ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — With little time to spare before a state government shutdown, Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton and top Republican lawmakers turned Tuesday to one of the most disputed areas of the unfinished state budget — health and welfare programs.
They met privately for about an hour and 15 minutes in the morning and planned to resume the discussion in the afternoon.
Their disagreement over state spending largely boils down to health and social service programs, the fastest-growing part of the budget, where Republicans aim to slice far more deeply into projected spending than Dayton would. The governor has been holding out for new income tax revenue to soften the cuts to vulnerable groups including the disabled and poor.
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"We look at that as a significant area of the budget, a significant area of disagreement based on our two proposals," Dayton said as he left the morning meeting.
He added: "We had a constructive meeting. We still have our differences."
Republican House Majority Leader Matt Dean said the talks are "still moving ahead" on the fifth straight day of negotiations.
Minnesota will have its second government shutdown in six years starting at midnight Thursday into Friday if state leaders don't make some kind of a deal to keep the state functioning. A Ramsey County judge is expected to rule this week on how critical services would be handled in a shutdown.
In a related case, another judge on Tuesday ordered the state court system to stay open during a shutdown.
Retired Judge Bruce Christopherson, who was appointed to handle the case, said a failure to fund courts would lead to "irreparable and inestimable" consequences.
"If the courts are not funded, the basic, essential constitutional rights of the public would fail," he wrote.
Christopherson said a closed court system would make it difficult or impossible for police to hold people accused of violent crimes, to keep psychopathic sex offenders in secure treatment facilities, to grant and enforce restraining orders in domestic violence cases, and to remove children from unsafe home environments.
Despite the high stakes, Dayton and the legislative leaders have hewed to an agreement to keep the content of their negotiations private, and few details have leaked out.
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