Dueling ads in the fight over Question 3

The fight over Question 3 on November's ballot has made it to the airwaves.

The campaign fighting to uphold Maine's school district consolidation mandate has released the following ad (Note that the site that's hosting the video inserts its own commercial before playing the ad.):

The spot hails Maine's school district consolidation mandate -- whose potential repeal is the subject of Question 3 -- as introducing needed reforms and savings to the state's public education system. Then, a deep narrator's voice discusses the consequences of repealing the consolidation law.

Citing an Office of Fiscal and Program Review analysis, the narrator says consolidation's repeal "could cost over $30 million every year.

"That means higher property taxes or big cuts in education."

Problem is, the more than $37 million cost of repeal already was a big cut to education funding that passed the Legislature in 2007 as part of the consolidation law. Repealing the law would mean reinstating that money.

But supporters of the consolidation law's repeal are prepared to forfeit that point. Sen. David Trahan, R-Waldboro, said last week he's preparing to file legislative language to keep those reductions in place if a repeal passes. "We realize there's not a whole lot of money in the State House," Trahan told me.

I blogged earlier about what I saw as shifting arguments from the No on 3 side. In interviews, campaign manager Newell Augur is no longer claiming the $37 million figure as consolidation-related savings. Apparently, that shift in argumentation didn't extend to the group's TV spot.

On the pro-repeal side, Green Independent Party gubernatorial candidate Lynne Williams is circulating this spot:

Williams bemoans the passage of the consolidation law "under dark of night and with no public input."

"One size does not fit all," she says. "There's nothing wrong with small schools or small school buses."

There's less information in this ad to scrutinize. And a brief ad doesn't allow Williams to go into much detail about the consolidation law, or mention the fact that the law has changed a number of times to account for individual school districts' circumstances and problems complying with the law. The consolidation law has led to a variety of school district formations, not just one. Still, if the law stays on the books, it's likely to uniformly penalize all districts out of compliance with the law starting July 1, 2010.

Williams claims that there's nothing wrong with "small schools." Designers of the consolidation law, however, didn't write a law that closed small schools. It was intended to merge small school administrative districts. It's too early to tell whether, long-term, consolidated administrative offices will lead to the closure of small schools.