If there’s anything I didn’t expect to hear this session, I wouldn’t have expected Tom Anzelc to criticize Gov. Dayton. That’s exactly what Rep. Anzelc did, though:

Several were skeptical an agreement could be reached in time to avoid a partial government shutdown.

“Historically, governors don’t call a special session unless there is rock-solid agreement among the leadership,” said Rep. Tom Anzelc, DFL-Balsam Township. “Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk, DFL-Cook, and Speaker Daudt have a cordial relationship. But the governor doesn’t seem to be in that triangle. That’s going to make this very complicated.”

Gov. Dayton certainly doesn’t fit into that triangle, though it’s fair to say that he’s admitted that he trusts Speaker Daudt.

To be fair, though, it isn’t accurate to think that Sen. Bakk has suddenly turned over a new moderate leaf. The reason he’s getting along with Speaker Daudt is mostly due to the fact that he’s worried that there’s something to the Republicans’ advantage in outstate Minnesota. A politician’s greatest instinct is to get re-elected. After seeing Paul Thissen get fired as Speaker in 2014, Bakk is doing his best to play to outstate Minnesota as much as possible.

But I digress.

The reality is that Gov. Dayton remains the biggest impediment to these negotiations. That’s why Speaker Daudt and Sen. Bakk pushed Gov. Dayton aside after spending the last week of the session trying to hammer out a budget deal. After 4 days of intense negotiations, the trio had reached agreement on 2 bills. After they pushed. Gov. Dayton to the side, they finished the other bills in 2 hours.

Now, Gov. Dayton is whining after taking his ill-advised pre-K initiative off the table:

“I’ve given up on my version of pre-k and that’s a huge concession on my part to try to get this resolved, to try to get this wrapped up, to try to give 10,000 public employees that they’re going to have their jobs on July 1st,” Dayton said. “I’ve gone a long ways on this to accommodate their concerns.”

It isn’t a concession considering the fact that legislators of both parties and both bodies of the legislature rejected Gov. Dayton’s proposal. It isn’t a concession considering the fact that school boards across the state oppose it. It isn’t a concession considering it’s hiding more than $3,000,000,000 in property tax increases in it because of the unfunded mandates hidden throughout Gov. Dayton’s bill.

When the Senate, which has a DFL majority, rejects Gov. Dayton’s proposal by a 52-14 margin, that’s a pretty strong indicator that it’s a terrible idea.

Gov. Dayton is opposing the bill because Republicans are demanding a common sense reform in exchange for increased spending:

The House GOP released an offer sheet that put $125 million more in the mix but called for changes to the “last-in, first-out” teacher layoff law.

Simply put, this is a sensible reform. Education Minnesota hates the idea, which is enough to earn Gov. Dayton’s wrath. If you asked parents if they’d want the teachers with the most seniority teaching their children or whether they’d prefer that the best teachers teaching their children, it wouldn’t be a fair fight.

Technorati: Mark Dayton, Tom Anzelc, Tom Bakk, Universal Pre-K, Education Minnesota, Tom Bakk, Paul Thissen, DFL, Kurt Daudt, Rural Minnesota