Downey: 'We Tried Our Best' to Avoid Shutdown

It obviously wasn't enough, but State Rep. Keith Downey (R-Edina) said negotiations between GOP leaders and Gov. Mark Dayton had come painfully close to ending .

Downey said the volley of offers came increasingly close to pleasing both sides, but a $1.4 billion gap still remained, along with a policy difference over tax increases. In the end, Downey suspects "political agendas" were responsible for the two sides not coming together.

"We were very, very close," Downey said. "I think we should all take 24 hours and take a breath here, then get back to work to finish this."

Though he wasn't in the room during negotiations, Downey said much of his week was spent fine-tuning finance bills to "make moves toward the governor on policy fronts."

One move in particular was being willing to remove his , which would have seen the state executive branch workforce decreased by 15 percent by 2015. Rather than impose a wage freeze and set a target for reducing the state workforce, Downey said he proposed giving Dayton freedom to eliminate $200 million from the state's $4.8 billion payroll any way he chooses.

"That was a huge move from my perspective," Downey said. "You look around the country at collective bargaining changes, and we were willing to negotiate on our provisions."

One sticking point all along was Dayton's proposal to increase taxes for the top earning 2 percent of Minnesotans. At one point, Dayton proposed increasing taxes only on those earning more than $1 million annually. GOP legislators rejected that proposal, and Democratic leaders have since portrayed Republicans as choosing "millionaires over Minnesotans."

In remarks Thursday evening, Dayton was critical of Republican leaders' stance to "protect the richest handful of Minnesotans at the expense of everyone else, even at the expense of a state government shutdown."

"Instead of taxing their friends, they would prefer very damaging cuts to health care, K-12 and higher education, state and local public safety, mass transit and other essential services," Dayton said.

Considering past events, Downey said he doesn't expect the shutdown to go on very long—perhaps a few weeks, at most. The fact that negotiations got so close less than 24 hours ago is encouraging, Downey said, though he doesn't think there's much appetite within the Republican-led Legislature for a budget higher than $34 billion.

While Downey is "frustrated" and "irritated" that a shutdown is taking place, he said it will be somewhat interesting to observe the functions of government with only one-third of state employees working.

"Nobody wants a shutdown, but it's an interesting opportunity to see what impact not having these nonessential employees has," he said. "It will allow us a chance to assess, one-by-one, what can actually be done without all of those people."