Committees, as has been observed, are quiet cul-de-sacs down which ideas are lured, and quietly strangled. The Legislature’s Education Committee, in revealing its dead-end “consensus” plan for school consolidation on Thursday, is certainly garroting hopes for tax relief.

With a crowd behind them, and the Appropriations Committee ahead, the Education Committee unveiled a diluted version of the governor’s ambitious Local Schools, Regional Solutions initiative that tried for compromise, but instead broadcast confusion.

Appropriations members were unsure of what the Education Committee was presenting. Sen. Peter Bowman, the Education Committee co-chair, called it a “concept for a report.” It’s more like an unsatisfying mish-mash, a tax relief recipe that started with marvelous ingredients whose taste was boiled away.

Superintendents would drop from 152 to 108; small districts are throttled, since only districts of 1,200 students or fewer would face forced mergers. Otherwise, the committee recommended incentives to entice, but not compel, districts to collaborate or consolidate.

Even the facet it touted – revising Essential Programs and Services funding to reflect the expenses of an “efficient, high-performing” school unit – is head-shaking. Sen. Libby Mitchell called this “de facto” consolidation, because EPS funding would be based on real efficiency benchmarks, instead of mere averages.

The fight over consolidation, however, will seem inconsequential when debate over defining an “efficient, high-performing” school unit begins. As Sen. Bowman dryly told the Appropriations Committee, in reflecting on his committee’s hearings, all districts say they’re operating efficiently.

Savings won’t come from corralling districts that probably spend the least – those with 1,200 students or less – and holding the remainder hostage to artificial standards. It will come from clear mandates from state government that mark a specific path, and press school districts to walk it.

The Education Committee’s report seems to view collaboration and consolidation as nice ideas to embrace, when it should consider them necessities to require. If the school funding system is unsustainable, as the committee said, then its recommendations should have reflected this desperation.

There are parts of the proposal to applaud. Standardizing budget warrants along the EPS skeleton is overdue, and should help taxpayers understand where their dollars are spent. A two-year period to plan, and implement, consolidation is likely more realistic than the governor’s accelerated timetable.

Where it fails, however, is within its guts. It doesn’t have any. The plan pushes around smaller districts, and coddles larger ones. Instead of mandating obvious cases, like Lewiston and Auburn, to consolidate, it would season the notion with spices of financial reward.

It’s not enough to show some districts what they could do. This plan needs to say what all districts must do.

The Education Committee failed to do this. The Appropriations Committee – where the proposal now rests – must show greater fortitude, and restore the urgency for consolidation the Education Committee choked away.