Question 2 on Nov. 3 would reduce the excise tax placed on motor vehicles. The tax is levied town-by-town and its revenue remains in each community.

While there is no legal requirement that the money the tax raises be spent for any particular purpose, it appears that most communities consider its receipts to be the amount they will spend on building and repairing local roads and bridges.

A reduction in those funds, while clearly unpopular with municipal officials and groups that benefit from highway spending, nevertheless deserves a "yes" vote from Mainers.

Maine towns collectively raise about $4 billion a year from all sources, and the reduction in auto excise tax provided by this measure would cut that by an estimated 2 percent.

While that's not an inconsiderable sum of money, the loss has to be balanced by considering that Maine's excise tax rate is the seventh-highest in the nation, and 22 states get along without levying this kind of tax at all.

Lowering the tax on new and hybrid vehicles certainly will provide an incentive to buy new instead of used. To some people, saving $600-$800 may not seem like much money, but to others it most certainly does.

Opponents predict that communities will have to either slash road spending or raise property taxes to make up the difference, but that is only an assumption.

Question 2's sponsors rightly point out that there is another option: Find economies in other spending categories and transfer money from those accounts to roads and bridges.

Lowering the tax also could spur communities to increase their efforts to find cooperative ways to save money in joint efforts, which would be a positive result all by itself.