School consolidation is mandated in Maine.

The mandate is from taxpayers, tired of burdensome government spending and a dearth of bold initiatives from lawmakers. It was delivered with the narrow defeat of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights at the polls last November.

With that vote, Maine taxpayers entrusted their government with reducing the tax burden, instead of tying its hands with uncomfortable legislation. Gov. John Baldacci heard the message and, in response, introduced an aggressive school administration reform proposal in early January.

As part of the state budget, consolidation is booked to save $36.5 million over the biennium. That’s the bottom line. This week, however, the path leading to this figure became further overgrown, as the latest proposal, now from a special Bipartisan Working Group on consolidation, was presented in Augusta.

At the heart of the proposal is whether to mandate consolidation unquestionably, or allow communities the opportunity to opt-out, in return for a financial penalty, on top of reduced state aid as Essential Programs and Services is recalculated.

Consolidation has undergone many transformations since Gov. Baldacci took to the dais and delivered his inaugural address, and lawmakers and the Department of Education are still spending hours analyzing every statistic, option and scenario that has emerged from the plan’s many versions.

One facet, however, shouldn’t change: Consolidation should be compulsory. If school administrative costs are unsustainable, as they’ve been described, proposals to streamline spending must reflect this desperation.

Letting districts exit the process would go against this.

The diligent review by the Bipartisan Working Group, and its predecessors within the Legislature, has sculpted the consolidation proposal into workable shapes. There are some that will never like the plan, regardless of its form, but the latest proposals have sensibly addressed most concerns.

No consolidation plan, after all, will ever be perfect.

But the plan can work, as long as all Maine school districts face the same requirement to consolidate, instead of having the choice to pay a little extra for escape. This could further tilt an unbalanced system, by giving so-called wealthy districts an apparent advantage, and foster the notion of consolidation as punishment for less affluent regions.

And this loophole would also fail to recognize that mandating consolidation, really, is a moot point.

The mandate, from the taxpayers of Maine, already exists.