Maine voters will face an awful situation on June 8 when they consider on the ballot a repeat of Question 1, which directs the state to immediately fund K-12 education at 55 percent of the total cost and all of special education. The impulse and sentiment of voters may be to say yes given the state’s retreat on education funding, but doing so trusts the Legislature to behave in a way that it rarely does.

Consider the following:

. The school funding formula in Question 1 will no longer exist starting next year, making its demands for increased funding confusing and changing the way the new money would be distributed compared with when the signatures for the initiative were gathered.

. The leading organization behind the initiative, the Maine Municipal Association, has agreed to support the new means for distributing school funding, Essential Programs and Services, and has also agreed to give up full funding for special education, placing that too within EPS. That component of the bill was a major reason some communities were interested in the ballot initiative.

. Instead of requiring the state to move immediately to 55 percent funding, a jump of $260 million, MMA says a down payment next year of $40 million would show good faith and be acceptable. How the petition signers feel about that is unclear.

With the MMA compromising on so much, the Legislature should have found that $40 million. Money was tight throughout the session, but a small sin tax would have ended a long-standing fight. As Rep. Peter Mills of Cornville observed the other day, “We failed to do even that. It was pretty disgusting.” In the end, the Legislature found only $15 million for school funding and MMA began its campaign to pass its initiative.

Voters should ask, however, whether it makes sense to pass a proposal that should be modified to meet new statute and could be further modified because the MMA has said it won’t stand in the way of some substantial changes. The value of the initiative under such circumstances is especially limited. And if modifications of what is being offered June 8 truly are needed, what happens when lawmakers with districts that, for instance, have high special education costs but low mill rates say they like the current form of the initiative and refuse to change it?

MMA’s point in beginning its signature drive more than two years ago was that the Legislature had been given ample chances to enact tax relief, had failed and would continue to fail without specific direction from voters. Their intentions were right even if some parts of their initiative were flawed. They nearly passed 1A last fall; passing it now is either meaningless (if legislators act to change it substantially) or dangerous (if they do not).

Here’s the even worse part: All of this was known to lawmakers all winter. The presence of another citizen’s initiative, a 1 percent cap on property taxes to be considered in November, made settling this during the legislative session crucial. Instead the parties squabbled, Democrats in the Senate ended up addressing correspondence to the Democratic governor “To Whom it May Concern” and the rare bipartisan tax relief plan was allowed to die by leadership. The result is a large mess handed to voters, who by law cannot clean it up, but are allowed merely to vote yes or no on a part of it and then entrust the Legislature to do the rest.

A no vote is less a reflection on the value of forcing Maine to move on tax reform than an understanding of what comes next.