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By BETH QUIMBY
MaineToday Media, Inc. 10/08/2007

and KELLEY BOUCHARD

MaineToday Media, Inc.

Emil Genest, an assistant school superintendent in Hampden, predicts a new law requiring a ballot vote by residents to approve the school district budget will lead to new transparency in the school-budget process.

But for Nadeen Daniels, the town clerk in Cumberland, the law is a potential nightmare because it provides so little detail about how those referenda will actually be carried out.

School districts and municipalities across Maine are grappling with a provision of the new school-district consolidation law that requires voters in each district to approve school budgets at the ballot box. The law is aimed at giving voters greater say and understanding about how their school tax dollars are being spent. For some districts, especially those that already require voters to approve school budgets, the law is not a big change.

But some cities and towns, like Portland, have never had citywide votes on school budgets. So the practicalities of the budget validation referendum process are raising concerns among the state's city and town clerks. They say the law provides no guidance about absentee ballots, advertising and posting or other details that ensure a fair election process.

The Maine Town and City Clerk's Association is seeking a meeting with Education Commissioner Susan Gendron to air their concerns. "The voters are going to be looking to us to make sure the election process is as transparent as possible," Daniels said.

Some school districts are exempt from merging under the state's new school district consolidation law because they have more than 2,500 students.

But each district in Maine must change the way it adopts school budgets under the new law. Starting next year, each district board must develop a school budget and then each district's top legislative body, such as a city or town council, will approve it.

Ten days later, residents in the district will vote on the budget in an up-or-down referendum on a paper ballot. This could take multiple elections if voters continue to vote down the budgets.

If voters fail to approve a school budget by July 1, the latest budget recommended by the district board will automatically become the budget for the coming year until a final budget is approved.

Currently, budgets are approved and adopted by a hodgepodge of methods. In some districts, a budget is drawn up by a school committee and put before voters at a town meeting in any number of articles. Another common method is a school budget drawn up by a school committee for a bottom-line vote by a town or city council.

Some school districts break the budget down into any number of different line items, which become separate questions on a ballot at the voting booth. The budget validation referendum, as it is called under the law, is used currently by only a few districts in Maine, including School Administrative District 22 (Hampden, Newburgh and Winterport).

Genest, the district's superintendent, said the method allows school officials to better explain where the money in a budget is being spent and increases voter participation. "In the long run, it was a blessing in disguise because we could show we were very conservative on administrative costs," he said.

Genest said voter participation has grown from the 75 to 120 people who would show up at a school district meeting to vote on the budget to 1,200 out of a potential 9,985 voters.

at the polls.

But SAD 43 school superintendent James Hodgkin said while more people may vote on the budget, there is still little participation in the process leading up to the vote. SAD 43, which includes the towns of Byron, Mexico, Roxbury and Rumford, was the first district in the state to adopt the budget validation referendum.

Typically, one or two members of the public show up at the informational meeting where Hodgkin explains why budget items have gone up or down. He said about 50 people show up at the district meeting, 90 percent of them school employees. But some 8,000 people take part in the ballot vote. He said in the five years it has been in use, voters have never rejected a budget.

"Our people have voted for the budget but they say it is too high," he said. In Portland, which is Maine's largest school district with 7,100 students, school and city administrators anticipate having to work hard to persuade voters to approve a school budget next spring.

They worry that a lack of clarity in the consolidation law will make it more difficult and, ultimately, more costly to taxpayers. They are already preparing the 2008-09 school budget -- three months earlier than usual -- in the wake of recent controversy over a $2 million deficit in last year's $82 million budget.

Portland officials are planning a school budget referendum in early April to make sure they have time for one or two more special elections before a budget must be passed, said City Clerk Linda Cohen. Cohen said it's difficult to gauge public interest in advance of the first budget referendum, especially when a handful of the city's 46,000 registered voters typically shows up for City Council budget hearings, not to mention the fact that it's a single-issue special election.

As a result, Cohen plans to open all 17 polling places and hire a full staff of election workers, which will cost $50,000. A skeleton crew with fewer polling places would cost $35,000. "The bulk of the cost of elections is personnel," Cohen said.

In particular, she's worried about the short notice allowed to reserve polling places, schedule and train poll workers and handle absentee ballots, especially if voters don't approve a school budget the first time. "The integrity of elections has to be above question," she said.

Gary Wood, Portland's city attorney, said he hopes many of these concerns will be addressed in an omnibus bill of technical corrections early in the Legislature's next session, which starts in January.

Wood is working on one amendment that would address what municipalities can do to keep money coming in if voters fail to approve a school budget by July 1.

"There's got to be a budget we can look to if the voters don't approve one by June 30," Wood said.

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