Gov. John Baldacci’s county jail consolidation plan is a welcome move to try to save tax dollars. It’s too soon to say whether the plan would work or save the amount of money promised, but lawmakers should be eager to start going through its details and testing its ideas.

The governor would have the state take over Maine’s 15 county jails, close four – in Oxford, Franklin, Piscataquis and Waldo counties – and consolidate administration. As with Baldacci’s school-district administration consolidation, more savings would come through greater efficiencies in central offices, through purchases – in the jails’ case, medical costs and pharmaceutical contracts are big – and more effective use of bed space throughout the system.

For instance, while jails in Knox or Penobscot counties are overcrowded, those in Cumberland and York are operating under capacity. Yet because counties set their own rates, according to Corrections Commissioner Martin Magnusson, York might have a per-day cost of $45 per prisoner but charge $105. That’s an added tax burden on the sending county.

Maine county jails have additional burdens that raise costs but need to be met: better service for the mentally ill, treatment for substance abuse, and services for women. Over the last three years, county jail budgets have cumulatively risen more than 12 percent annually, as the state prison costs have risen at less than half that rate. New county jail construction – even as some jails have enough space -will keep that rate high.

The governor says the first year projected savings from administrative efficiencies at the jails is conservatively $10 million. He says he believes more consolidation opportunities will push that number higher in future years. Under the governor’s plan, property tax rates would be frozen at their current levels, with added costs picked up by the state in subsequent years. That’s an attractive idea, but the public should be given a better sense of how that would work in both the short and long terms. As more details of the savings are released, this is a good place for legislators and the public to examine the potential of this plan.

The governor says he wants to build public support for this consolidation – a task that should be considerably easier than the one he launched for school-district administration. One way he could do that is to encourage money-saving suggestions from jail personnel, local taxpayers and even county officials who, after all, have been looking at county-level savings possibilities for years.

By raising this issue, Gov. Baldacci offers Maine the chance to save substantially over the long term and to create a higher-quality jail system simultaneously. The desire for this reform should be applauded by the public, but its details should be examined closely over the next couple of months. Done right, property taxpayers, as well as people in jail, could end up better off.