Rachel E. Stassen-Berger and McKenzie Martin

Gov. Mark Dayton Wednesday said he'd like not to start intense budget negotiations until after lawmakers pass joint conference committee bills.

"The House will pass its, the Senate will pass its, and then they'll go to conference committee and they'll pass conference reports, and then at that point we'll have a legislative budget by the majority and I'll have my budget and then we'll begin the negotiation...My hope would be they'd pass the conference committee reports and lay them on the table," Dayton said. "They'll have their budget, I have my budget, and they both are balanced budgets, we'll have our differences and then we can begin to negotiate. I think that's a very reasonable proposal."

That idea could put negotiations weeks out. The House and Senate are still in the process of passing their budget bills and they have significant differences, even though both bodies are controlled by Republicans. The differences in the Health and Human Services, Taxes and Education bills coming out of the two chambers are marked.

Legislative leaders said Wednesday that Dayton's "reasonable proposal" is flawed and would mean blocking some measures on which they could agree until they agree on everything.

"What he's proposing simply doesn't work. It has never been done or proposed as a means of finishing session, primarily that's because procedurally it's impossible to do. In principle we would like to have a governor very engaged in an open process with the House and Senate in the conference committee process and indeed in bills because our goal...is the Legislature agrees to bills the governor can sign," said House Majority Leader Matt Dean, R-Dellwood.

Senate Deputy Majority Leader Geoff Michel, R-Edina, said he wants to include the governor and his commissioners thoughts long before conference committees.

"We're going to take assistance, compromise, ideas from commissioners now. We need to," Michel said.

But Michel said regardless of procedure, he is hopeful that the "brand new crew" -- the governor and the House and Senate leaders -- who will end up negotiating will do things better than the last crew.

"This has to be different than the last group involved. This has to be just a better atmosphere and, frankly, I think the relationships are much more important than the procedure," he said.

McKenzie Martin is a student at the University of Minnesota interning with the Star Tribune.