While Maine’s Legislature convenes to resolve outstanding issues and divvy up some $250 million in tax windfall, New Hampshire’s Legislature has retired, leaving a $400 million education budget mess for someone else to clean up.

Now, only one thing seems certain for the Granite State: A broad-based tax, almost certainly in the form of an income or sales tax, will have to be passed.

Last year, New Hampshire’s Legislature was faced with a dilemma. The state’s Supreme Court had ruled the traditional method for funding schools almost exclusively by property taxes as unconstitutional. That left lawmakers with having to find a way to ensure enough money went to property-poor districts to match the opportunities in property-wealthy districts.

The Legislature responded by throwing about $181 million in one-time money at the on-going problem, leaving another $30 million to be made up from unspecified, largely hoped-for budget savings, and by freezing state aid to all districts — despite growing student populations and the court mandate for equity.

Add up the costs, and the next Legislature faces nearly a half-billion-dollar nightmare. The options aren’t attractive to a state known for loathing all taxes, which explains why the last New Hampshire Legislature was all too happy to ignore them. One option is a constitutional amendment that would trash the court ruling; most observers say it can’t get the votes needed in the Senate.

Another is to try to keep the $6.60 per $1,000 value statewide education property tax alive, but it is fairly apparent that the state’s Supreme Court will have nothing to do with resolving the school funding problem by resorting to the very tool that caused the problem in the first place.

Increasingly, New Hampshire cannot avoid the end game. Somewhere along the line — namely, next session — the state must pass a broad-based tax to ensure adequate school funding, and the only two that are accessible and reliable are income or sales taxes.

Those education-funding options are less popular than a pop quiz in a state known for its “Live Free or Die” motto. Inequity in educational opportunities and an overreliance upon the property tax will force the next New Hampshire Legislature to do the inevitable and unthinkable — which, paradoxically, will also be the appropriate and sensible.