The end of the holiday season marks the beginning of a new legislative session and the opportunity to correct some of the mistakes made in 1991. There were a lot of mistakes made last spring and they have become more apparent as time goes by.

Metro Mobility was underfunded and attempts to modify the existing budget have not worked. The result is causing hardship for people the program was designed to serve.

The health care bill which Governor Carlson vetoed was a start toward the program advocated by our Minnesota Health Care Commission. The Governor’s counter proposal was a joke. The legisla¬ture should override the veto.

ACCESS PRESS will be asking the advocates and opponents of var¬ious bills which concern our readers to give us more insight into the pros and cons of these issues and others. We want your ideas, too. Call us or write to us about your priorities and your feelings about the political process.

We are hearing more and more about “the system” these days, how ineffective our representation has become, how powerless the voters seem to be. Legislative discussions degenerate into budgeting plans and talk of cutting allocations before the merit of the idea under consideration is determined. “Across the board” reductions lead to absurd situations, such as the U. of M. attempt to discard a worthwhile program in Occupational Therapy.

We want our legislators and the governor to listen to us in 1992 and to set the budget priorities according to the worth of the programs being funded. Certain things (Metro Mobility, Health Care, and the University of Minnesota among them) are worth the necessary taxes. We should be intelligent enough to fund these things in a straightforward manner, and give up the devious methods like lotteries or “sin” taxes.

Once again we invite you, our readers, to comment. For your convenience we’ll try to summarize the issues being debated in the upcoming issues. And we’ll publish a list of legislators and their phone numbers starting January 10th.