Developments on the Question 3 front

The implications on the outcome of the vote on Nov. 3 are unclear, but there have been a couple notable developments in the debate over school district consolidation in the past few days.

For whatever newspaper endorsements are worth, the Sun Journal has taken a side in the debate over Question 3, which will ask voters where they stand on repealing Maine's school district consolidation mandate. While acknowledging the law's imperfections, the Lewiston paper's editorial board came down on the side of keeping the mandate in place in a Sunday editorial.

While the law might have its imperfections, the editorial says, it's far from inflexible to widely varying community concerns. Amendments to the June 2007 law have allowed merging districts more liberty in designing cost-sharing formulas, formed a new operating structure for consolidated districts and temporarily forgiven the penalties intended for those districts that voted down local consolidation plans.

"It's hard to say ... that school consolidation is too rigid, when its terms have been compromised, negotiated, legislated and stalled at
almost every turn," the paper's editorial board writes. "If anything, this law has proven to be far too weak."

Shortly before the Sun Journal released its Question 3 endorsement, the blog Augusta Insider posted a poll on Question 3. Some 67 readers of that blog had voted as of this afternoon, and they've come down decisively in favor of a consolidation repeal, with 73 percent of the vote.

Clearly, it's not a representative sample of voters, but it's a window into what the devout followers of Maine politics -- not all of whom live in areas of the state closely affected by consolidation -- are thinking.