While legislators in Augusta continue to contemplate changes to the school consolidation law, towns across the state are faced with a dilemma. Should they follow the law as enacted last year; continue as usual and hope that expected changes to the law are enacted soon enough to become effective before town voting, or should they carry on as they always have without consideration to the legislature's decision? The island community of Southport may be the first to decide to take the latter course of action.

Southport selectmen, budget committee, and school committee members agreed unanimously last week to not follow the budget validation process outlined in last year's school consolidation law. Instead, Southporters plan to approve their school budget the way they have always done - in town meeting.

The legislature's education committee voted unanimously in December to postpone the new school budget validation process until 2009, due primarily to financial concerns, procedural difficulties, and the potential for interference with municipalities' tax setting. They envisioned that this delay would be passed by emergency measure and become effective early in 2008 allowing towns and school districts to adopt school budgets as they have in previous years. This postponement of the new budget process is included in LD 1932, which includes other changes to the law, and has yet to see the light of day in the full legislature.

To be effective immediately, LD 1932 would require passage by two-thirds of the legislature, which appears unlikely at present. Without the two-thirds majority, LD 1932 may not become applicable until July, too late to help many towns that ratify their school and town budgets months earlier. While the full legislature hasn't even begun to discuss these modifications to the consolidation law that need "emergency fixing," the education committee continues to consider other changes to the law, presumably including fixes to the budget validation process. Thus, those communities who undertake the budget validation process this year will be following a requirement likely to disappear or be significantly altered before next year.

Southport has no intention of doing that. "Without any idea of what the heck is going on in Augusta, we're going to use the system that's been working for us for a long time," says school committee member Bruce White. Despite the fact that School Union 49 Superintendent Eileen King has advised them to follow the existing law, White says Southport will not. "We're not going to do it. We've had enough. We've reached a limit. We've been incorporated since 1842. We've been good stewards of our taxpayers' money. We've been holding town meetings since then. We've been raising money to spend on the school, probably since then. We have a system that works."

Southport Selectman Gerry Gamage agrees. "The town meeting is the purest form of democracy and that's the process we have followed since incorporation. The state of Maine is telling us that that is not legal, permissible, allowable … They're wrong."

White and Gamage acknowledge that for larger municipalities where voters may never have an opportunity to vote on school budget items, the new budget process may offer taxpayers some desired control. But Southport already votes on the individual parts of the school budget during their town meeting. White explains, "Just because they don't have one (a budget approval process) doesn't mean that we should have to undo what we've been doing for years which works perfectly well. This one size fits all thing that's come from Augusta just doesn't work."

Penalizing those towns that do not conform has been a critical part of this latest attempt at consolidating Maine's schools. However, at this point, no one knows what, if any, repercussions Southport may incur by rejecting the budget validation process. Unlike many other towns, Southport receives relatively little in state subsidies, only about $45,000/year, and thus, is less beholden to the state. In a worst case scenario, the state may deny Southport its entire subsidy. To prepare for this, Southport's town warrant will ask voters to appropriate additional money for the school budget, to be used only in the event that state subsidies to Southport are withheld.

Will other towns follow suit? King said that the Boothbay-Boothbay Harbor CSD and towns have not made a decision about budget validation as yet. With a significantly larger state subsidy, it is going to be a lot harder for the CSD to risk bucking the state. But small towns like Bristol and South Bristol, which are less dependent upon state subsidies, may follow Southport's lead.

"I bet there are a lot of small towns that still have a town meeting form of government and I think they would jump aboard this or at least be supportive," White noted.