By Bill Salisbury and Rachel E. Stassen-Berger

St. Paul Pioneer Press

Minnesota legislative leaders reached a deal Thursday on a $373 million public works construction package that includes $19 million for a health and science center at St. Paul College and approvals for expanding the Minnesota Children’s Museum and renovating the Palace Theater in downtown St. Paul.

The bill, funded in part with $180 million in general obligation bonds, would be put to a vote in a special session that could be held as soon as Saturday or possibly early next week.

Resolving the borrowing measure is only one part of the deal the bipartisan Legislature and Gov. Mark Dayton have to strike before completing their work for the year and avoiding a government shutdown. As of late Thursday, they still had not revealed their plans for education, environment, agriculture and economic development budgets — which make up about 40 percent of the state’s $42 billion budget.

The bipartisan bonding bill, however, is a key piece of the plan. It provides $33 million to complete the renovation of the state Capitol, $140 million to reroute U.S. 53 around an Iron Range mine and $19 million for two University of Minnesota animal health laboratories in St. Paul and Willmar aimed at halting bird flu, which is ravaging poultry flocks.

“It’s pretty basic stuff,” said House Capital Investment Committee Chairman Paul Torkelson, R-Hanska.

He and Senate Capital Investment Committee Chairman LeRoy Stumpf, DFL-Plummer, headed the negotiations that produced a bipartisan agreement.

Although the bill is smaller than he had hoped, Stumpf said it takes an important step toward fixing the state’s most urgent projects.

Meanwhile, lawmakers spent Thursday gearing up for a special session. They have planned a Friday joint House-Senate hearing on three outstanding budget bills plus the capital investment measure. They also have alerted members to be ready to meet to approve those bills over the weekend.

“We’re not all the way there yet, and we are making progress,” said House Speaker Kurt Daudt, R-Crown. “We are still hoping for a special session on Saturday. … If it doesn’t happen Saturday, it would be early next week.”

But by Thursday evening, Dayton had not officially called lawmakers back to work.

The governor made clear this week that he would not ask lawmakers to come back to work — and only he has the power to do so — unless an obscure provision governing the state auditor is changed.

That provision, approved just last month and signed into law, would give counties the option of hiring outside accountants rather than being audited by the state auditor.

“It is the sticking point at this time. But we are working to resolve that,” Daudt said.

He said lawmakers will fix a small portion of that new law, which inadvertently stripped the auditor’s office of its power this summer. But the rest of the law — including counties’ opt-out starting in August 2016 — will have to wait, legislative leaders said.

“It seems awfully strange that we would be repealing a law that was just passed a week and a half ago,” said House Majority Leader Joyce Peppin, R-Rogers. “It is just really, really hard to comprehend.”

Leaders in both the House and Senate have expressed some concern about the idea of a Saturday session, given that by Thursday evening, the $17 billion-plus spending measures had not been made public.

“People are going to want to review the bills,” said House Minority Leader Paul Thissen, DFL-Minneapolis. During special sessions, minority leaders are unusually powerful because their votes are needed to suspend normal rules that govern how long bills have to be available before they are voted upon.