Maine voters sent a message to the Legislature on Tuesday that they do not like having multiple items lumped together in bond issues. And though both bonds were approved, totaling $60.47 million combined, one almost didn’t make it because of what some people called excessive, unnecessary funding requests that shouldn’t have been put on the ballot at all.

Now the question becomes, “Will the Legislature listen to the voters?” According to people involved in the process, the answer is probably not.

Question 2, the $34.97 million bond that included 11 separate funding requests, squeaked by Tuesday with a 51.4 percent approval rating. The bond in some ways presented the usual election-time quandary for voters – if they like only one or two projects in the bond package, should they vote for it or against it?

While such multifaceted bond packages have passed by reasonable margins in the past, this time around was different, according to observers. An undetermined number of voters rejected Question 2 because they were tired of having to make that choice.

“With this particular issue, we’re hearing the voters say, ‘Please stop,'” said John Diamond, a former legislator who promoted the bond for the Maine Economic Growth Coalition.

In comparison, Question 1, a $25.5 million bond request to provide funds for school renovations and to put sprinkler systems in college dormitories, passed with a 58 percent approval rating.

What befuddled some voters who otherwise might have given their support to Question 2 were three small projects, each requesting between $30,000 and $1 million, said Sen. Jill Goldthwait, an independent from Hancock and chairwoman of the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee.

One bond item asked for $30,000 for the Moosehead Marine Museum to help refurbish its cruise ship, the Katahdin. Another asked for $500,000 to renovate the Center Theater in Dover-Foxcroft, and the third asked for $1 million to establish a Franco-American Heritage Center at St. Mary’s Church in Lewiston.

Goldthwait said she believed putting those projects on the bond almost cost the entire package its approval. She also pointed out that Senate President Pro Tempore Mike Michaud, D-Millinocket, was mainly responsible for placing them on the ballot.

She said the majority of lawmakers had voted against funding the projects as part of the state budget, but then approved placing them in a bond package when prompted to do so by Michaud.

“I’m sorry that it was jeopardized because people thought, ‘geez, should that be in a bond?'” Goldthwait said.

Michaud, who on Tuesday won the Democratic nomination for the 2nd Congressional District seat, according to unofficial results, said Wednesday that he had been asked by several legislators to promote the various projects for inclusion in a bond package.

In retrospect, Michaud said, funding for the Katahdin “probably could have come out” of the state budget.

“The other two are substantial amounts of money that are bondable issues,” he said.

Michaud denied placing the projects on the ballot to garner votes for his congressional campaign.

On Tuesday, the majority of voters in nine of the state’s 16 counties approved the bond. The seven counties that voted against the package ironically included Piscataquis County, where two of the three community projects are located.

Michaud said “it’s nothing new” that voters use their bond votes to send a message to the Legislature about borrowing requests being too lengthy or including projects they don’t like. He said it’s unlikely that the Legislature will reconsider how it packages bonds in the future, even after Tuesday’s slim victory for Question 2.

“The Legislature does hear it, but the voters also have approved the bonds,” Michaud said Wednesday. “If the voters had turned them down, the Legislature might look at them differently.”

But, he added, at times bond questions are long because they should include a project for every area of the state. And if they were separated into individual requests, voters might look at a request for one part of the state and vote against it because it doesn’t directly affect them, he said.

“That’s something we have to weigh,” Michaud said.

In the past, any attempts to limit by law the amount of funding requests that can be placed in a bond has failed, Goldthwait said. Legislators like to have the option of trying to borrow the money to pay for a project when it can’t be funded out of the budget

That holds true, she said, in economically distressing times when money may need to be borrowed to fund projects that would stimulate the economy and bring in matching federal funds.

“I don’t think it’s good fiscal policy,” said Goldthwait about bond limitations. “It’s not a terribly effective thing to do.”

House Speaker Michael Saxl said he does not believe there will be any efforts in the near future to try to limit the number of funding proposals that can be included in a bond. Question 2, as it was written, was “perfectly legal,” he said, even though he would have liked it to be “much simpler.”

He said he didn’t know whether individual legislators would heed the message given by voters Tuesday that they don’t want so many funding requests in one bond package.

“I guess it’s up to every legislator as to what they do,” Saxl said.