John Baldacci soon will leave his congressional seat and move the governor’s office to immediately confront a $1 billion or more shortfall, a failing health care system, a dated tax system, a federal government intent on reducing taxes at all levels of government while municipalities are demanding more support. Maine’s transportation network is inadequate, its public universities underfunded and local property taxes are too high. To paraphrase another politician from another time, there is great disorder in Augusta and the situation is excellent.

It is excellent because political leaders from both major parties and, more important, the general public, know that Maine either works together to enact major reform or watch the state slide deeper into crisis. There is a rare opportunity in the next year or two for the politician who is less concerned with grand visions and legacies and who instead can bring all sides together to work through these challenges.

A lot will happen between then and now – Congress returns to session Tuesday with a strong mandate to reduce spending, which will affect state revenues; the badly divided state Legislature still must close the gap on the current year’s budget, and recounts could swing the state Senate from Democratic to Republican starting in January. But the broad outline of what the next governor will face is clear enough: Rapidly increasing demands and sluggish growth of revenues – more cuts in state programs are inevitable.

How this is done and how an accompanying reform of the tax system is achieved will guide Maine for the next decade or more, so what happens next is crucial. Gov.-elect Baldacci has already called legislative leadership and met with Gov. King, a good start. But he also has dozens of interest groups across the political spectrum, committee chairmen with specific agendas, department officials, ardent campaign supporters and many others who can help him or provide large headaches. To them, he will have to preach patience, and fortunately the revenue forecasts support the idea that any new initiatives – whether new programs or tax cuts – will have to wait while the budget gets straightened out.

Mr. Baldacci has a reputation for bringing Democrats and Republicans together to find agreement on issues – in Congress, he had little choice. It is one of two skills he will need constantly in the coming year. The other is empathy, for taxpayers, certainly, but more so for the people served by programs that are not going to see increases or will actually be cut, and for the parts of the state that struggle to hold jobs and families even in better times. Maine is not going to solve its budget problems by increasing taxes, so the next governor will be spending a lot of time hearing from these groups.

The immediate agenda is clear enough: Lawmakers in the next week must close the $300 million budget gap. There will be strong political differences over how to do this, but just about all states have accomplished this unpleasant business; Maine lawmakers have no excuse not to act as responsibly. If, for instance, legislators do not like Gov. King’s delay in the business equipment tax rebate, they must offer an alternative that can attract a majority of votes. If they have no such alternative, they should back the governor’s plan and avoid confusing the fact that they do not like the delay with the idea that they therefore have the option of simply opposing it.

January provides a fresh start, and wherever the work from the current Legislature ends, the next session should start with all of leadership sitting down together not to relive the last campaign but to figure out how they can cooperate so that the large amount of work before them gets completed in the best interests of the residents of Maine. Hope springs biannually in politics, and the addition of a new governor gives even greater opportunity to move beyond the chronic mutual obstructionism of the past and make progress on the many issues the parties hold in common. An excellent situation.

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It is worth noting the Rep. Baldacci’s Republican opponent in the governor’s race, Peter Cianchette, not only received more votes than was predicted early on, but ran a powerful, issues-oriented campaign that marked him as a political leader in Maine’s future. He came within about six percentage points of winning and ran exceptionally strong in southern Maine. And while he and the governor-elect had several ideas in common, Mr. Cianchette also offered other substantial proposals, for instance, for reforming the state’s economic-development agencies. There would be nothing wrong with the new governor borrowing some of those ideas. Giving proper credit, of course.