Last week, state House Majority Leader Bill DeWeese, D-Greene, suggested it was time to start talking about legalizing table games in Pennsylvania. Maybe gambling interests see that as a priority, but most Pennsylvanians do not.

In fact, such a discussion would be widely seen as premature considering that most of the state's authorized slot machine casinos have not yet been constructed. Beyond that, most observers can see that Harrisburg lawmakers have plenty to keep themselves busy this fall.

Significant unfinished business was left over from this summer's contentious budget battle. Among the headline items punted into September from late June and early July are Gov. Ed Rendell's ambitious energy proposal and the broad topic of how to boost transportation funding.

Rendell wants to encourage the development and use of alternative, renewable fuels, but his proposal to add a fee or tax to customers' electric bills generated considerable opposition. And regarding transportation funding, the proposal to toll Interstate 80 is being challenged by two of the state's representatives in Congress.

With all the publicity surrounding the deadly bridge collapse in Minnesota this summer and Pennsylvania's many substandard bridges, the issue of transportation infrastructure funding has taken on even more urgency.

Beyond these two high-profile issues, there is a competing list of issues that are lower-profile but still important.

One such issue is the proposed merger of Blue Cross and Highmark, and what impact the merger would have on health care costs, escalating insurance premiums and competition within the health insurance market in Pennsylvania. There are growing doubts across the state that such a merger would be good for consumers, as the companies claim.

Another topic of importance to many people is a proposed statewide ban on smoking in public places. Localized efforts in major cities, including Pittsburgh, have been defeated by legal challenges funded by tobacco interests. To ensure consistency, there is growing support for a statewide ban.

Also left unresolved from the summer's bruising budget battle is Rendell's support for the so-called Jonas Salk Legacy Fund, which would divert $500 million from the state's share of the national tobacco settlement to help generate up to $1.2 billion for biomedical research and the associated jobs.

Then there are the plans to reform both the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission and the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency. At the Turnpike Commission, the need for reform is based on perennial stories of patronage hiring, management inefficiencies and the awarding of no-bid contracts to benefit friends or family of powerful state lawmakers. With PHEAA, the reform movement has been driven by embarrassing news stories over the board's lavish travel expenses totaling $800,000 for trips to luxury resorts and over $500,000 paid to key managers in year-end bonuses. PHEAA, whose 20-member board includes 16 state lawmakers, also spent $409,000 in a legal battle to keep its spending records secret.

The need for reform is obvious at both PHEAA and the turnpike commission.

And with teachers at Seneca Valley School District, and many other districts across the state, working without a contract and threatening to strike, there is expected to be legislation introduced in both the House and the Senate to ban teacher strikes in Pennsylvania. Such a law also would penalize teachers financially for striking and would force more of the negotiation process into public view. While supported by most taxpayers, such legislation can be expected to be opposed by the powerful state teachers union, the Pennsylvania State Education Association.

As a veteran party leader, DeWeese knows how much work state lawmakers will be, or should be, facing this fall. His plan to expand legalized gambling in Pennsylvania to include table games is expected to, some day, gain traction, especially since West Virginia plans to expand its gambling options to compete with the emerging Pennsylvania slot machines.

But the expansion of gambling in the commonwealth should barely be a blip on the radar of state lawmakers this fall. They have plenty of more-important things on which to work. And based on the General Assembly's recent record of accomplishments, any one of these pending issues is enough to produce partisan bickering and gridlock.