Gov. John Baldacci suggests next November for the runoff vote.

AUGUSTA (AP) – Looking toward a runoff vote on a citizen initiative to force an immediate quarter-of-a-billion-dollar infusion of state aid for local schools, proponents and opponents have already spelled out their differences on the merits of the so-called 1A plan.

Now a new argument is looming over when the runoff vote to consider 1A on its own should be held.

Tuesday’s referendum results kept 1A alive but well short of voter enactment.

Unofficial tabulations from 97 percent of precincts showed 38 percent voting for the immediate school funding boost promised by 1A and 35 percent voting for a gradual increase phased in over five years that would have been provided by a competing measure known as 1B.

Voting for option 1C to reject both proposals was a bloc of 27 percent.

The inconclusive referendum results left 1B dead while 1A, having gained support from more than one-third of the voters but from less than a majority, survived for another vote — up or down, without alternative.

Backed by the Maine Municipal Association and Maine Education Association as a step toward property tax relief, 1A would boost state aid for public education to 55 percent.

To date, backers of the 1A initiative have suggested that it might be best to hold a second election as soon as February and that the balloting probably will have to held by the June primary.

“One of the reasons is that there’s dates in the bill,” 1A campaign spokesman Jeff Nevins said Wednesday, referring to the citizen initiative’s self-contained implementation plan.

Out-of-cycle single-issue elections are traditionally held to give an advantage to the most committed voters and the most dedicated partisans of a cause.

Gov. John Baldacci, who unsuccessfully advocated the 1B competing measure but is still championing the forces opposing the 1A citizen initiative, is suggesting that a runoff vote on 1A be scheduled for next November, when presumably a relatively large turnout will be generated for presidential balloting.

“My thought is you want as many people as possible,” Baldacci told reporters at an impromptu session with reporters in his State House office Wednesday.

According to the secretary of state’s Maine Citizen’s Guide to the Referendum Election: “If neither 1A nor 1B receives a majority of the votes cast for Question 1, but one or both receives more than 33 percent of the vote, the one with the most votes will appear on the ballot by itself at the next statewide election.”

Baldacci suggested that, contrary to 1A campaign assumptions, a June primary might not be considered a statewide election.

“Not everybody can vote in a primary,” he said.

Nevins suggested that a delay in a runoff vote in November didn’t sound right, but that the 1A campaign had yet to adopt a fixed position.

“I guess at this point in time we’re waiting for the secretary of state to make that decision,” Nevins said. “It wasn’t something that we had discussed a lot prior to the vote yesterday.”

Meanwhile, Baldacci and Nevins each said Wednesday that the door was open for talks between 1A supporters and critics with an eye toward making some unspecified accommodations.

Still pending is a secretary of state’s review for certification of yet another tax-related petition drive aimed at the November 2004 ballot.

To win approval of a proposed Act to Impose Limits on Real and Personal Property Taxes, advocates would like to see voters asked: “Do you want to limit property taxes to 1% of the assessed value of the property?”