Rest assured, Minnesota is not Wisconsin.

That was the sole point of consensus Thursday morning when three legislators -- two DFLers and one Republican -- spoke to about 500 city, county and school district officials at the officials' annual conference in downtown St. Paul.

Referring to the epic budget battle that convulsed the Badger State for weeks, House Majority Leader Matt Dean said Wisconsin isn't "a particularly good model -- except for football -- over the long term." The bruising showdown between Democratic legislators and Gov. Scott Walker poses "an extremely high risk for the faith people have in government."

Sen. Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis, said the spectacle that unfolded in Madison showed a lack of "respect" for the process of governing that's "not worthy of Minnesota."

And, added House Minority Leader Paul Thissen, "Wisconsin is not going to happen in Minnesota" because state government is divided between a Democratic governor and a Republican-led legislature.

However, compared to Walker's frontal assault on public employee unions in Wisconsin, Thissen echoed Minnesota union leaders by saying GOP legislators are pushing "50 pieces of anti-labor legislation." Here, he added, "you have Wisconsin, just broken up into pieces."

The trio echoed their parties' position on how to stanch the state's $5 billion gusher of red ink, disagreeing on property taxes, local government aid and the accelerated path that budget bills are taking through legislative committees.

Dean called the plan for bills to clear committees by week's end "a very aggressive deadline, while Dibble called it "a really compressed timeline" that is papering over "fictional numbers" in the GOP's budget proposals.

All three agreed that the state must rein in its health care costs, one of the biggest, and fastest-growing, line items in the state budget. "We can simply not sustain the path we've been on the last eight to 10 years," Dean said, referring to a period when the governor's office was (mostly) occupied by a Republican.