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This legislative session, there was no escaping the long shadow of that big deficit year.

Rep. Nora Slawik lost sleep last week, trying to nurse early childhood education provisions into the final E-12 education bill. But the gloom in her voice at midweek bespoke more frustration than fatigue.

"All the innovation is gone," the Maplewood DFLer ruefully reported. When the little bit of money left for early ed was allocated, it would stretch only far enough to restore funding to pre-2003 levels for Head Start, School Readiness, Early Childhood Family Education.

Those are proven programs. They ought to be as least as robust as they were in 2002. Still, not being able to apply new ideas and money to an emerging need "feels like treading water," Slawik said. "It's not getting ahead."

The story was much the same as other big bills were put in final form last week. When shiny new ideas went head-to-head with embedded programs that had been hit hard in the big deficit year of 2003, the chrome fell off.

Four years and two general elections have passed. Yet still present in nearly every conference committee room this year were the spending cuts made by the 2003 Legislature and Gov. Tim Pawlenty to close a $4.5 billion deficit without raising state taxes. Those decisions were this session's inescapable context.

The governor and some legislators want to push high school reform? Not so fast, said the school districts. You can't start something new until you repair the damage the 2003 freeze in special ed funding is doing to our bottom lines.

The Legislature's 2020 Conference likes cash incentives for families to care for frail elderly relatives? Not now, when the 2003 cuts have a third of the state's nursing homes on the brink of closure.

Pawlenty and the Private College Council have an idea for getting more high school kids to take college-prep classes? We can't put millions into an unproven scheme like that, and let tuition at state colleges keep climbing into the stratosphere, legislators said.

When Susan Heegaard of the state Office of Higher Education described the tension in higher ed funding talks, she might have been describing the debate throughout the Capitol: "We keep hearing, 'We've got to fund the basics first. We'd like to do more strategic funding, but we can't afford it.' The governor disagrees. You've got to try to do both."Do both" was easier said than done this session. It wasn't just that it was hard for DFLers to say no to their big institutional friends. Or that Pawlenty wouldn't permit a tax increase. Or that a lot of the loose money at the Legislature's disposal was a one-time windfall, which responsible people don't use for ongoing expenses, even if their governor claims it's OK.

It's also that preschool scholarships for poor families don't make much sense in poor neighborhoods where state cuts put child care centers with preschool components out of business. And that you can't sell grandkids on caring for Grandma if the nursing home that might provide adult day care while the grandkids are at work has closed.

New ideas that build on an intact government-services infrastructure were stopped by evidence that Minnesota doesn't have one anymore.

"I keep hearing that we should be more like business, and that businesses both cut expenses and invest in new things," said Rep. Mindy Greiling, DFL-Roseville, the House K-12 finance chair. "I don't know. I don't think too many businesses let their whole plant crumble in order to improve the landscaping."

Her analogy would be more apt if the proposed investments were merely aesthetic improvements. They weren't. Several are responses to the biggest challenge this generation of lawmakers faces -- preparing for a future in which prosperity will depend more than ever on a well-educated workforce, even as the average age of the population becomes older than ever.

Getting more little kids ready for kindergarten and bigger kids ready for college goes to the heart of this state's aspirations for its future. Finding a more affordable and appealing way to care for Minnesota's frail elderly is imperative, if education is going to continue to have first claim on public dollars.

The ideas bandied about this year may not have been right for Minnesota. Other ways of going at the Big Challenge might work better. But discussion of all such options ended too soon this session -- silenced by an inability or unwillingness either to raise new revenue or to move money away from programs that were hit in 2003. With one day to go before regular-session adjournment, this year's Capitol story looks to be the triumph of unfinished business over new priorities. That's not the way to move Minnesota ahead.

Lori Sturdevant is a Star Tribune editorial writer and columnist. She is at lsturdevant@startribune.com.

http://www.startribune.com/314/story/1192980.html