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State Finance Commissioner Myron Frans sounded like a kid bringing home a straight-A report card when he delivered word last week that Wall Street bond rating agency Fitch had restored Minnesota to its top rating — fittingly, AAA — after five years of lesser marks.

Frans' pride is warranted. These are grades that pay a multimillion-dollar reward to taxpayers in the form of reduced borrowing costs for both state and local governments.

The rating is also external expert validation of what Dayton administration officials have been claiming about state government's financial health: It's very good — arguably better than at any time in the past 35 years.

Fitch's rationale for the upgrade bears noting. Minnesota has "a solid and broad-based economy," it said. That's not an accident. It's the result of generations of investment in education and infrastructure that have allowed this state to expand on the natural resources-based economy of its early decades.

Minnesota has "a revenue structure well designed to capture economic growth," Fitch said. That's a compliment to the state's progressive income tax and its willingness to tax capital gains as ordinary income. That makes the state's revenue stream uncomfortably volatile. But, especially after the 2013 rate hike for upper earners, it's also a stream that has grown apace with an economy that has been kinder to the rich than the lower and middle classes.

Fitch also complimented Minnesota's "low liability burden" — this state has ample borrowing capacity — and "a sophisticated approach to reserve funding." A 2014 law requiring an automatic boost in reserves when surpluses are forecast at mid-biennium has plumped the state's rainy-day and cash-flow cushions to a record $1.95 billion. That should look good not only to bond buyers, but also to Minnesotans who don't like what happens to government services when state coffers are empty.

Of course, Minnesota must actually issue bonds to take full advantage of Fitch's praise. While some bonds remain to be issued from previous years' authorizations, a $1 billion bonding bill failed in the final minutes of the 2016 Legislature's regular session. That's a failure we hope will be corrected very soon in a special session.