Budget deal announced-shut down could be over soon

Minnesota’s three top budget negotiators walked from the governor’s office Thursday evening to announce a state budget deal.

Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton gave up his long-held demand that the richest Minnesotans pay higher taxes; Republican House Speaker Kurt Zellers and Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch gave up their party’s strongly held stance of keeping state spending to no more than $34 billion in the next two years.

But in giving up what they fought for all year, they reached a framework of a budget deal that could end a shutdown entering its 15th day today.

Dayton said negotiators and others involved in the state’s budget will work around the clock so it can be passed within days. A Thursday night e-mail to Senate Democrats said they should expect a special session to start Monday or Tuesday.

Once legislators pass new budget bills, and Dayton signs them, 22,000 state workers can return to work,

98 road construction projects can resume, state parks can reopen, fishing licenses can be sold and Minnesotans can receive hundreds of state services they need or want.

It could take several days for state government to ramp back up to full speed even after lawmakers pass specific agency budgets and the governor signs them into law, according to the Minnesota Management and Budget office website. At some state parks-water lines will need to be flushed, grass mowed and staff contacted.

Each state agency will determine how they will notify employees of a recall to work after the shutdown ends. Then, under a pre-arranged agreement between the state and state employee unions before the shutdown hit, employees have no more than three days to get back to work.

Dayton moved a long budget impasse off center Thursday morning when he announced that ending the state government shutdown is so important that he was willing to drop his proposal to increase taxes on Minnesota’s top earners.

Dayton said he would accept a offer Republican legislators made on June 30, the day before state government shut down. But he tacked three of his own requirements onto the proposal: All policy issues would be stripped from budget bills, a GOP plan to cut the state work force 15 percent would disappear and the Legislature must approve at least $500 million in public works construction.

The basis of the June 30 GOP offer was increasing spending $1.4 billion beyond what Republicans wanted to spend in the next two years. Half would come from delaying state payments to schools, a tactic legislators and governors have used before. The other half of the new revenue would be borrowing against Minnesota’s future payments from a lawsuit the state won against big tobacco companies.

Koch and Zellers said they accepted Dayton’s proposal, but altered it. They did not say what changed.

Dayton said all nine remaining budget bills would have to be completed, and his commissioners sign off on them, before he calls legislators back to work. Only a governor can call a special legislative session.