CONCORD — Five candidates for governor say they will work next year to pay the state's nearly $1 billion education bill by being efficient with the overall budget, but they have different ideas on how the state should distribute the money to cities and towns.

Republican candidates Ovide Lamontagne and Kevin Smith had hoped they would have been free of the state Supreme Court's decisions in the Claremont and Londonderry cases and would have been able in January to propose a new education funding scheme, allowing more dramatic targeting of aid to the neediest communities.

But that won't be the case, thanks to last Wednesday's House vote, which fell short of placing on the November ballot a constitutional amendment that would have effectively overturned those court decisions.

Smith and Lamontagne now say they intend to keep the issue alive and push for getting an amendment on the 2014 ballot if they are elected.

Both said that without such an amendment on the books, they will be “hamstrung” in proposing changes in how education is funded and the aid distributed, but intend to work within the court-ordered confines.

The three Democratic candidates — Maggie Hassan, Jackie Cilley and Bill Kennedy — opposed the proposed amendment.

Hassan said she will try to raise $30 million to $40 million by restoring the 10-cents-a-pack cigarette tax cut passed last year by the Republican-dominated Legislature and rehiring 20 laid-off state tax auditors so they can resume tracking down tax evaders.

Recent state figures show those two actions have so far cost the state $31 million.

Cilley proposed revisiting the current funding formula, which has been constrained by a “collar” aimed at preventing wide swings in the amount of state aid given to communities from one year to the next. She wants to determine how the current formula would work unfettered.

Cilley and Kennedy said they would talk to local educators to help them determine how well education is being delivered in the state and whether it could be done more efficiently.

Lamontagne, Smith and Hassan have pledged to veto any broad-based taxes. Cilley and Kennedy have rejected that traditional pledge, though neither has proposed such taxes.

Kennedy said he would propose one only to replace several of what he considers to be “regressive” state taxes.

Although proponents of a constitutional amendment say the state bill for education will balloon beyond the current $940 million now that the proposal has died, laws passed during the last few legislative sessions will keep state education spending stable at about $578 million in “adequacy” and “stabilization” funding, plus $363 million raised locally through the statewide property tax.

Since funding is on a per-pupil basis, that required amount will rise or fall slightly depending on student enrollment, which has been declining in recent years.

But beginning in fiscal 2014, adequacy aid will change based on the Consumer Price Index. Another component of the formula to come into play in 2014 says that no community can receive more than a 5.5 percent increase regardless of how sharply student populations increase.

As a result, said state Rep. David Hess, R-Hooksett, and state Sen. Jim Rausch, R-Derry, key legislative players on the issue, the next governor and Legislature will be looking at a total education bill in the $950 million range, with $363 million of it automatically raised by the statewide property tax.

Candidate Smith said the lack of a constitutional amendment “will continue to hamstring future governors and legislatures from really appropriately targeting aid to the neediest communities and also dealing with spending constraints within the state budget. There's not a lot of wiggle room.”

Smith said he sees no need to propose “big changes” in the distribution formula, and “we'll try to target aid to those communities that need it the most within the confines of that law as it's been set out by the courts.

Lamontagne said he intends to “help persuade citizens that we are going to be far better off if we meet this challenge head-on with a constitutional amendment than if we continue to operate under the cloud of what I think will be another Claremont decision that will further remove the people from the delivery of education.''

“We're really hamstrung to be able to engage in true educational reform so long as we have this situation in which the state is found to have a non-delegable duty to provide an adequate education and provide adequate funding,” he said.

Hassan said she will first focus on “reversing the giveaways to 'big tobacco' and tax evaders that the Republicans in this Legislature approved.''

“There are some things this Tea Party Legislature did that we can reverse that will increase our revenue,” she said.

Although she would veto broad-based tax legislation as governor, Hassan, like Cilley and Kennedy, opposes a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban an income tax, which will be on the ballot.

Cilley said the education funding constitutional amendment plan was dangerous given “the very anti-education stance that this Legislature took.''

“I would never vote to put that sort of power, with no oversight, into the hands of someone who would use it as a political football so that they could get more for their district at the expense of another district,” she said.

Cilley proposed looking closely at how the current formula would work freed of “manipulation,” such as collars and other tweaks.

“It was conceived as an objective formula” and passed largely on a bipartisan basis, she said.

“I also would want to see a full-throated commitment to educating every child in this state,” said Cilley. “I would sit down with the people who actually deliver the service. You start there and you get their input.

Kennedy said he has no intention of rushing to trying to impose a broad-based tax as governor.

“I don't want a knee-jerk reaction,” he said.

“I'm going to address it in a rational process, looking at the things that suffered the most, because I'm fiscally responsible.”

He said he would call on local school board members and “state experts” to “see where we've suffered through the previous cuts, and they are going to have to legitimize increases in state funding.”

He said he would only propose a broad-based tax if there was a corresponding reduction in “some of the unfair taxes,” such as the Business Enterprise Tax and the Rooms and Meals Tax.

“There are many regressive taxes,” he said.

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John DiStaso may be reached at jdistaso@unionleader.com.