A state nicknamed Vacationland naturally paces itself, letting weeks, months, sometimes decades slide by while its politicians try to focus on conditions that, however they are dressed up, are leading Maine to grow old, poor and alone. The lack of new industry, remoteness, too few with college degrees, too little diversity have all been blue-ribbon-paneled at length but to no particular end. My favorite is the continued contemplation of the last leg of the national highway system begun under the Eisenhower administration, the one that would send I-95 to the top of Maine. The state is not about to hurry that one along.

Sometimes waiting is a way to let truly bad ideas die of their own badness – if only Maine had waited out sugar beets. But sometimes, as with a road that is not completed and opportunities lost along the way, waiting leaves Maine with bad choices and not much else.

Tax reform is no different. Has it been 15 years of debate on the burden of property taxes or only 12? It hardly matters, but the results of waiting will be seen in the November election. Because each is so far from complete, none of the three tax-reform questions to be found there are worth the effort of town clerks to count the ballots, and if doing so weren’t a requirement of law and a habit of democracy I would urge them to skip the exercise entirely. The inadequate questions are a shame because the tax reform they try to provide is truly needed. But no one needs more mischief in Augusta, which is what Maine could get under any of these choices.

The state Legislature spent years wondering how to give property taxpayers a break, rejecting anything that sounded innovative or offended the comfortable while hoping a tax cap would fail to be imposed by voters. Meanwhile, property taxes kept rising. The Maine Municipal Association harassed lawmakers regularly to devise a means for lightening the burden of school funding from property owners and all it got was a demand to be patient. MMA was patient for a long time, then it told the Legislature it would get signatures on petitions and pass its own plan unless the state acted.

The Legislature got as close as voting on a single plan, which it failed to pass. MMA kept its word: It got nearly 100,000 signatures and a measure on the ballot demanding property-tax relief.

Its question is 1A, which asks whether the state should pay 55 percent of the cost of public education, including all special education costs. With the exception of the special-ed demand, which offers poor incentives to towns, nothing is especially wrong with this – as long as the Legislature behaves responsibly and reforms its sales-tax system to produce the couple hundred million dollars needed annually to pay for it and every town passes along all the savings to taxpayers. There is no chance either will happen.

Gov. Baldacci, a Democrat, says he won’t raise state taxes. Legislative Republicans won’t either, so if 1A passes, expect more budget gimmicks, damaging cuts to other programs and increased confusion within the school funding formula, which no one understands anyway. This fit of denial is not MMA’s fault; it is what happens when lawmakers fiddle as their state becomes notorious for having the heaviest tax burden in the country and then become too nervous about a potential tax increase to reform the system. As for towns passing along all the money to taxpayers: The Maine Education Association has given $350,000 to the 1A cause. Do you think the teachers union would do this if it expected to see no increase in funding?

The governor and lawmakers responded to 1A by devising 1B, which uses the sensible funding model of Essential Programs and Services to bring school funding up to 55 percent by 2009. Unlike 1A, the rules for this are more specifically described and follow a logical path, with attention paid to property taxpayers. It is missing just one thing: money. Absent tax increases, funding 1B would require Maine to dedicate an overwhelming share of all new revenues to K-12 education. It would become even more unlikely if Democrats carry out their promise to double the Homestead Exemption at the same time. Even if revenue projections are modest and only, say, half of new revenues are needed for tax relief, the state’s other expenses – health care, road and bridge repair, higher education, conservation and the environment, business incentives, etc. – can’t live on the remaining money, forcing Maine into approximately the situation it is in now: with a promise to fund education that it cannot meet.

Question 1C – none of the above – was attractive until voting for it could plausibly be interpreted as voting for tax caps or various other tax ideas, some still yet to be formed, which is how some activists are trying to see it. And 1C gives the Great Ponderers, Maine’s Legislature, the excuse of not doing any further reform for another decade or so, as if it needed an incentive.

So, how to vote? Question 2B gives Maine time for fiscal adjustments, doesn’t make unusual demands for special education funding and because lawmakers themselves came up with it, they would feel more responsible for its success. It is the choice with the least potential for mischief. But depending on your tolerance for legislative chaos, either of the other two could work. And before any of them work well, each requires further legislative action to become real reform – not that I’d advise waiting around for it.

Todd Benoit is the BDN editorial page editor.