Lawmakers gather at the Capitol for their "Unsession" in just more than two weeks. It's not too late to be sure the vision is broad enough to help address the very real challenges Minnesota will face in years ahead. Failure to do so will be a missed opportunity.

Gov. Mark Dayton called for an "Unsession" devoted to eliminating outmoded, unnecessary or redundant laws, regulations and practices that burden people and hinder efficiency.

Why stop there? Especially when the future looks like this: In 2025, the first wave of the baby boomers starts to turn 80. At the same time, labor-force growth goes down to zero.

"That is going to be an earthquake through every policy issue you can imagine," Citizens League Executive Director Sean Kershaw told us. "I think this is a perfect session to get ready for those changes in ways that the state needs to do anyway."

To remain economically productive, Minnesota will need to examine, among other things, its tax climate, how we attract people here, what regulations get in the way of growth and how we'll deal with health-care and long-term-care costs.

As such, he said, the call should be not so much to an Unsession, but to a "future" session.

Others, meanwhile, are paying attention to different social shifts and their implications, including the growing role of digital electronics. New technologies, arriving at a remarkable pace, are "having a powerful impact on a wide range of activities," said Ted Kolderie, a senior associate at the St.


Paul-based reform group Education Evolving and a former Citizens League executive director.

Practices, products -- sometimes entire businesses and their workforces -- quickly become outmoded. "When you think about the scale of disruption going on right now," he said, "what becomes apparent is an imperative for change."

His conclusion is that our existing bureaucratic institutions are "in no way capable of handling the transition that's got to occur."

To make the needed changes, "the conventional political and bureaucratic process is not going to serve us well," Kolderie maintains. Old notions about figuring out problems at the top and imposing solutions no longer will work, he said.

In the realm of education, for example, he suggests more authority for schools and teachers to adapt learning, and less centralization from school districts and the state, as we "think about how that translates into specifics."

Still, Kershaw said, the Unsession could begin to "point us in the way we need to look going forward."

He and other observers, however, are realistic when it comes to assessing what's ahead in an election year.

Former Rep. Carol McFarlane, a leader in legislative reform and redesign efforts before she left the House in 2012, told us she hasn't seen the bipartisan effort that would be important to make an Unsession work.

"It could be a real win for everybody if they could get together on some key issues," said McFarlane, a Republican from White Bear Lake. "But I haven't seen that effort."

It's been suggested, said Jim Mulder, retired executive director of the Association of Minnesota Counties, that lawmakers are "looking for things nobody will object to. There are very few."

His only reason for optimism about the Unsession, he said, is that the governor's point person is Tony Sertich, commissioner of the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board, and a former House majority leader. "If someone can put something together, he can. I just don't know how he gets to the next step."

Important work could take place nonetheless.

What needs to happen is awareness and engagement, "so we can build both the good ideas and the political will to get things done," Kershaw said. "That's not something you can start doing in 2021 -- or at least not effectively."

To understand and anticipate the forces in play and on the horizon, lawmakers will need to make the most of every opportunity -- including the one that begins with the call to order Feb. 25.