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When Gov. Chet Culver talks about slashing budgets and putting off a planned state government building, it’s nice to look around downtown Des Moines and realize how good the city’s timing was.

Several major projects were completed in the past few years, and state money played a substantial role. Now we’re entering an era of more cautious spending. Figuring out how to handle our money probably will define Culver’s administration.

The governor is right to point out that we’re in better shape than many other states. Auditor David Vaudt kept warning us that something could go wrong, and the Legislature managed to keep the rainy-day fund well-stocked.

The trick now is to keep rolling forward without running into a ditch. Thinking big doesn’t always pan out; the Iowa Communications Network, for example, has delivered only marginal returns on our investment. But thinking small is no way to run a state. When Culver talks about “making Iowa the renewable energy capital of the United States,” he expresses the right attitude.

Wind energy has become an Iowa strength; now we have to make sure we don’t fall behind in a rapidly changing biofuels race.

We think Culver is also wise to push for infrastructure spending through a new Rebuild Iowa Infrastructure Authority.

A lot of folks have fallen in love with the idea that the Obama administration will twist the federal money tap wide open for infrastructure projects. However, the list can’t include everybody who wants to be on it. We’ll have to pay for a lot of the work ourselves.

The nation’s governors have been labeled “50 Herbert Hoovers,” each frantically cutting expenditures even as the federal government pushes out more and more cash. The difference, of course, is that a state has to live with a realistic budget, not manufactured money. In the long run, that’s one more advantage for a common-sense state like Iowa.