Finally unfettered by paralyzing budget deficits of the last four years, the 2007 Minnesota Legislature made modest progress toward maintaining the stateís vital tradition of better-than-average public services. Perhaps mirroring an electorate that sent a divided government to the Capitol, it was a legislative session of giant strides, incremental improvements and missed opportunities.

Lawmakers in the DFL-controlled House and Senate and Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty hit a pair of home runs with the long-awaited smoking ban and a landmark energy law that requires electric utilities to provide 25 percent of their output from renewable sources by 2025. Lawmakers also set aggressive greenhouse-gas reduction goals, bypassing the Washington, D.C., gridlock on climate change and energy independence.

The state whiffed on a prime opportunity to improve its creaky transportation system. It failed to readjust a tax structure that has veered from progressivity and fairness. Republicansí aversion to new revenue ó "no new taxes," in Pawlenty-era parlance ó means property taxes will remain higher than they should, and the state will have yet to fulfill its obligations for E-12 education.

The legislative session began with a $2.2 billion surplus, about half of which was available for new spending in the next two-year budget cycle. It ended with Pawlenty making good on promises to hold spending increases to about 10 percent. Legislative leaders could also claim successes ó including some relief from runaway college tuition increases and the addition of 30,000 children to the health-care rolls.

Lawmakers will likely have to wait until Pawlenty has left office to pass an overdue gasoline-tax increase ó the fairest means of improving and stabilizing transportation funding. Pawlentyís veto of this yearís proposed increase was secured by party loyalty, even though some Republican legislators want to raise the tax.

A two-year increase of $794 million for E-12 education includes $326 million for special education. That will help districts that have raided their general funds because the federal and state governments havenít fulfilled their stated obligations for special education.

But the state is leaking in its 2001 promise to permanently tip the education-funding balance by expecting far less of property taxpayers. Many districts will return to voters this fall, asking for more money because the $794 million package wonít cover cost inflation for two years.

Despite growing consensus on the need to beef up early-childhood education, the Legislature managed only a modest increase for all-day kindergarten, and far less for preschool programs.

DFL proposals to raise more money by hiking income taxes on high-earning Minnesotans were nonstarters with the Republican governor.

But a slowly growing imbalance in tax burden finds higher-earning residents paying a lesser share of their income in state and local taxes than most of us. Future Legislatures should reconsider tax rates to make the income tax an instrument of both revenue and fairness.

This editorial is a product of the ECM Editorial Board. The Caledonia Argus is part of ECM Publishers Inc.

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