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Message to legislators or would-be legislators: If you can’t set priorities, you are in the wrong business.

I was surprised to read that two of our Republican porkmeisters in the Legislature are telling our governor that lawmakers can’t possibly decide if batting cages are more important than hospital equipment or if the restoration of a totem pole should take precedence over a snow blower.

And they dare not venture a guess about whether artificial turf for a ballpark is a higher priority than a fire truck.

“At this late stage in the process, trying to rank one school project over another, or one water project over another creates an adversarial relationship between communities, neighborhoods and constituents all over the state,” said Rep. Kevin Meyer of Anchorage and Sen. Bert Stedman of Sitka.

The objections from Meyer and Stedman, key players in the super-sized budget, prove Gov. Sarah Palin and budget director Karen Rehfeld are asking the right questions.

The problem is that legislators tend to have the most narrow view of state priorities, defining them as whatever will please voters in their districts.

It’s no accident that you stand a better chance of getting re-elected if you approach the state budget this way.

We find ourselves in this situation because Alaska is blessed with a temporary cash surplus, though the reality is that if our lawmakers would extend their budget horizons from 12 months to 84 months — the length of some car loans — the picture wouldn’t be nearly as bright.

That’s because oil production is expected to keep declining at a steady rate and Alaska is dependent on a dwindling resource.

We certainly wouldn’t be having this conversation if lawmakers had to ask Alaskans to pay for anything.

The governor should look at the 927 earmarks stuffed into the budget by lawmakers and use her veto power again to provide better regional balance and establish priorities.

Our constitution invests great power in the chief executive and Palin has the chance to assert the authority of her position and take the first step toward a more reasonable planning process.

When oil money began to flow in large amounts more than a quarter-century ago, our state government adopted the notion that lawmakers were entitled to walking-around money that they could bestow upon projects they liked, with few questions asked.

The amounts have increased and decreased across the years, depending upon the price of oil.

We’ve developed a system in which everyone in the Legislature thinks that he or she should be able to decide which local projects get funded.

“Selecting among the thousands of legitimate needs around the state is difficult, and it is the responsibility of the legislators elected to represent those communities to identify the most pressing,” Meyer and Stedman wrote.

Meyer and Stedman are wrong. The power to spend state money should not be given to one individual from one district.

Selecting among the thousands of legitimate needs around the state is difficult, but it is the job of the governor to look out for every district.

Under her direction, the executive branch agencies take, or should take, a statewide view.

Legislators should have a role in this process, but in Alaska they make spending decisions on projects that sometimes are not subject to any real public review.

Meyer and Stedman would have you believe that lawmakers spend every waking hour trying to “identify the projects that provide the greatest benefit to Alaskans.”

In fact, the goal is to find projects that provide the greatest benefit to their districts.

What Alaska needs is a coherent approach to funding construction projects that is not up to the whims of individual legislators, regardless of where they are in the power structure. We also need a more open process.

How about a scoring system to show the relative merits of projects?

Lawmakers won’t like that idea, but reform is long overdue.

For now, they should work with the governor as she reviews those 927 earmarks and help her set priorities before she decides what to veto.