Governor Mark Daton and legislative leaders are scheduled to sit down again this afternoon to continue negotiations on a State budget for the biennium which began almost a week ago. A one hour meeting yesterday, the first since the shutdown began on July 1, produced no progress and possibly some regression. While Republican legislative leaders had proposed various accounting shifts and one-time revenue streams to add $1 billion to the State budget in the last negotiations on June 30, they came out of yesterday's meeting announcing that this additional revenue was now off the table and they would not agree to any budget spending more than $34.2 billion. The legislators again suggested that Governor Dayton agree to a "lights on" bill which would keep government functioning at its current levels until agreement can be reached on an overall budget solution.

Meanwhile, smaller groups of legislators are attempting to work out the nuts and bolts of the spending bills, including some significant policy differences with the Governor. Today, a group of legislative negotiators is meeting to go over the Health and Human Services Appropriations Bill and tomorrow a group will meet on the K-12 education bill.