A rosy December revenue forecast gave lawmakers reason to believe they quite possibly will have an extra $300 million to spend in the legislative session that starts Wednesday, and that’s just one of their problems.

The General Assembly gavels in Wednesday, and for the ensuing 120 days 100 lawmakers will debate about 700 bills and pass a few hundred laws and resolutions. Sometimes they will compromise, but often they will argue on the most important issues in minute detail that must seem silly to those outside the Gold Dome.

Expect tan intense debate over where that extra money gets spent. And though logically much of the windfall will go into roads, but how much and for how long is the question.

Democrats and Republicans will hash out how much will go to transportation and whether a fixed amount can be locked into future budgets for maintenance and traffic relief on overcrowded interstates.

Lawmakers will fight over energy policy, school finance, rural broadband and marijuana, as well.

Predictable partisan efforts are going nowhere, however, not as long as Democrats use their majority in the House to kill Republican bills, and the Senate GOP majority returns the favor on liberal legislation.

That means curbs no dice on abortion, expanded gun rights, tax cuts or immigration enforcement in the House, while oil-and-gas regulation, equal pay laws, gay rights and transit are DOA in the Senate.

All this happens in a year where the political landscape is more uncertain than usual. No one can predict how voters in November will feel about the Republican tax cuts or how how they might feel about the Republican president.

If the national mood slides into local races, voters could remember what was said in the legislature in the spring and vote accordingly.

This year, unaffiliated voters can cast ballots in the June primary. Logic would dictate that the next four months is a time for moderation. However, logic and politics aren’t always on good terms.

Sexual harassment suspicions hang over four members. The fairness with which they are treated, as deemed by either side, threatens to divide the session in its early days, but, frankly, not much of significance happens early in the session.

Not usually, but this year legislative leaders expect to see an early version of a bill to deal with a painful plan to fill in a looming shortfall in the state employees’ pension plan. The Public Employees Retirement Association faces a $32 billion liability over the next 30 years between what it takes in from working employees and pays out to retirees.

The Democratic governor and legislative Republicans think the workers and retirees should pay for that, not taxpayers. But to ease the sting, while the governor asks employees to pay in 2 percent more into their retirement plans and receive less in annual cost-of-living adjustments, he recommended a one-time 3 percent across-the-board raise.

Democrats tend to side with state workers.

“It’s going to take a lot of wrangling,” said Senate President Kevin Grantham.

Senate Republicans have to resolve a spat with the governor’s office, however, over a mistake written into last year’s Senate Bill 267. Celebrated as a grand compromise, the bill moved a fee charged on hospital beds out from under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights’ spending cap.

Bill drafters inadvertently left special districts out of the bill, costing museums, municipal transit programs, firefighters and rural healthcare services millions of dollars from their share of local marijuana taxes.

Republicans balked at solving the legislative gaffe in a two-day special session in October, saying they needed more time. Time is up.

The evolution of marijuana laws also are expected to sprout more tentacles this session. Lawmakers will again consider creating public social clubs – pot clubs, as they’re called – where people can gather to get high, the same way they gather in a bar to lift a drink.

The industry also is expected to push for cannabis “tasting” rooms at existing dispensaries, delivery services and the usual series of bills that would streamline regulatory structures, industry proponents tell us.

Hickenlooper and Attorney General Cynthia Coffman, a Republican, sought to calm down the Colorado industry last Thursday, after U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded a Obama administration policy that allowed states where voters have legalized pot to operate outside the federal law, as long as they comply with state laws.

The governor surmised Sessions is “firing a shot across the bow” about his views on drugs and the need for stronger state laws. The Justice Department doesn’t have the staff or money for massive raids, prosecutions and lawsuits, Hickenlooper said.

“Don’t freak out,” Coffman advised.