One of the subtle messages from last week’s election is that Iowans, no matter how partisan as individuals, were as a group turned off the viciousness of the rhetoric marking the campaign’s homestretch. Mean-spiritedness isn’t us.

With control of both legislative chambers and the governor’s mansion, the temptation is great for Democrats to take the moral low road and muffle the minority party as payback for how they think Republicans treated them in past sessions. Democrats would do well to remember that an imbalance of power makes for imperfect democracy, and it will be up to them to make corrections when things fall too far out of balance. Despite Democrats’ victories, Iowa’s residents remain sharply divided on the best solutions to issues they say are limiting the state’s growth potential.

For all its successes, Iowa has serious problems to fix. A couple of examples:

Hardly anyone thinks the rollback provision that currently taxes residential property on less than half its value shouldn’t be eliminated. Iowa has the nation’s third-highest tax rate on commercial and industrial property and that isn’t good for business. Reform of the archaic formula is something legislators talk about every year. 2007 will be the year to get it done.

Iowa’s waterways aren’t much cleaner than they were decades ago when attention was first called to their polluted state. Policy shifts to protect natural resources won’t be easily achieved. Iowa agriculture has consisted of corn and soybean rotations and hog and cattle operations for so long a that a pro-environment agricultural agenda is too often perceived on an assault on a way of life that has served the state well in the past.

The strong showing of Denise O’Brien, the Democrats’ nominee for secretary of agriculture, is a bellwether of the importance Iowans place on issues such as local control over where large hog confinements can be located. O’Brien won 49 percent of the vote with her pro-environment agricultural agenda, even after she was called an extremist, activist and by other labels that make Iowans nervous. As a property-rights issue, local control over hog confinement siting is as important as eminent domain. 2007 is the year to address that, too.

There’s lots of work to be done, from increasing Iowans’ access to affordable health-care insurance that doesn’t destroy their employers’ solvency to maximizing Iowa’s potential in the renewable fuels sector. Democrats can no longer blame Republicans for their failure to pass meaningful reform on myriad issues. It’s time to get on with it.