When jail consolidation started, we urged Gov. John Baldacci to “keep going.” Proving the state could run the costliest county function more efficiently was the best first step, we thought, toward phasing out counties entirely.

Consolidation, however, gave county officials palpitations. They fought the proposal vigorously, and won a compromise this week. If approved by the Legislature, there will not be any jail consolidation on Maine’s horizon.

Instead, the state – in return for paying $10.25 million in debt, and letting counties keep federal boarding dollars – will control every important facet of the jail system: financing, growth, bed space, investment, downsizing, etc.

Plus, the state gets free room and board for its prisoners, and the authority to freeze the county’s 2008 property tax assessments for jail services. Jails will neither close, nor any county corrections personnel lose their jobs. At least not now; the state has also assumed control of staffing.

On its surface, it seems a good compromise. Controlling jail costs was beyond county ability; tight state oversight, through a new State Board of Corrections, should work to cap tax increases, while pursuing efficiencies.

Yet the real measure of this compromise won’t be simple cost-containment. The new state board is also tasked with resolving the immense problem of managing “specialty” inmates – such as women, and those with mental health or substance abuse problems.

These are cost-drivers, the inmates who require specialized treatment, programs, medical care or have the highest probability of recidivism. How the state board, through the Department of Corrections and counties, tackles these issues will define whether its efforts were an overall success, or failure.

It won’t decide, however, whether the state should keep going regarding counties. It should.

With the financial and operational power over jails it’s been given, the state has been granted the ends of consolidation, without the headache of consolidation. Tough issues do lie ahead, but there’s little preventing state government from remaking county jails, from top to bottom.

And if counties are willing to transfer this crucial oversight to the state, they should also be open to extending this same courtesy to other operations, like law enforcement, prosecutions, probate and emergency management.

This would leave most counties with deed registries, a job that could transfer nicely to local municipalities, and we’re sure public or private interests could assume the odd county-owned civic center, airport or other facility.

Regardless of how jail consolidation ended – either in a hostile takeover or the hard-fought compromise – the state’s pursuit should signal the end of counties as unassailable entities. Taxpayers should have demanded counties to either be put to work, or put to pasture, long ago.

With their compromise on jails, counties have shown they will cede control of even the most essential operations.

This is an open invitation for going further. So we’ll say it again.

Keep going, governor.