editorials

To the drumbeat of "jobs, jobs, jobs," two similar billion-dollar capital improvement bills have sprinted through the Minnesota House and Senate. They've landed in a conference committee, where their reconciliation is also on a fast track.

The resulting bill is expected to head to Gov. Tim Pawlenty's desk as early as next week. There, a speed bump awaits.

As the DFL-drafted bills left the House and Senate floors, they were more than $300 million larger than the Republican governor wants. He met Wednesday with DFL bonding leaders to advise them that he also considers their bills' priorities misplaced. Pawlenty has threatened for weeks to either shrink the bill via line-item vetoes, or reject the whole package and advise legislators to start over.

Minnesotans should root for the first of those options. Better still, they should ask DFL legislators to shrink the bill before it goes to the governor, to a total bond authorization closer to $800 million, and then urge the governor to meet DFLers there. The delay associated with a do-over would spoil one of state government's only opportunities this year to hasten economic recovery. Acting quickly will allow work to begin on some of the approved projects as soon as frost is out of the ground. This year particularly, seizing that opportunity must take precedence over the good that would come from the larger package that DFLers prefer.

Pawlenty and other Republicans correctly claim that a bonding bill is not a particularly efficient short-term job-generator. Capital improvement bond proceeds go to the purchase of land and materials as well as to payrolls. A billion-dollar bond authorization is projected by the Associated General Contractors of America to generate 21,500 jobs over a period of several years. But only 7,100 of them would be for the construction workers who have endured long spells of joblessness since 2008, and not all them would find work this year.

The better jobs case to make for this bonding bill is a long-term one. Investments in higher-education labs and classrooms, water treatment plants, convention centers and the like build this state's capacity for lasting private-sector growth. Pinch those investments in the public sector, and private sector investment in Minnesota will be suppressed in years to come. That's why state economist Tom Stinson cites infrastructure improvements as one of several ways in which state government can set the table for future private sector investment and productivity.

Pawlenty has refused to back funding for civic and cultural facilities this year, deriding some of them as trivial local projects. In fact, all of the civic projects in the House and Senate bills have regional or statewide significance and would spur private-sector job growth.

Shrinking the bonding bill will mean that some projects of that type will have to wait for another year. But there's no good reason to delay long-postponed, ready-to-build convention center expansions in Rochester, St. Cloud and Mankato. Each of those regional centers is poised for growth as the economy recovers. More meeting space in each of those cities will quickly translate into a boost for regional industries. The St. Cloud project alone is projected to pump an additional $17 million per year into central Minnesota's economy -- a good share of which will spin back to the state in the form of higher taxes, Mayor Dave Kleis notes.

The lagging economy has many Minnesotans understandably worried about debt, government's and their own. They may be thinking that prudence demands a smaller-than-usual bonding bill this year.

They should know that a recent review of state governments' per-capita debt by the national Tax Foundation ranked Minnesota's 42nd lowest among the 50 states. Further, the debt service difference between the small bonding bill Pawlenty recommended and the ones the House and Senate approved is less than $13 million through 2012. With interest rates low and construction bids coming in well below their level of a few years ago, public buildings can now be bought at a discount. Now's the time to buy.