After a late-night session Thursday in St. Paul, legislators could finally give Minnesota cities some final budget numbers.

While Austin is hit hard, it's not any worse than expected and the numbers should fit into the city council's proposed budget presented to citizens earlier this year.

Cuts to local government aid (LGA) this year for Austin will be about $933,000, which is basically what the council had budgeted for. In 2004, Austin will lose an additional $1.3 million, less than the $1.8 million expected under Gov. Tim Pawlenty's plan. However, the 2004 Austin budget proposal counted on personnel reductions making up $600,000 in 2004 and did not include cost of living increases. An early retirement plan has only enticed four retirements to off-set the need for layoffs, and one of those was already expected.

Director of Administrative Services Tom Dankert said the council will have to decide what to do to make up for that. One option is to levy back up to 60 percent of the cuts. Otherwise, the council will have to look at amending the budget further.

These issues will likely be discussed at the next work session, Dankert said.

In other legislative business, law-makers passed a health and human services proposal, a $7.5 billion funding proposal that makes up roughly a quarter of the state's total budget.

By 11 p.m., the Legislature passed bills on transportation, bonding and taxes. Pawlenty was expected to sign all of them into law.

Before giving the nod to the tax bill, the Senate passed the bonding and transportation bills in a matter of minutes with very little discussion.

Senate Majority Leader John Hottinger, who was one of a handful of Democrats who voted in favor of a Republican-leaning slate of bills, called the session "hard."

"I don't want the sky to fall -- I'm afraid the sky's falling," he said.

The funding bill for health and human services programs was perhaps the most difficult to reconcile overall because it would cut more than $1 billion from services for the disabled, poor and families.

DFL Sen. Linda Berglin had held up a deal on the bill as she fought to keep MinnesotaCare, the state's low-income health insurance program. She succeeded.

Rep. Paul Thissen, DFL-Minneapolis, said voting on the bill wasn't as difficult as the decisions that were made earlier by House and Senate leaders.

"The real decision we made here was that we were not going to raise revenues," said Thissen, DFL-Minneapolis. "We didn't make any hard choices this year. We made the easy choices. Cut, cut, cut, cut and cut again without regard to Minnesota's quality of life and values."

The House earlier this week passed bills dealing with transportation and taxes and the Senate was expected to follow late Thursday or early Friday.

Included in the tax bill is about $420 million in aid to local governments, about $23 million more than House Republicans originally proposed spending. Democrats wanted to raise taxes, but that possibility was abandoned shortly before the end of the regular session.

So-called local government aid is designed to make sure residents in the state's poorer, smaller or older cities have basic services such as police and fire. But some cities have been grandfathered in over the years.

The new plan would distribute most of the money based purely on need, largely eliminating money going to cities for historical reasons.

And finally, the $3.8 billion transportation funding plan that also includes money for public safety programs, would borrow $400 million and seek $300 million to $500 million in federal funds ahead of schedule to pay for up to $900 million in construction work over the next four years.

Senate DFLers had opposed such an approach because interest owed on the bonds will reduce transportation funding in the future, but they stepped aside to allow the session to end.

Matt Merritt can be reached at 434-2214 or by email at matt.merritt@austindailyherald.com