Conservatives bray, lawmakers govern.

• Author: Schwab, Robert

WHEN I WRITE THIS FOR OUR FEBRUARY ISSUE, IT IS USUALLY mid-January, the legislature has begun, and I'm feeling guilty about not having written enough already about the challenges state lawmakers will face during their 120-day session. I write it today because the legislature indeed has already begun--to the tune of braying by anti-government conservatives about the use of Referendum C money voters approved in November.

On page 15, at the beginning of our retooled Attitude at Altitude department, see what state transportation department chief Tom Norton has to say about money his department needs to resume a road-building program that was cut short by the 2001 recession.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

I interviewed Norton for the piece because I knew highway funding was already becoming a fight-or-flight issue for many legislators on both sides of the Republican/Democratic partisan divide in the General Assembly. I also knew that some important highway projects around the state got stalled as a result of past legislative attempts to balance the budget.

Referendum D was supposed to fix that, but voters turned it down, and now Norton, part of the Republican administration of Gov. Bill Owens, wants to convince a Democratic majority in both houses of the Assembly to give him more money than the $200 million-plus that normally will flow to his department for highways.

Without more, some projects favored by cities and counties across the state might not get put on the highway department's construction calendar.

Gov. Owens, who badly wanted Referendum D funding, addressed his last legislative session as governor in the same way he worked for Referendum C, with a call for cooperation between his administration and the Democratic leadership to use Referendum C funds wisely, and to restore a flow of desperately needed funds to several areas of state spending that were drained as dry during the recession as our reservoirs were drained during the drought.

It was a message, too, to those legislators in his own party, mostly opponents of Referendum C, who had opened the session with some harsh calls for "no new programs," and about how they were making themselves self-appointed guardians of the public purse.

Democrats shouldn't be intimidated.

Dick Morris, a former political adviser to both Republican U.S. Sen. Trent Lott and former Democratic President Bill Clinton, who specializes in studying shifts of voters toward or away from the middle ground of politics...