By Rachel E. Stassen-Berger

St. Paul Pioneer Press

ST. PAUL — In a tableau eerily similar to the budget negotiations that failed to complete the state’s budget, Gov. Mark Dayton on Tuesday invited Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk and House Speaker Kurt Daudt to his St. Paul residence to hash out a budget.

“Let’s see how quickly we can get it done,” Dayton said. “It behooves us to get it done as quickly as possible.”

The three men failed to agree on a complete budget package Dayton was willing to sign during the regular session, which ended May 18.

Now, they are talking about the problems Dayton had with those measures and plans for a one-day special session for lawmakers to try again to pass budget measures he will enact. If lawmakers and the governor fail to finish the rest of the budget by July 1, parts of state government will shut down.

After lawmakers passed the eight budget bills that make up the state’s next two-year budget, Dayton vetoed three of them. Those three fund preschools through high schools, environmental and agricultural programs and economic development, employment and commerce programs. The remaining measures make up about 40 percent of Minnesota’s $42 billion budget.

Republican House Speaker Kurt Daudt said the Legislature will start with the measures that the Democratic-Farmer-Labor governor vetoed “and kind of tweak or make changes to that where necessary.” He said the House and Senate would meet in the State Office Building, half a block from the under-construction Capitol, for one day in a special session.

The governor had earlier suggested that lawmakers should meet in a tent on the Capitol lawn but said with a laugh Tuesday: “I conceded on the tent.”

Daudt and Dayton, who will meet again Wednesday, have said they would like lawmakers to approve three budget measures to replace the ones Dayton vetoed during that special session, as well as pass a public works borrowing bill and an appropriation of Legacy Act funds for arts and outdoors projects.

The governor has said he wants lawmakers to spend $250 million more on preschool through high school programs, including $100 million for a voluntary, half-day prekindergarten program across the state. He also wants lawmakers to enact buffer zones around the state’s waterways and fund avian flu recovery programs. They had moved to do so, but Dayton vetoed the budget bill containing those provisions.

“The most difficult bill I had to decide on was that one,” Dayton said. But, he said, “there was just some egregious anti-environment provisions in the final bill, which frankly more emanated from the (DFL-controlled) Senate than they did from the (Republican-controlled) House.”

Among the provisions to which Dayton objected: amnesty for violators of environmental regulations, elimination of citizen review of pollution control, earmarking of funds and funding “false pollinator labeling.”

Among his priorities for a special session, the governor also listed legislation that would restore ex-felons’ right to vote.

Dayton also offered to back a $260 million tax cut in exchange for extra funding for schools. Daudt, who had previously supported a $2.2 billion tax cut, said he was unsure about that deal because it would require lawmakers to deal with a tax bill.

“Every time we bring an extra bill in, it opens up a whole bunch of other unanswered questions,” Daudt said. “If we try to keep this simple, we probably wouldn’t bring this in, but we’re certainly open to that, and it has been on the table.”

—Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.