The Legislature will disagree about some of these priorities. That's healthy. Any budget should have to suffer the slings and arrows of spirited debate.

The signal fires from the legislative camp suggest that lawmakers may want to shovel more cash into tax cuts and highways than the governor does. However, it would be a mistake to get carried away with tax cuts, even though 2006 is an election year and the temptation for legislators to cut taxes will be irresistible.

That temptation is compounded by a $344 million surplus and a state economy that is humming along with about 3.3 percent job growth.

But the state still is rebuilding budgets that were devastated by the last recession. Public employees and public programs have not recovered. Frankly, the state could efficiently use every dime of its growing resources to feed starved programs. It is hard to look at the state's dead-last per-pupil school funding and billions of dollars in highway needs and see any mandate for tax cuts.

But Huntsman agrees with the rest of his Republican Party that tax cuts - he prefers to call them reforms - are the Holy Grail. He has reserved $60 million in his budget for that purpose. About $23 million would go toward the so-called flatter personal income tax, and the balance would go toward elimination of the sales tax on food.

Unfortunately, that $37 million is just a fraction of what would be lost if the sales tax on food were eliminated, so Huntsman's proposal by itself is not realistic. Though we agree that eliminating that tax would be the right thing to do, we can't support any plan that doesn't fully make up the lost revenues to state government.

By contrast, the flatter income tax is a sop to the richest taxpayers and would punish the middle class.

Things we like about the governor's budget:

He gives the state's cash-strapped schools a 5.5 percent infusion, and fully funds projected enrollment growth. Universities would get new money to jump start research in fields that should generate higher-paying jobs.

Most public employees would get 4.5 percent pay raises (corrections officers would get 10 percent). Their increases in health and retirement insurance would be fully funded.

Transportation would get new cash and $83 million in bonding.

Huntsman wants to let the good times roll. The Legislature will help decide how far and for whom.