Wisconsin's economy hit rock bottom in 2009, with unemployment reaching 26-year highs and the state budget facing its deepest hole ever.

There are signs that 2010 won't be as bad.

Even so, dealing with the economy and trying to find ways to put more people back to work is expected to dominate the coming legislative session and much of Gov. Jim Doyle's last year in office.

Doyle, who is not seeking a third term, will have a Democratic-controlled Legislature to help push through his agenda again this year. Those Democrats, in their second year of control, will be mindful that in November voters will cast judgment on how well they did.

Economic issues will be at the top of the agenda, said Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor.

Politicians will focus their rhetoric on the issue, but given that it's an election year it's unlikely that anything dramatic will be done in the Legislature related to the economy, he said.

Instead, both sides will focus on passing changes that can be done easily but that they can tout on the campaign trail as being substantive, Franklin said.

"It's probably better for the Legislature to debate the issues than it is to vote on them," he said. "A lively debate on these things lets both parties and candidates set out their positions and talk about them at length."

Given that it's an election year, and the Legislature is fresh off raising taxes more than $5 billion in 2009, Republicans say they expect Democrats to cast a low profile.

"The next six months are going to be nothing more than window dressing," said Senate Minority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, a Republican from Juneau. He said Democrats squandered their first year as the majority party in both houses of the Legislature by raising taxes and in 2010 they will be focused on trying to get voters to forget about that.

Democrats in control say their work will center on creating jobs and improving the economy.

Make no mistake, for most politicians 2009 was a year to forget. State government furloughs, job losses, tax increases and spending cuts don't make for an attractive campaign flyer.

Unemployment hit a 26-year high at 9.4 percent in March and by November it had come back down to 7.8 percent. Even so, that was 2.6 percentage points higher than a year ago. The state lost 126,700 jobs over the previous 12 months.