Now that the obligatory battle lines have been drawn, perhaps the governor and state legislators can get down to the nuts and bolts process of crafting a state budget.

It’s not like this isn’t how it’s always been done, but sometimes you have to wonder how much time and effort state lawmakers might save if they could start talking to one another at the beginning of the budget process instead of at the end.

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius got the first shot with a budget that proposed targeted cuts that went fairly easy on social services and K-12 schools but was hard on higher education. Her plan called for some departments to be cut back, merged or eliminated and included measures that would take away tax revenue promised to local governments, which likely would mean tax increases that were avoided at the state level might well be required at the local level.

Republican leaders said the governor’s budget didn’t cut deeply enough to address the current economic crisis. The governor’s cuts must not have looked too bad, though, because the budget proposed this week in the Kansas Senate included most of the governor’s cuts but added a 3.2 percent across-the-board cut to all state entities. The GOP budget would force the state to renege on its multi-year deal to fund K-12 education and would be even harder on higher education because it heaps the across-the-board cuts on top of already-deep cuts in the governor’s budget.

Obviously, this is a difficult budget year. During its first two weeks the Legislature has seen a steady stream of people making the case for why their portion of the budget simply can’t be cut or why the state simply can’t cancel or delay tax rollbacks that have been approved in recent years. No one is coming to Topeka to volunteer to take a budget cut or pay higher taxes.

One way or another, the governor and state legislators are going to have to make a lot of unpopular budget choices. Our two-party system has served us well for many years, but the primary goal of state budget negotiations shouldn’t be for lawmakers or the governor to make sure they can gain political points by blaming members of the other party for painful budget decisions.

Perhaps starting the budget debate in clearly adversarial postures, with the promise of a governor’s veto, will lead to productive discussions and good decision-making on taxes and spending, but it would be interesting, at least once, to see how a more cooperative approach might work.