When it comes to tax reform in Augusta, two rules have applied:

Proposing it has been easy. Delivering it has not.

Even in the aftermath of Carol Palesky’s failed – but nonetheless alarming – effort to cap property taxes, some experts don’t expect state lawmakers to emerge from the next session with any drastic changes to the state’s system, which has placed Mainers among the highest taxed people in the nation.

“I just don’t think Mainers are very serious about tax reform,” said University of Maine economics professor Philip Trostel. “I don’t mean to sound cynical, but being serious about tax reform would prove politically unpopular.”

Politics in the post-Palesky era has moved the long-simmering issue to the front burner, and Gov. John Baldacci and House and Senate leaders on both sides of the aisle have proclaimed the end of the partisanship and parochial interests in order to reform the system.

But politics has had just as much to do with the relatively stagnant nature of Maine’s tax code, which, adopted in 1951, depends heavily on property taxes and business equipment taxes. The last major change came 35 years ago when then Democratic Gov. Ken Curtis signed into law a state income tax.

Baldacci insists he will not raise taxes in his forthcoming proposal to provide property tax relief. Set to be unveiled Dec. 2, the plan – based in part on one presented by the Maine State Chamber of Commerce – is expected to instead include spending caps for state, local, county and school governments. It also likely will include an expansion of the state’s circuit breaker program, which provides tax relief to low income property owners.

But for all the likely proposals the spending caps will be critical to any real reform, say Trostel and others. Whether Mainers and their representatives in Augusta will stand for the resulting cuts in services – a politically unpopular byproduct of such reform – remains unknown.

But what Baldacci’s plan will not include troubles some tax reform advocates, including state Rep. Bernard “Barney” McGowan, a Pittsfield Democrat who spearheaded a 2002 tax reform effort. McGowan’s bill – which called for capping local spending and a broadening of the sales tax base – fared better than most, clearing the House before its ill-fated trip to the Senate.

McGowan, who did not seek re-election this year, said the only real reform would come when the state rebuilds its code from scratch and rids it of the more than 200 exemptions to the sales, income and excise taxes that total $2.2 billion each year. For comparison, the state budget is about $2.75 billion per year.

“I expect it will be another Band-Aid on top of a Band-Aid,” McGowan said about the unlikely prospect of more drastic change. “I’m not sure there are enough people in Augusta with the courage to deliver real tax relief.”

It’s a perennial debate in the Capitol, attracting armies of influential lobbyists when reform efforts venture into the vast array of exemptions. Despite increased calls for concessions and cooperation in Palesky’s wake, State House veterans expect nothing different.

“Everyone wants tax reform, but nobody wants their piece of the pie to be touched,” said incoming Sen. Joe Perry, D-Bangor, a longtime member of the Taxation Committee while in the House. “Behind every piece of the pie is a lobbyist.”

Legislators are likely to offer some of the same remedies as sessions past. Besides attempts at broadening the sales tax base, those proposals have included more politically palatable increases in the cigarette and lodging taxes to help ease the property tax burden.

Maine’s total tax burden is second highest in the nation just behind that of New York when measured as a percentage of personal income.

The reasons are many, experts say, and include the cost of maintaining the 832 municipal, school and county governments now operating in the state. Maine’s 6.7 local governmental bodies for every 10,000 people is more than twice the national average, according to a Congressional Quarterly report.

While expensive, the tradition of local control also is extremely popular in Maine, and few state lawmakers have been elected on a platform of merging town and school administrations in their district with those in neighboring districts.

Nudging towns and schools toward consolidation will not be easy, but Baldacci’s plan is expected to propose incentives for such mergers should they reduce costs.

With Maine’s property taxes now the highest in the nation per capita, some say the move to consolidate could gain some momentum.

“Everybody loves local control in the abstract, but when you start finding out it costs you hundreds of millions of dollars more, people lose some of that enthusiasm,” said David Flanagan, a former power company executive and independent candidate for governor.

While Maine’s property taxes remain high, state officials point to their ability to hold the line on state taxes – including income and sales taxes – in recent years, during which time Maine has dropped from eighth in the nation to thirteenth in terms of state tax burden.

As lawmakers ponder how to drop Maine to the middle of the pack, other tax reform efforts wait in the wings. Included among those are the Chamber’s plan and the so-called “Taxpayer Bill of Rights” citizen initiative. The Chamber’s proposal would link government spending to growth in personal income and cap property taxes at 6 percent of income. The taxpayer proposal would tie state spending increases to inflation and population growth.

Beating the citizen initiatives to the punch and crafting tax reform in the halls of the State House will be challenging, say administration officials, but doable in concert with the Legislature.

“It can happen,” said State Planning Office Director Martha Freeman, who is heading Baldacci’s tax reform efforts. “Ultimately, not everyone will have their favorite way of going about it, but [the governor’s plan] will be responsible. But mostly [the governor] wants something that will work.”