Political zombie: Special session in limbo as talks go nowhere

Time apart isn't healing wounds at the Minnesota Capitol.

Legislative leaders and Gov. Mark Dayton resumed their special session talks Tuesday after a week's hiatus but somehow moved further from a deal to bring lawmakers back for a special session on transportation, taxes and construction borrowing.

But no one is ready to bail out of the negotiations or give in just yet, but at this point, it's become a zombie session, neither dead nor alive.

"I don't have a deadline. I'm not setting a deadline. But at some point we'll have to see whether we're making any progress or getting farther and farther apart, which is what the result is today," Dayton said after about an hour of closed-door discussions. "We don't need to get even still farther apart."

Republican House Speaker Kurt Daudt's assessment was similarly dour.

"There's a lot of puffing out the chests up there and not a lot of rolling up the sleeves," Daudt, R-Zimmerman, said following the meeting.

About the only common refrain is that the gridlock is the other side's fault.

Dayton blasted Daudt for adding proposals to the negotiations. That includes a plan to prevent local governments from adopting more rigorous wage and benefit laws than the state has and another to let low-income families qualify for tax credits toward private-school tuition.

"Unless he's serious about trying to resolve the differences rather than add to the differences we're not going to get anywhere. So I'm very pessimistic at this point," Dayton told reporters.

Daudt said the governor expanded the scope of negotiations when he asked for additional projects for the construction borrowing bill and some budget items instead of keeping things focused on a vetoed tax-cut plan and a limited public works bill.

"He unfortunately thinks it's unreasonable to expect for us to bring anything to the table for negotiations and that we should simply live with his list of demands. Sorry, I don't think there's a Minnesotan in the entire state that thinks that's reasonable," Daudt added. "If the governor wants compromise, he is going to have to be the leader and is going to have to start showing some compromise because he has shown zero compromise to this point."

The back-and-forth has been a source of frustration for people and groups with a stake in the unfinished Capitol business. Advocates for a long-term transportation finance package appealed to the state's leaders to reach an agreement for the good of the state.

Dayton and lawmakers left it open as to when they'll give talks another shot. Dayton said he'd leave it to Daudt to reconvene the group.

A solution is long overdue, said Golden Valley Mayor Shep Harris.

"We need results and we need results now," said Harris, part of a coalition including Minnesota businesses, unions and nonprofits pushing for road and transit funding. "We can't afford to let the politics of the present get in the way of focusing on the future needs of our communities and the future needs of our state, especially when it comes to transportation."

Correction (June 21, 2016): An earlier version of this article inaccurately attributed a quote from Gov. Mark Dayton.