More than 40 percent of Maine voters supported a tax- and spending-cap measure that by most accounts needed immediate repair were it to pass. That level of support for the Taxpayer Bill of Rights was an expression of the chronic frustration over a signal failure of Maine government. The tax burden here has remained high despite decades of political promises to act on it so that even flawed legislation is nearly accepted as an alternative to doing nothing for yet another year.

That feeling is not only understandable, it is useful. It is the energy needed to force the newly elected or re-elected to commit now to specific action.

First, the Baldacci administration can explain what it has done during the previous four years to lower taxes. Despite the claims of opponents, measures such as LD 1 to limit spending and the agreement, finally, to eliminate the business equipment tax really do matter. But the administration must do more to explain how its long-term plans to lower taxes would work and how it will achieve its goals while funding essential services.

Second, the Brookings Institution report advocating a BRAC-like commission to find savings in state government should go forward immediately. The savings will not be huge compared with the overall budget, but it would provide some tax relief and, more important, create funding for the kinds of reinvestments Maine needs.

Third, the minority ought to notice the constant exchange of accusations between it and the majority doesn’t help – Republicans appear to have lost the Legislature again. Instead, it merely sours the state on all politics, in turn making reform more difficult.

Most important, the failure of TABOR, like the Palesky tax cap before it, suggests that rallying the public to a budget formula gets the equation backward. Instead, an effective campaign to persuade the public of the benefits of careful tax-burden reductions and then moving toward a means to accomplish that end stands a better chance of success. Again, Brookings takes on that challenge, and Maine Public Spending Research Group already is compiling the necessary data and arguments to see it through. The public is more than ready to be persuaded.

There is no end to methods for limiting taxes and spending, and while some work better than others, the initiative campaigns over specific measures automatically divide the state and create resistance to doing what a broad major-ity of Maine knows must be done. Rather than endure that again, political leaders, beginning with Gov. John Baldacci, were handed an opportunity Tuesday to achieve more than just the defeat of the next initiative.

Maine has the desire for tax reduction and reform and it has the tools. It awaits the leadership to put these two in their proper order and get Maine moving.