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Capitol View®
Tim Pugmire

Transportation talk on Dayton’s lunch menu

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The main players at the Minnesota Capitol have been doing some pre-session socializing this week.

DFL Gov. Mark Dayton hosted House Speaker-designate Kurt Daudt for lunch today at the governor's residence. It was their first meeting since Election Day, when Dayton won a second term and Republicans won control of the Minnesota House.

“Pork and potatoes,” Daudt said. “It was good.”

Daudt said the conversation ranged from their dogs to their priorities for the 2015 session. He said they both included transportation funding.

“We didn’t get into real specifics about how to solve the problem,” Daudt said. “We just talked about the fact that we need to focus on transportation over the next two years. I think everyone realizes there are challenges in that.”

One of the challenges is coming up with the money needed to tackle a backlog of transportation projects. Dayton has repeatedly said additional revenue is needed. Daudt and other Republicans want to find money elsewhere in the state budget, and they want the emphasis on roads and bridges, not mass transit.

Dayton also held separate private meetings this week with DFL Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk and the outgoing DFL House Speaker Paul Thissen, who will serve as House minority leader next year.

Bakk said he expects transportation funding to be a front-burner issue in 2015, and it came up in his meeting with the governor too. Bakk  said Senate Democrats will not limit their discussion to roads and bridges. He said they’ll push for a comprehensive approach that includes transit.

“It is important transportation infrastructure here in the metropolitan area, to a lesser extent in rural Minnesota,” Bakk said. “But there are some communities where it’s important. So, I suspect that a Senate transportation thing is going to have more emphasis on transit than what I hear at least is coming from the House.”

Still, Bakk said he thinks disagreements over transportation funding and other budget matters can be resolved for a timely adjournment of the session in May.   He noted that the last time Minnesota had a DFL governor, a DFL Senate and a Republican House was in 1985. That session didn’t go well, and a special session was needed in June to pass a budget.

“That was a significant failure on the part of the Legislature,” Bakk said. “They weren’t able to negotiate an agreement. I don’t want to make the same kind of mistakes that were made in 1985.”

The 2015 session begins on Jan. 6.