Maine voters will have a fateful decision to make on Nov. 4. They will choose between a referendum question proposed by the Maine Municipal Association that would force an immediate $260 million increase in General Purpose Aid to education, and a competing measure proposed by Gov. Baldacci and the Legislature that would achieve the same goal over a five-year period.

As I will shortly explain, I believe the competing measure, Question 1B, is far superior to the MMA plan, Question 1A. But I also believe voters need a better understanding of state school funding – and property tax relief – than they have so far been provided.

The MMA question is a knee-jerk solution to a big problem, and such solutions often cause more problems than they solve. To see why, we must go back a few years.

MMA’s referendum is based on a simple statement of intent in the 1985 School Finance Act. It said the Legislature would like to provide 55 percent of the GPA pie. That was all it was – a statement – and there was no plan to provide the money. The Legislature did make some progress during the economic boom of the late 1980s, and eventually reached 50 percent.

It is important to note that this is not all the state does. Unlike most states, Maine funds 100 percent of local teacher retirement cost – $170 million a year. Even today, state and federal funds provide more than half the money necessary to run Maine’s schools. The GPA figure alone is misleading.

In the severe recession that began in 1990, the state cut back spending across the board. GPA was “flat funded,” with no allowance for inflation, for the last four years of the McKernan administration. In hindsight, this was a big mistake. It opened up a large gap between what the state had been providing to local schools and what they decided was necessary to educate students. Local property taxpayers took up the slack.

When I joined the Legislature in 1997, we began a concerted effort to pump more money into school funding. Until this year, the GPA increase was more than 6 percent a year.

Was it enough? Probably not. But as we look at the state budget today, having just cut $1.2 million from the biennial budget, you have to wonder where we’d find the $500 million we’d need to fund MMA’s plan over just the next two years. Gov. Baldacci is absolutely right that the state budget, and Maine’s economy, couldn’t absorb the shock this would create. We’d be cutting deeply into every other program or raising taxes, just when our economy is starting to recover. GPA would go from about one-third of the state budget to nearly half.

As that last figure indicates, Maine spends a lot of state dollars to support local schools. Although you’d never guess it from MMA’s rhetoric about “broken promises,” we compare very favorably to our New England neighbors.

According to a 2001 Education Week survey on school funding equity – one of the most comprehensive to date – Maine provided a greater percentage of state funding than any other New England state, at 46.8 percent. Wealthy Connecticut provided only 37.4 percent, and New Hampshire a mere 7.1 percent. Maine did even better than Massachusetts, where Proposition 21/2 limited local property taxes and required more state aid.

The survey also showed that Maine ranked fifth in the nation in adequacy of resources devoted to public schools, far ahead of any other New England state. No state in the region ranked well in Education Week’s calculation of funding equity – Maine was 31st – because of New England’s vast numbers of local governments and heavy reliance on the property tax. But again, we ranked higher than any other New England state, most of which have far greater financial resources than we do.

We need to realize that Maine’s performance in state school funding is far better than the “broken promise” charge would have voters believe. My conclusion is that the Legislature in the 1980s promised more than the state could deliver – and the Legislature in the early 1990s flat-funded education for far too long. But if we erred on the high side in one decade, and on the low side in the next, we should be careful about what we do next.

MMA doesn’t tell voters that increased school funding doesn’t necessarily translate into property tax relief for homeowners. A majority of state payments to towns and school districts goes to assist businesses and out-of-state residents, not Maine homeowners. And because of a failing school funding formula, many school districts with high tax rates won’t see much relief even if MMA’s plan passes.

That’s why the Legislature enacted a competing measure that’s much more comprehensive than the simplistic MMA plan. It provides a much needed increase in funding for both the Homestead and Circuit Breaker programs. The Homestead program reduces every Maine resident’s property tax bill, while the Circuit Breaker provides relief to homeowners and renters whose incomes are low in relation to their housing costs.

The competing measure also reforms the school funding formula by basing state aid on the Essential Programs and Services Act that, for the first time, defines what every school district needs to provide a good education. It also includes a local tax expectation that will have the effect of targeting state aid to districts where it is most needed.

The competing measure doesn’t do everything I’d hoped for. While the emphasis of the campaign has been on spending more money, we need to understand that Maine’s public schools are about to become smaller. Because of an aging population and a record-low birthrate, enrollment will decline by 10 percent over the next decade. That means we will have to use our resources more wisely and emphasize regional cooperation – it can’t be business as usual or our per-pupil costs, already high, will go through the roof.

I don’t like the look of this future, and I’m now co-chairing a legislative task force to find out how to attract more young people to Maine, and keep more of our daughters and sons at home. But even if we turn the situation around it will take years before school enrollment increases again.

Gov. Baldacci’s original proposal included spending re-straints on municipal government similar to what the state has imposed on itself, and such restraints may still be needed. We won’t have accomplished anything for property tax relief with Question 1A, or 1B, if local budgets continue to escalate.

Maine is not a wealthy state, but we take care of our own – and we do a lot better than our neighbors when it comes to school funding. I want to increase state aid to education, but I want to do it responsibly. There’s no way I want the Legislature to come into session in January and immediately be faced with the need to slash vital health care and economic development programs, or enact a huge tax increase – or both. That’s why I’ll be voting for Question 1B.

Pat Colwell is Maine House Speaker.