LAWMAKERS ARE approaching today’s start of the 2005 General Assembly with hopes of an easier year than they’ve had in some time, now that we are finally seeing a slow upturn in the state’s economy. But that very optimism and sense of relief could make it more difficult than ever to come to terms with the hard reality: Our state’s physical and social infrastructure is crumbling from years of neglect, and we will never be able to build a strong economy and healthy communities where people want to live until we repair it.

As important as other issues ranging from highway safety to tort reform may be, they must not be allowed to sidetrack legislators from making the repairs.

That repair demands more spending on schools and prisons and public safety, on mental health programs and Medicaid and highways, and on other basic services. And that means lawmakers must find ways to make government more efficient, take the difficult step of eliminating non-essential programs, or raise taxes.

We believe this task would be much easier if the Legislature would adopt the reforms that we and others have been advocating for 13 years now — consolidating and streamlining state agencies under the governor’s control, overhauling and updating a clunky and inefficient tax system, and developing a budgeting process that makes it easier to focus our state’s limited resources on our most important needs.

Beginning Sunday, we will lay out in much greater detail why our state needs these reforms, how they could be accomplished and how the state will benefit if they are adopted.

But even if lawmakers reject these reforms, they will still have to address our state’s problems. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, you solve problems using the governmental, tax and budgetary system you have.

That means that whether we continue to have an independently elected superintendent of education and far too many school districts, or abandon those outdated policies, lawmakers still must find a way to make sure every school has at least the amount of money state laws says it must have in order to provide an adequate education to our children — children whose education, or lack thereof, will determine our state’s future.

It means that whether we get rid of the tax exemptions that skew or system or not, lawmakers still must find a way to put more troopers on the highways, and more guards — and education, substance-abuse and job training programs — in the prisons.

It means that whether we continue to build an incremental budget or change to a process that makes it easier to set priorities, lawmakers still must find a way to provide treatment to the dangerously mentally ill and to those too poor to care for themselves, rather than passing these costs on to hospitals.

Without reforms, the Legislature approaches its task with one hand tied behind its back. That makes it all the more important not to voluntarily bind the other as well: The journey toward improving our schools does not begin by encouraging the best students and the most engaged parents to abandon the schools. And the journey toward rebuilding vital programs that have been crippled by financial neglect does not begin by sucking more money out of the system, based on a quasi-religious belief that supply-side economics can work on the state level.

Our state has far more problems than resources with which to solve them. We can’t stand to waste another penny — or another minute.