Here’s a fresh “to-do list” for getting Minnesota back on track:

• Restore the state government’s moribund long-term planning function and get serious about setting goals, encouraging innovation, solving problems and getting results.
  
  
• Energize and organize the enormous talent found in all generations of Minnesota’s citizens, and stimulate the state’s business leadership to take a more active role in working with the public-sector to improve government systems.
  
  
• Enact reforms to keep partisan politics out of judicial elections, to make redistricting non-partisan, and to prevent future governors from abusing the budget unallotment process.
  
  
• Start negotiations now toward a special session, to begin undoing the stalemate between the governor and the Legislature over the state’s unprecedented budget crisis.

• Continue making public investments in education, transportation, the arts, and health care to enhance Minnesota’s economy, quality of life, and prosperity for all.

Those were among the recommendations offered at the Growth & Justice event Recapturing Minnesota’s Edge: Advice from the Sages on September 22. The evening featured former Vice President Walter Mondale and former Gov. Arne Carlson, two of the most influential leaders in Minnesota’s major political parties over the last half-century. Mondale is a DFL godfather who also has served Minnesota and the nation as state attorney general, U.S. senator, and ambassador to Japan. Carlson is a maverick Republican moderate whose career includes service on the Minneapolis city council and 16 years as state auditor.

Mondale emphasized that Minnesota became an overachiever among the states in economic performance and quality-of-life because “we looked upon wise public investment as the ideal.” A generation of anti-government, anti-tax conservatism which was designed to “starve the beast,” along with deregulation and less oversight, has delivered an economic crisis, causing even former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan to admit he was wrong, Mondale said.

“The economic fundamentalism is over, because of the [near] collapse of the economy,” Mondale said. He called for both spending cuts and revenue increases to be on the table as Minnesota struggles with its budget, and made the point that investments in education, transportation, the arts and health were critical components of Minnesota’s success.

“We looked upon wise public investment as the ideal,” Mondale said. “[We must] keep education up front.”

Carlson said Minnesota benefited greatly from the era in the 1960s and 1970s when the state’s business leaders were deeply involved in public affairs and public policy innovation. Both parties spent more time constructively solving problems and Republicans and Democrats were seeing “who could come out first with good-government proposals,” Carlson said.

Carlson was particularly emphatic on the need to immediately tackle the state’s looming $7 billion projected budget shortfall over the next three years, without waiting for the 2010 session or a new governor in 2011.

“We know what we must do,” Carlson said. “There’s an iceberg 3,000 yards in front of us and we have time to make the turn.” Alluding to Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s apparent pursuit of presidential ambitions, Carlson said: “This is a time, as no other in my lifetime, when the governor has to be at the helm of the ship full-time.”

A partial transcript of the event will be available soon on this website and it will be featured on Minnesota Public Radio’s Midday with Gary Eichten on Thursday, September 24.