Patrick's first test; Budget offers sample of one-party `collaboration'.

• Position: INSIGHT

COLUMN: IN OUR OPINION

Signing the state's $26.8 billion spending plan for fiscal 2008 last week, Gov. Deval L. Patrick declared, "I am proud to sign this budget into law." He must have been relieved as well to have come to the end of what, to him, must have been a frustrating exercise in executive-legislative collaboration in a one-party state.

To be sure, the budget includes positive elements, including a 5.8 percent boost in local aid and full funding of Massachusetts' fledgling health insurance law. And while the 4.4 percent increase in spending still outpaces inflation, the growth rate is smaller than in the last several budgets enacted by the Legislature, perhaps signaling fiscal restraint.

But as a demonstration of the superiority of collaborative one-party government, the process has been less than satisfying. While legislative priorities generally were addressed, some of the signature issues of Mr. Patrick's campaign - policing, preschool education and the like - received tepid or no support, including key initiatives intended by Mr. Patrick to make good on his campaign pledge of property tax relief.

If the gubernatorial influences on the budget are hard to find, the impact of Mr. Patrick's veto pen is...