First off, Gov. King’s plan to fix this year’s half of the state’s two-year, $180 million (give or take) budget shortfall is not, despite the governor’s assertion, free of broad-based tax increases. Three unpaid furlough days for state employees are nothing less than a tax increase of several hundred dollars each for this particular broad-based group of Maine citizens. Yes, the cut in education funding is a reduction of growth, but given the new state and federal mandates school districts still must meet, it’s going to look a lot like a tax increase to an even broader-based group – property taxpayers – come town meeting time next spring.

Semantics aside, the plan is about as good as can be expected under the circumstances, if the circumstances were a one-time anomaly that could be corrected by a one-time sharing of pain. That, however, is not the case – this particular shortfall may be the result of a sagging stock market and a consequent decline in capital gains tax revenue, but the problem of Maine lurching from unexpected surplus to unforeseen deficit is chronic. Spending and taxing without clear priorities tends to produce lurching.

The governor’s reluctance to involve legislators in solving the immediate problem grows ever more puzzling, as does the Legislature’s apparent comfort (with a few commendable exceptions, such as Sen. President Rick Bennett) in not being involved. Both branches of government are responsible for the budget now in tatters, both failed to adjust adequately for the obvious decline in revenues derived from stock investments, both are parties to Maine’s haphazard fiscal policies.

Yet two full months after this revenue hole appeared, plans for a special session of the Legislature remain vague – maybe late summer, maybe after the November election, maybe never. This stalling may change details in the shortfall, but it will not change the overall truth that Maine has a budget it cannot afford.

The Legislature’s willingness to let the governor do the heavy lifting here is especially puzzling since the shortfall was reported to the governor by his revenue officials just hours after the Legislature adjourned its session in April. Had that phone call come just a few hours earlier, it is most unlikely the gavel would have come down and legislators headed for home.

A special session would be noisy and tumultuous. It would open up the entire budget – spending and taxing – to revision. Pet projects might get deleted, plans already made would have to be altered, expectations might get dashed. So what?

Maine has a mess on its hands and while a special session probably wouldn’t clear it away, it would give the underlying cause a thorough airing long overdue. Maine lawmakers – executive and legislative – have become quite comfortable in observing that Maine has meandering fiscal policies but have ducked every opportunity to hold a vigorous, wide-ranging and open discussion on how to straighten them out.

There was a proposal this past session for comprehensive tax reform, a major overhaul that would have brought profound changes. After being hammered with objections about myriad specifics, sponsors of this bill offered to have it presented this fall to voters as a non-binding referendum, just to get the debate going. That offer was rejected.

Now there is a new opportunity for this debate and there could be no better time than before the November election. Voters would have a valuable opportunity to watch legislators seeking re-election respond to this crisis. Challengers would have specific proposals to support or denounce; they could even offer, in a theoretical but important way, proposals of their own. Gubernatorial contenders could join in as well. Any candidate seeking office on the simplistic platform of “better jobs and lower taxes” would have laughed off the ballot. That alone would be worth the noise and tumult.