Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton is making major concessions.
(Official photo)
(Official photo)
At a speech at the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota on Thursday, Gov. Mark Dayton announced that he is prepared to concede to most of the demands offered by Republican legislative leadership on June 30 in order to end the 14-day government shutdown. The Republican demands included a shift of $700 million in payments to public schools and borrowing another $700 million from the state?s tobacco settlement fund. Dayton will also drop his proposal to tax the wealthiest 2 percent of Minnesotans. He excoriated Republicans for not offering any compromises during the shutdown.
As much as it sucks, it's hard to blame Dayton, since he was faced with opponents who did not care how much pain they inflicted on the state, while he did and does care. He did have a few conditions, as well:
Dayton added three conditions to his offer. First the Republicans must abide by their public statements that they will take all policy issues off the table. Second they must drop their arbitrary 15% across-the-board reduction to employees in all agencies, regardless of their funding source. Third, that after all the budget issues have been resolved in a special session, Republicans must support and pass a bonding bill in that session not less than $500 million to put people back to work throughout Minnesota.
Republican leadership hadn't yet commented on the propsal, but some individual Republican legislators are not thrilled with it, so despite Dayton's near-total acceptance of their terms, Republican support is not guaranteed.
3:52 PM PT (Kaili Joy Gray): The New York Times reports that a deal has been reached.
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