Left with a set of bad choices, Maine Democrats passed a two-year state budget last month that is built upon borrowing.

Borrowing to reduce the amount of the state’s unfunded liabilities. Borrowing to fund increased education funding. And borrowing to keep the lights on.

That borrowing is under attack and could face an ill-advised “people’s veto.”

Passed without Republican support and utilizing a procedural tactic to eliminate the requirement to pass the budget with two-thirds support in the Legislature, the budget put forward by Democrats is built upon the politically possible.

Republicans, frustrated by the process, by the borrowing and by being in the minority, have responded to the budget with a full-throated critique. While the differences between Democrats and Republicans are over only a fraction of the two-year budget, those differences are irreconcilable.

Now a group of moderate Republicans has taken steps to launch a people’s veto of the borrowing portion of the budget. Sens. Peter Mills, Richard Rosen and Karl Turner and Reps. Sawin Millett and Kevin Glynn are leading the move. If their efforts continue and they are successful in gathering enough signatures, the budget will go on the ballot in November; voters would then have the opportunity to reject the $450 million of borrowing.

Budgets should not be written at the ballot box. While voters might not like the idea of borrowing – we surely don’t, and neither do most of the people who voted for the budget – the alternatives are even worse.

Last November, voters approved a referendum question to increase state funding for education by $250 million. The question included no instructions on where the money was to come from. Would voters have supported the initiative if the question had also raised sales or income taxes? Probably not.

Politics being politics, we would expect the anti-borrowing effort to leave out the hard realities of the alternatives: big increases in broad-based taxes or $250 million in cuts to important social services.

Right now, towns and cities are working on their budgets. With the state budget in flux from the threat of a people’s veto, local lawmakers are left wondering what they can reasonably expect.

By the time the people’s veto would be decided, the state would be four months into the new fiscal year. Waiting on the outcome would undermine the state’s financial stability, threaten its bond ratings and create an unfunded liability that would hamper state agencies trying to carry out their mandates.

To have the budget rejected by voters would be a major defeat for the governor and his priorities, and certainly that is part of the political calculus involved with putting a veto on the ballot.

Imagine what this effort could spawn.

To get the veto on the ballot, backers need to gather 50,000 signatures before the end of June. If the effort succeeds, no future budget will be safe. Highly organized and well-financed special interests could attack parts of the budget they don’t like, mandating spending or cuts and destroying the Legislature’s ability to craft a comprehensive budget.

We wish the 2006-07 budget looked different, and we wish that the two political parties were not so far apart that a two-thirds budget was impossible. But wishing doesn’t make it so.

Putting a portion of the budget on the ballot represents a dangerous departure from an already-damaged process. No good can come from it.