As part of Maine's school consolidation law, voters have to approve a school budget through a two-step process: first at a town meeting-style forum, and then at the polls. Few could have expected what's happened with the Sheepscot Valley Regional School Unit. Voters in the unit's eight towns have rejected the school budget four times, most recently on January 16.

By then, more than $40,000 had been spent on putting on meetings and referendums. "It's incredibly frustrating each time because there is an incredible amount of work and effort that goes into it," says Sheepscot Valley Superintendent Greg Potter. Potter is now among those calling for a change to state law governing school budgets.

Right now, there is no limit on how many times the budget can go to referendum. Potter suggests setting the limit at three rounds.  It's halfway through the school year, and Potter still doesn't have a budget. "One of our biggest fears is that we bring a budget back close to the end of the fiscal year and then all of a sudden there is some kind of drastic cut made to it, and the funds have already been expended."

Sheepscot Valley is not the only school system to face multiple votes on its school budget. A survey of 80 districts by the Maine Municipal Association shows that 10 percent of school systems had their budgets turned down at least once last year.

This issue has come to the attention of lawmakers such as Justin Alfond, who co-chairs the Legislature's Education and Cultural Affairs Committee. Alfond, a Democrat from Portland, says the committee will consider changing the rules on budget validation in an omnibus education bill known as LD 570.

"I've always been one to support the idea that voters locally and statewide should determine what's happening in their schools and city councils. That's why we vote every single year," Alfond says.

But Alfond says that superintendents such as Greg Potter make a strong argument for changing the way budgets are validated. "Everything is on the table when you have an economic climate like we have today. This is a very costly process, a very timely process. Some would say it's a very redundant process," Alfond says.

Among the opponents to changing the budget approval process are the Maine Heritage Policy Center and the Maine Municipal Association. The MMA's Geoff Herman says the difficulty that some districts are having with their budgets are simply growing pains that are to be expected with a school consolidation law that's just three years old.

"Each municipality's exposure within the new district is related to its relative municipal valuation within that district and its relative municipal student count. And so you take those values and put them into a new district it can catch taxpayers by surprise," Hermon says. "There was this overarching thought that consolidation would save money and so when the budget impact is much greater than it was the previous year, they react negatively, obviously."

Herman says that some towns have their own problems with the budget process -- namely the rule that says the referendum vote must take place within two weeks of the the town meeting on the budget. But he does not think it should be up to Augusta to change the two-step process. "The law itself allows the voters in each individual school system to essentially repeal the process if they wish," he says. "Every three years automatically on the ballot there has to be this referendum sidebar question is do you want to continue using this referendum process."

This is the first year that the "sidebar" question will be posed to voters, at the same time that they are voting on the school budget. But there is confusion over whether this provision applies to districts that consolidated less than three years ago.

Dale Douglass of the Maine School Superintendents Association and the Maine School Board Association says the two groups are behind an effort to get lawmakers to clarify that all school systems can vote on the budget process this year.

Neither group, says Douglass, took a position on repealing the budget process. "Some districts have said that they can work with this, and others have said it's not a very good idea, and so what we've said is people should have that choice."

Potter says that voters in RSU 12, which spans from Palermo in the north to Westport island in the south, will likely want the budget process to stand as is. Potter says voting on a school budget for a fifth time may seem like an anomaly now, but he predicts that as the state continues to tighten its belt and more costs shift locally, RSU 12 won't be alone.

"We're looking at an additional $1.45 million reduction to in-state monies for next year, which is getting close to a 25 percent reduction in those state funds in a two-year period," Potter says. "So I think the issue is going to continue to be one and it will probably grow given the economic climate that we have."

Potter says the RSU 12 school board will be getting together next week to plan bringing the budget back for a fifth vote. Discussion about the budget process will continue in the Education Committee. Alfond says the plan is to vote the omnibus bill out of committee by next Wednesday.