Lawmakers in St. Paul and Washington, D.C., have tried in recent months to free a vast amount of school trust land from the even vaster confines of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA).

Two marquee pieces of environmental legislation in the 2012 session owe their victories in no small part to horse trading between Gov. Mark Dayton and the Legislature.

While legislative leaders haggled in private regarding the 2012 session’s marquee legislation, rank-and-file legislators spent long hours on the floors of the House and Senate processing members’ pet bills.