"Past performance does not ensure future success." That familiar investment warning appears in a blue-ribbon panel's report released Monday about the state budget's future -- and it would be fitting as its title. Minnesota state government has developed a chronic case of budget trouble, it says.

The state's money woes this year are not just the result of the global recession, concluded the 14 former finance commissioners, legislators and economists who comprised the Budget Trends Study Commission. They spent 15 months analyzing state fiscal trends, concluding that 20 to 40 percent of the $5 billion-plus deficit the Legislature faces this year is the consequence of tax and spending choices made by previous Legislatures and governors. Those decisions are now working together with the aging of the state's population to produce persistent deficits that, left unchecked, will worsen over time.

That gloomy assessment will likely be no surprise to the legislators who commissioned this report in 2007. They were hoping that an expert analysis would point the way to a politically palatable remedy before the next recession hit.

On that score, the bipartisan panel went only partway. It proposed a number of rules and tools that would improve state fiscal management. But -- perhaps because the bipartisan commission was keen to issue a unanimous report -- it stopped short of proposing either particular tax increases or spending cuts that would eliminate the budget's built-in gap.

But while the budget trends report is not a road map out of the deficit, it merits the Legislature's attention. Heed its proposals, and Minnesota will be better positioned to avoid draconian service cuts or tax increases the next time recession hits. Notably, the report said:

• Minnesota needs a much larger budget reserve to weather an average recession. The state has kept a $650 million reserve in recent years. It should be more than three times larger -- $2.1 billion -- to stabilize a budget as volatile as Minnesota's, the panel said. The state's cash-flow account, $350 million, is likely also too small.

• A bigger reserve is needed because state revenues cannot be made less volatile without a significant shift away from sales and income taxes to property taxes, the panel concluded. That would increase tax burdens on those least able to pay, something Minnesota has long sought to avoid.

• Budgeting should be based on revenue trend lines, not short-term surges or shortfalls. That discipline would help build the reserves needed to weather recessions.

• Legislators should balance the state budget for the next two bienniums, not just one. That would help lawmakers resist the temptation to use one-time revenues or shifts in payment schedules to cover ongoing obligations.

• Long-range planning should be improved. The State Planning Agency, eliminated in 2003, or something akin to it should be revived, the panel said. Forecasting should include a demographic analysis and rates of growth in each expenditure area.

Controlling health care spending, the fastest-growing budget category, should be the focus of a separate public-private commission, the panel said.

One recommendation was not unanimous, said commission co-chair Kevin Goodno, a former human services commissioner for GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty. The report calls for a return to accounting for inflation in expenditures when state budgets are forecast. Pawlenty opposes that change, and went so far as to veto the 2007 tax bill because it was included. Goodno said some GOP commission members also oppose that change, but were still willing to put their names on the panel's final report. That show of compromise is yet another way in which this commission's work bears heed.