Consolidation still sought Baldacci backs grass-roots efforts to regionalize

PORTLAND – The Baldacci administration’s push to save tax dollars by prodding towns to band together and school districts to consolidate is no longer on the front burner, but the governor hasn’t given up on the idea.

Instead of having the state provide financial incentives to promote regionalization, Gov. John Baldacci is encouraging grass-roots efforts in which communities take it on their own to team up in order to deliver services more efficiently.

“Maybe once people see what this is all about and embrace it as their idea, maybe it will [spread] like a prairie fire,” Baldacci told the Maine Sunday Telegram.

Regionalism was a central issue in Augusta in 2003 and 2004 as the administration developed plans to give more state dollars to communities that created new “regional school districts” and “municipal service districts.”

Those plans failed to materialize as towns sought to retain local control and parents balked at changes to schools.

Instead, communities around the state are developing a patchwork of agreements to share school transportation costs, combine emergency dispatch or create a regional agency to assess properties.

Changes are happening, but at a far slower pace than the administration anticipated. Annual savings once projected to be $125 million to $150 million statewide haven’t been reached.

Baldacci on Sunday denied that he was backing away from incentives, telling The Associated Press that he plans to seek a legislative appropriation – he wouldn’t specify an amount – to encourage communities to embrace consolidation.

“I still maintain that incentives have to part of the overall program,” he said.

Those pushing for regional government say that having 490 municipalities and 286 school districts in a state of only 1.3 million people is a prime cause of Maine’s high tax burden.

Baldacci’s plans to reshape local government and school districts by providing incentives to those that consolidate services died in the Legislature. Instead, the state created a $1 million grant fund to help local communities.

The challenge now, according to Baldacci, is to find a way to change a culture of local control that dates back to Maine’s beginnings.

“When we offered a plan on municipal service districts, the communities for the large part rebelled against” the idea, Baldacci told the Telegram.

That is why Baldacci is looking to local communities to start the trend toward regional cooperation, while working with other ideas that won’t meet strong opposition.

He said state and county officials are starting to study how jails and prisons operate. Changes in the distribution of education dollars will encourage more centralized schools.

And the $1 million in grants handed out last March to towns and cities should produce models for other communities to follow.

Baldacci also sees the local-spending caps that were included in last winter’s tax reform package as a way to push regionalization and consolidation.

To follow the caps, the governor said, communities will be forced to look further at sharing costs with neighboring cities and towns.

“There is no trickle down in Maine. It grows from the grass roots up,” he said.