A view from the states: state legislatures magazine went to a group of state leaders to get their perspectives on the challenges and opportunities 2005 presents. Here are their responses.

• Position: Conversations - Interview

THE BIG ISSUES

SL: What are the two or three most pressing issues you are facing this year in your legislative sessions?

Texas Senator Jeff Wentworth: The most important thing we have to do is revamp our public school finance situation. We've been attacked in court over a period of years. Our constitution requires an efficient system of public free schools. I believe we ought to address this issue earlier rather than later. I'd rather get it done in a regular session, but I'm not confident that it will happen.

The second thing we have to do is to try to pass a budget of about $116 billion for the next two-year cycle. We're not in as bad a shape economically as we were two years ago when we began the session with a $10 to $11 billion shortfall. Somehow we passed a budget without raising taxes. Now, we have to deal with the problems that resulted in not adequately funding state government. Those are the top two things and that will take 90 percent of our time and effort.

Georgia Senator Eric Johnson: Our biggest issue is the budget. When you're the fourth or fifth fastest growing state and revenues are not increasing as fast as the population and health care costs, you have a problem. We have to tackle health care. We've got to get a handle on Medicaid costs. With $900 million in anticipated new revenue, almost $800 million is going to go to Medicaid, patient care and the state health benefit plan. That'll be the most contentious issue we deal with. Coming from the minority to the majority, it's a lot harder than it looks. Taking something away from citizens that they've come to expect is harder than anything else you do. And we'll tackle tort reform. It failed in the House last session, but control of the House has changed hands to the Republicans, so I think we'll do some sort of minimum tort reform. Business and health care providers have been screaming for that for a few years.

Massachusetts Senator Dick Moore: Health care is our major effort this year, including medical malpractice. We have about a 7 percent uninsured population and it's been growing as the price of insurance premiums keep going up for both businesses and employees. We have about 100,000 people that we think are Medicaid eligible, but aren't enrolled. Our governor has indicated a desire to enroll them without any additional state expenditure, which we think will be difficult. We will also need to address medical malpractice. We face about a billion dollar structural deficit. That's one we could probably phase out over time if we make a concerted effort. We've already started restoring our rainy day fund, and revenue is...