Head-on tax reform failed in the Legislature last year, although just about all lawmakers recognized the imbalance among a too-narrow sales tax, a too-steep income tax and a too-heavy property tax. Legislators will be especially busy next session trying to close a huge budget shortfall, but they should make time to try reform again – only this time, they might try it in smaller pieces.

Gov. King, surveying the unhappy prospects of a $900 million budget gap to be closed by the next governor, allowed that raising taxes next year was a distinct possibility. It took eight years, but finally he and Green candidate Jonathan Carter found something to agree on. It is too soon to know whether they are right – as Maine has seen, budget projections can swing in long arcs over six or eight months. That’s why it would be a mistake to focus now solely on the budget gap and ignore a tax system that overcollects in good times and falls off a cliff in bad.

The question is how do legislators find a more balanced system and put it in place. For instance, an announcement that the state plans to compensate communities for lowered property taxes might get lawmakers little more than a nice thank-you note from the Maine Municipal Association. But the necessary other side of even a revenue-neutral plan – say, the extension of the sales tax to previously untaxed goods or services – would have a dozen or more business groups howling in the hallways of the capitol, and the business groups would win, as they have in the past.

House Speaker Michael Saxl has put together a group of Maine citizens with long service to the state on matters of policy and, especially, tax issues. They are, first, trying to sort between the accepted wisdom of what is wrong with the state’s tax system and what is demonstrably wrong with it. They hope by late fall to produce a bipartisan plan that legislators can use to fix the system.

The group has an added opportunity by proposing reform just before a new governor will be elected; whoever is chosen will have four or, probably, eight, years to make changes. That means that a group like the speaker’s or legislators with plans or the new governor himself can present a broad reform initially, but phase in pieces of it over his term. This would allow leaders to lower fears that the reform will not work, establish a regular review of the reform’s effectiveness and make adjustments based on experience. Strong bipartisan support for a phase- in with chances for plenty of modifications along the way commits the state to needed reforms but calms concern that it will drive business out of Maine.

A phased-in reform carries risks; the most serious of which is that the Legislature’s attention may drift as the pressure to overhaul the system ebbs. Another risk is that a years-long reform could be nitpicked to death. The next governor, whose agreement with any plan is essential, could solve both problems through enthusiastic leadership and regular reminders of why Maine needs to change its inefficient tax system.