When it comes to cutting taxes, everyone talks a good game. High-tax state. Waste in government. Cut the fat. You’ve heard it all.

Yet, despite the talk, we have seen a host of money saving proposals come to nothing.

And, we can’t always blame politicians for the inaction. Mainers just don’t seem willing to make the sacrifices necessary to, as people are fond of saying, run government like a business.

The latest proposal that seems destined for the scrap heap of Maine history is a 13-point plan presented to the Maine Board of Education Wednesday.

The plan received a cool reception from teacher unions and school administrators when it was first proposed last year.

Of course it did. Among its controversial recommendations:

• increasing the student-teacher ratio;

• reducing the number of Maine’s school districts from 286 to 35;

• lengthening the school year; and

• funding only construction projects involving school consolidation.

And, we suspect it would receive a cool reception from the tax-paying public. More than 200 school districts would disappear into larger entities. Hundreds of local school boards would evaporate. Superintendents would be looking for new jobs. District office personnel would be cut. Kids would be sitting in larger classes and getting a little less individualized attention.

Painful? You bet. Yet, when you look around at the business world, this is exactly what businesses do to save money.

Take banking. The local banks have been absorbed by larger banks that have, in turn, been absorbed by regional banks. The reason? There is efficiency and savings in consolidating services.

To some extent, the same thing goes for local government. Right now, Lewiston and Auburn are slowly nibbling around the edges of consolidating some services. It’s been slow going so far. In the first six months after a committee recommended hiring a coordinator and beginning the process, virtually nothing was accomplished.

The obstacles to consolidation and cooperation are even greater across the state. There are nearly 500 local governments in Maine, according to the Maine Municipal Association. That’s in a state with only 1.3 million residents.

It’s nice to have the town hall down the road, but is that the most efficient, least-costly way to provide services? Study after study has found that it is not.

Then there is the University of Maine System with “Seven Unique Universities,” according to the system’s Web site.

An effort to simply consolidate the administration of these seven campuses was scuttled in the Legislature last year when parochial interests weren’t willing to give up their control.

So, instead of doing the logical thing to save money and reduce the tax burden, we have the magical way: TABOR, or the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, which we will vote on in November.

The pros and cons of TABOR aside, its basic premise is that we don’t have the willpower to control government ourselves, that we need a formula built into state law to do it for us.

Maybe we do.

But the reality is this: There may be “fat” in local government, but it’s not much. The only way to save money is the hard way – to either cut services or provide them more efficiently, which means consolidation and cooperation.

Mainers are deluding themselves if they think otherwise.