In Bemidji on Monday night, city officials gathered to consider what spending cuts to order next. On their list: No snowplowing on nights and weekends. Less use of salt and sand on city streets. Less maintenance work at city parks. A 10 percent whack in library funding. And a review of police and fire budgets. They probably can't be spared much longer, Mayor Richard Lehmann said before the meeting.

Despite the unpleasant agenda ahead, Lehmann's mood was upbeat. Earlier Monday, the Legislature adopted a package of city aid cuts only 40 percent as large as the ones recommended by Gov. Tim Pawlenty, and the GOP governor indicated that he intends to sign the bill. "That takes the edge off" the evening's work, Lehmann said.

Meetings like the one in Bemidji are being replicated in city halls and county courthouses all over Minnesota this spring as mayors, city councils and county boards struggle to cope with state aid cuts proportionately larger than those borne by any other major recipients of state money -- and wonder what's next.

The bill the Legislature passed Monday reverts to city aid amounts smaller than those paid in 2004, the year cities sustained a 21 percent cut in state aid. Yet local officials around the state are heaving sighs of relief, said League of Minnesota Cities executive director James Miller. They know that it could have been worse -- and might well be worse in 2011 and beyond.

In fact, the sorry condition of the state budget has some voices -- most, but not all, from the political right -- calling for an end to the state's 40-year-old funding relationship with its cities and counties. Get the state out of the business of subsidizing local governments, the argument goes, and cities and counties will spend less. Give the profligate ones authority to raise their own sales tax (if their voters let them).

But that argument misses the original point of state aid programs. They were attempts to assure all Minnesotans, no matter how wealthy their community, a roughly similar level of government services. State aid to cities amounts to tax base sharing for purposes of public safety and infrastructure. It shores up the quality of life and holds down property taxes in places without large tax bases.

That's still a worthy goal. Few have made that point more courageously this year than Lehmann. Bemidji's mayor is also a Republican candidate for the Minnesota House.

Last month, Lehmann and Pawlenty tangled over whether Bemidji's 2.4 percent average annual property tax increase since 2000 was the result of cuts in state aid or excessive city spending.

The public sparring concluded with a private meeting between the two on March 9, at which Lehmann pointed out that Minnesota's regional centers contain numerous institutions that are exempt from property taxes. Those communities -- Bemidji, Alexandria, Albert Lea and Worthington, to name a few -- are faring remarkably well, despite the recession, in large part because state aid through the years has made it affordable for those communities to host tax-exempt institutions and still provide adequate streets, sewers and public safety.

Lehmann wasn't claiming Monday that his personal lobbying helped persuade Pawlenty to go along with a smaller cut in aid to cities and counties than the governor originally proposed. But the mayor did claim that it should be possible for some much-needed bipartisanship to emerge at the Legislature to defend that aid from deeper cuts. "We Republicans say we ought to look at the main premise of government," Lehmann said. "Government was designed to provide for the safety and welfare of its citizens." That's what state aid to local governments does.