AUGUSTA -- Gov. John Baldacci Monday vetoed a bill meant to amend Maine's school-district consolidation law hours after it passed the Senate.

The bill, L.D. 1932, would have allowed consolidating school districts to devise individual cost-sharing formulas, basing individual towns' tax contributions to their regional districts on measures other than property value.

The House passed the bill on Friday, voting 83-47. On Monday, the Senate approved it, 21-14.

The legislation also would have allowed districts that currently receive a minimum special-education subsidy to continue to receive it when they consolidate. L.D. 1932 also would have created a single budget format for all districts.

Legislators had amended the bill to allow a "school administrative union" district structure, a provision Baldacci has opposed since the amendment was introduced in February.

In a statement, Baldacci said such a structure "would encourage more bureaucracy and allow for the expansion of an inefficient means of school governance. Maine would likely end up with more school districts, not fewer."

After his veto, senators failed to muster the votes for an override in a 12-23 vote.

Rep. Peter Edgecomb, R-Caribou, who originally introduced the amendment allowing the school union structure, said Baldacci's veto would help efforts to repeal the consolidation law altogether.

"There are a lot of areas where the school consolidation law is not working well," Edgecomb said. "This school union concept would have been helpful to a lot of areas."

Edgecomb said he plans to introduce an amendment that, if passed, would repeal the consolidation law. He said he would attempt to attach the amendment to L.D. 2280, another bill that would apply fixes to the original consolidation law.

In rural areas of Aroostook and Hancock counties, Edgecomb said, consolidation is impractical. Operating a single school board for a consolidated regional school unit would make it difficult for rural residents to travel long distances to offer input at board meetings, he said.

A school union would allow individual school boards in each town of a regional district, all reporting to a single superintendent.

"It really boils down to local control. This is not the way the fabric of the state of Maine is," Edgecomb said of the district structures required by the consolidation law.

Residents "like to have representation on local school boards where they have their own budget," he said.

The school-district consolidation law, which legislators approved last year, intended to reduce administrative costs by cutting Maine's 290 districts down to approximately 80.

Baldacci said he would file separate legislation to pass what he termed "the noncontroversial elements of L.D. 1932" into law.

The governor's veto did not surprise the chairmen of local regional planning committees working out school district mergers. Planners of a regional district including Fayette, Winthrop and Maranacook-area schools said the veto means more waiting until the cost-sharing arrangement the proposed district is depending on becomes legal.

"We decided again today that we're not going to have any more meetings until the Legislature comes out with a final bill approved by the governor," Dale Glidden, of Winthrop, said Monday. "We don't feel there's any sense to meet until we know what the final law is going to look like."

Glidden said he hoped the Department of Education would extend a June deadline for submitting an updated merger plan if legislation does not pass swiftly.

Lester Sheaffer, co-chairman of the committee planning an eight-town consolidated district dubbed the Sheepscot Valley Regional School Unit, said members of his committee also would wait. The Sheepscot unit would serve Alna, Chelsea, Palermo, Somerville, Westport Island, Whitefield, Windsor and Wiscasset.

"We're just going to keep plugging away," Sheaffer said, "whatever the law happens to be that particular week."

Matthew Stone -- 623-3811, Ext. 435

mstone@centralmaine.com