Pressure is building on lawmakers and Governor Mark Dayton to agree on a bonding bill for state public works projects, with only two weeks left in the legislative session. Dayton has requested one-and-a-half billion dollars. House Republicans propose just over half that — 825 million dollars. Dayton asked last week, “Where is the other half?” House Capital Investment Committee Chairman Dean Urdahl from Grove City told his committee members Friday afternoon he appreciates what the governor is trying to do, but “when he says, where’s the other half, when he’s got a 1.5-billion-dollar bonding proposal, well, he does not have to get votes to pass his proposal.”
Republicans say the legislature passed a big bonding bill last year and 825 million dollars more this year would bring state bonding to a record level over two years.
It remains to be seen how much bargaining the two sides will do. Urdahl told his committee, “825 million still is a lot of money. I can’t guarantee that it’s gonna get bigger, even though there’s a sentiment of many of you that it should, but don’t approach that as a sure thing that’s going to happen.”
Here are some of Urdahl’s comments: