Given the tools they had to work with, it would have been astounding if the 2006 Hawai'i Legislature did not accomplish substantial work.

And it did.

Lawmakers made a big commitment to public education, kick-started important initiatives in the arena of housing and homelessness, and served up political recognition of Hawai'i's depressing dependence on imported oil for energy.

There was a modest, but reasonable, nod toward tax relief and substantial action on the dangers and public costs of tobacco to the community.

Thankfully, this time around it was a productive session without much of the political backbiting and gamesmanship that has tainted many previous sessions.

Still, lawmakers lost the chance to do something truly dramatic about the core issues that will impact Hawai'i's future, such as energy independence and the lack of affordable housing that is ripping the state's social fabric.

Unfortunately, their efforts in these areas were incremental.

EDUCATION PUSH

The big winner this year — and appropriately so — was public education. The biggest slice of the $600 million budget surplus went to education.

About $235 million was set aside for repairs and maintenance for our aging public schools, $20 million to ease the sting of the new "weighted funding" program for the schools, and a number of smaller initiatives, some sought by the Department of Education and others created by lawmakers.

As several legislators correctly noted, this now places a heavy responsibility on those who run the public school system: They have been handed a huge check, and now it is time to perform.

The money doled out this year must translate into visible improvements, or legislators will rightly be in no mood to pour more into the system the next time around.

On a less positive note, the Legislature largely ducked the issue of moving toward a much-needed statewide standardized curriculum for the public schools.

The curriculum measure was originally designed to require a consistent core curriculum, while rightly leaving the precise design and details of the curriculum to educators.

But the watered-down measure that finally passed merely nudges the DOE to allow school complexes (a high school and its feeder middle and elementary campuses) to experiment with across-the-board curricula that align with existing statewide standards.

The best hope is that such experiments will show a curriculum that is coherent across grade levels and from school to school is in the interests of both students and teachers.

TAX RELIEF

With so much going to education, there was naturally less available for politically popular tax relief.

The relief package the Legislature finally passed was far short of what Gov. Linda Lingle had sought and a disappointment to the minority Republicans. But it did take responsible aim at two longstanding flaws in our income tax system: a compression of tax brackets that pushes even modest wage earners into relatively high brackets and an outdated figure for the standard deduction.

The dollar value of these changes to any individual family will be small and will not go into effect until 2007. But these changes were needed purely on the basis of tax equity and fairness.

HOUSING CRISIS

The housing crisis was much on the minds of legislators and the public this year.

While the lack of housing that average folks can afford is a complex issue beyond the Legislature's ability to totally control, there were several sensible steps taken this year.

Lawmakers shifted more of the state conveyance tax into the rental assistance fund rather than the general fund. The rental fund is where it should have gone in the first place. They put money up for creation of new housing and for repair of existing public housing that has shamefully fallen into disrepair.

In all, the package will clearly not solve our housing crisis, but it is a substantial step beyond last year's effort.

In the arena of public health, legislators took two bold and important steps. They increased the tax on cigarettes, with the proceeds dedicated to public health programs, including the soon-to-be rebuilt Cancer Research Center. And they banned smoking in virtually all public places, such as bars and airports — an important decision that addresses the dangers of secondhand smoke.

ENERGY INDEPENDENCE

At the beginning of the session, there was hope that Hawai'i would make a bold move toward energy independence. Both the Lingle administration and majority Democrats in the Legislature were talking about cutting-edge efforts to push utilities and consumers into alternative-energy directions that would wean us from our dependence on imported oil.

Many of those ideas survived, but primarily as suggestions or directives for the Public Utilities Commission.

This hardly means the effort is dead, but it will surely delay the arrival of the day when Hawai'i is no longer reliant on expensive and uncertain imported oil supplies for its energy and economic needs.

A first order of business for the Legislature next year will be to look at what has transpired at the PUC and take direct action if little progress has been made.

DISAPPOINTMENTS

There were also several disappointments this year.

Election-year jitters may have contributed to the Legislature's endorsement of a popular but potentially unfair "three strikes" sentencing bill, caused the death of an effort to stop the state from from forcing some low-income patients into new and unfamiliar health insurance plans, and resulted in an awkward compromise on gasoline pricing regulation.

The session lacked contentious political drama, and there was no dramatic breakthrough that would re-establish the Legislature's old reputation as a progressive wellspring of political innovation.

But that opportunity still exists. The productive foundation laid this year should lead to even more impressive achievements next year.

All it takes is courage and a sincere desire to do what is right for the people of Hawai'i.