good reason other than that William Loeb, the late publisher of the Manchester Union Leader said so, no candidate for major office in New Hampshire has won without taking The Pledge — there shall be no broad-based statewide tax in the Granite State.

So here’s how New Hampshire lawmakers, after dallying for 15 months under a court order to meet the state constitution’s guarantee that every child will have an adequate education (with a standard definition of “adequate”), fixed its school-funding crisis in an 11th-hour frenzy late last week: a uniform property tax of 6.6 mills, with rich towns subsidizing the poor; increases in the business profits, property sales and cigarette taxes; a new tax on rental cars; tapping several sources of one-time money and crossing their fingers; raiding other areas of the state budget and hoping no one notices.

At least they kept The Pledge — as long as no one looks too closely at that uniform property tax.

It’s not a fix. It’s not even a decent Band-Aid. The court decision handed down in the Claremont Case in December 1997 was based on the claim by that property-poor town that the almost total reliance upon local property taxes to fund local schools violated the “adequate” clause. The new plan surely will quiet the poor towns, but it won’t take long for the wealthy “donor” towns to start howling about the confiscation of “their” property-tax dollars. Get ready for the Portsmouth Case.

This episode has cost New Hampshire dearly. When lawmakers missed the April 1 deadline to have a new funding mechanism in place, many school districts had no choice but to hand out pink slips. Massachusetts got busy recruiting the best teachers. Wall Street downgraded the state’s bond rating. Public confidence plummeted. That kind of damage will not be undone by a plan so tenuous and that skirts the real issue. While polls show the New Hampshire public would welcome income or sales taxes if it meant relief in property taxes, lawmakers remain behind the curve.

Any plan, in any state, that finances good, fundamental education with primarily property taxes ensures a constant battle between poor towns that claim they’re being deprived and wealthy towns that claim they’re being robbed. That’s the way it will be as long as property taxes are viewed as the property of the town from where they come. Such an idea would be absurd if applied to income or even sales taxes.

Maine and all the other states that accept the necessity of broad-based statewide taxes to fund the essential obligations of a civilized society might look with bemusement at New Hampshire. At the same time, it should look at the still too heavy reliance upon property taxes and the still too great disparity in the quality of education and realize there is much more to be done.

With this statewide uniform property tax, New Hampshire keeps The Pledge by fudging on it, and thus guarantees more squabbling and divisiveness. Every child deserves an education that provides the opportunity for his or her full potential to be realized, regardless of whether that child comes from a town rich in property or poor. That’s a pledge worth taking. And worth keeping.