Perhaps not surprisingly, the heavily Democratic Helena area legislative delegation didn't have much good to say about the recently concluded session.

In an 80-minute roundtable Thursday with the IR's editorial board, the area's six Democratic legislators and Republican Dave Lewis offered their thoughts on what was - and wasn't - accomplished over the 90-day session, with special attention on the plight of Helena's 6,000 state employees.

While there was some relief that the immediate toll to Helena's public workforce wasn't worse, there was agreement that layoffs still could be in the offing.

Massive layoffs were avoided, but attrition and open positions left vacant will still deplete the ranks of state workers here.

"We've already lost 88 folks, that's close to 20 percent of the people in my local, gone in (the) six months (of 2002)," said Rep. Jill Cohenour, president of the MEA-MFT local chapter.

"That across-the-board cut (at the end of the session) will be painful," added Rep. Christine Kaufmann.

Most local delegates were disappointed that so few new taxes were considered as the state battled the budget crisis, and that an income tax cut made it into law at a time when the state can least afford to lose the revenue.

While noting that the $85 million package of new or increased cigarette, lodging and rental car taxes constituted "the biggest tax increase the state has ever passed," even Lewis was unimpressed with the component that trimmed income taxes for only the state's top earners.

"I was hauled in by the (Republican) leadership and berated over the fact that I don't buy this basic tenet of Republican philosophy," Lewis said. "But the average family in my district is going to get two bucks a week out of it, and they're not going to go out and build a steel mill."

Discussing other taxes that failed at various stages of the session, Sen. Ken Toole said he was surprised his "big box tax," a gross receipts tax that kicked in after a store reached $20 million in sales, went as far as it did before dying in a tie vote on the Senate floor. And he was equally surprised the gambling tax was left alone at a thin 15 percent, lower than most states.

"Other states are getting much more in return for whatever negatives come with gambling," he said.

On higher education, the local delegation's modest expectations were met. A Kaufmann bill that would have provided bonding authority for a $13 million College of Technology building wasn't expected to pass and didn't, but the local college did get $175,000 in seed money to study future expansion. What's needed now is firm direction on whether the college would rather expand on its Roberts Street building or develop a new campus at the Poplar Street site near the airport.

Area legislators agreed that many of their colleagues from around the state share the sentiment of Rep. Stan Fisher, R-Bigfork, whose much-publicized bashing of state workers made headlines in the session's waning days.

"I was stunned that as hard as people work to get elected to come to Helena, how so many people dislike Helena," Sen. Mike Cooney said. He noted that the Senate debate on exempting casinos from local smoking control got downright bitter, with most of the vitriol aimed at the Queen City.

"They come to Helena and see all the construction and parking lots filled with new cars, and then they go back to Harlem and people are starving to death," Lewis said.

Rep. Hal Jacobson said term limits are taking their toll, with newcomers showing much more ambititon to quickly climb the leadership ladder because they know their time is short.

"The vast majority of us, even in our second or third terms are neophytes," he said. "We probably made a lot of mistakes this session collectively that we wouldn't have made if we didn't have term limits."

Rep. Dave Gallik blamed the ongoing partisan spat over legislative redistricting for setting a foul tone from the outset of the session.

"We need to go into the next session with our eyes more open and our mouths more closed," he said. "Right out of the chute this time we hit a huge bog with this redistricting. That set the stage, and when you have that type of sharp rhetoric and partisanship, you end up with what happened here."

Which was, by most local accounts, not much.

Reporter John Harrington can be reached at 447-4080 or john.harrington@helenair.com.