Remember making your Christmas wish list when you were a kid? You probably didn’t put socks, long underwear or rubber boots atop that list. You swung for the fences, asking for a video game console, a motorized dirt bike, perhaps an American Girl doll.
Well, Christmas is more than 10 months away, but for a lot of Minnesota government agencies and private organizations, it’s wish-list time — and our two state-funded higher education systems have a stack of requests that are more akin to a winter coat than a PlayStation.
The Legislature doesn’t convene until next week, but the University of Minnesota and Minnesota State already have launched a joint marketing campaign for about $1 billion in projects for inclusion in this year’s capital investment bill.
We won’t beat around the bush: Many of these requests are no-doubt, slam-dunk, keep-the-lights-on projects that should have…