So when legislators first meet next week, you have this strange landscape — a conservative such as Stephenson fighting for traditional education funding, GOP House and Senate leaders suggesting eliminating a long-held funding source for public education, a governor who wants to kick-start more education spending while trimming back by $100 million the main education tax source, and Democrats who are looking around wondering what the heck is happening and how can they impact these public school financing decisions.

On top of all this, you will have what supporters say will be the most directed and likely to succeed effort yet to give parents who send their kids to private schools a tax voucher. And Democrats, some moderate Republicans and other public school supporters will be wondering how such a voucher plan may harm public education funding in the short and long runs.

Politically speaking, legislative Republicans should be glad their leaders have come together on a major tax cutting package — trimming back or eliminating the state-mandated property tax for schools.

Otherwise, days or weeks would have been spent with House and Senate Republicans spitting at each other over taxes, personal agendas being played out and bad feelings all around.

That is what happened last year when Huntsman and House Republicans stood shoulder-to-shoulder on giving a cut in the sales tax on food, with Senate Republicans looking like Scrooges who want poor people to pay a tax on their most basic of needs.

Senate Republicans ended up looking pretty bad — a public perception that spread to the whole Legislature when later in a special session lawmakers voted to build a new $15 million parking lot on Capitol Hill but refused to spend $2 million of emergency dental care for the poor and disabled. No one wants to repeat such a public-relations disaster.

Tax cuts will certainly come in the 2007 Legislature. What shape they will take will no doubt be debated hotly over the next six weeks.

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Deseret Morning News political editor Bob Bernick Jr. may be reached by e-mail at bbjr@desnews.com