Brinksmanship all but supplanted statesmanship at the State Capitol last week.

DFL Gov. Mark Dayton and the Legislature's Republican leaders increasingly turned their focus from reaching an agreement on a 2012-13 state budget to coping with the consequences should they fail to agree -- a shutdown of at least some state and local government operations on July 1.

With the authority to spend money due to expire on June 30, the need to prepare for the possibility that the budget impasse will outlast the current biennium has become pressing.

We don't fault officials for considering how to keep a bad situation from becoming a catastrophe. But the first duty confronting Dayton and legislators in the next 11 days is to avoid the need for shutdown planning altogether.

They need to accommodate each other's positions sufficiently to set a balanced budget. Time is flying, and they have a long way to go.

It was discouraging Thursday when Republican legislative leaders said they would make a "major concession" to the governor -- then offered to spend a meager $90 million more than the $110 million they'd offered to add to their spending total a week earlier. They said they would pay for the lot by cancelling $200 million in proposed business tax cuts.

That's a small move in Dayton's direction, but far from enough. The DFL governor proposed back in March to spend $3 billion more than legislators want. He offered on May 16 to meet them in the middle -- an offer that has been rebuffed by Republicans.

The GOP position needs reconsideration. While Republican resistance to higher taxes is sincere and well-intended, the budget the Legislature has passed is not adequate to Minnesota's needs, especially in higher education, health care for the poor, transit and local government aid.

The Star Tribune Editorial Board supports a 2012-13 budget $1.6 billion larger than the latest GOP offer proposes.

What's more, the GOP position fails to acknowledge that under the Minnesota Constitution, the power of the purse is shared between the legislative and the executive branches of government.

Last week several GOP legislators hotly complained that the executive branch had issued letters saying that the Legislature had adjourned "without appropriating money to fund the operations of state government."

Not so, said Sen. Dave Thompson, R-Burnsville, in a release, and Rep. Steve Drazkowski, R-Mazeppa, at a commission meeting. The Legislature passed all of its budget bills.

But passing bills is not the same as enacting a law. No appropriation is final until budget bills are signed by a governor or win the two-thirds vote of the Legislature that a veto override requires.

The Legislature's budget bills were vetoed; no override appears possible. The governing obligation of the Legislature's majorities is not done.

Neither, however, is Dayton's. The governor bent in the GOP direction last week when he freed his commissioners to negotiate on individual bills despite the lack of agreement on the size of the total budget. That sets the stage for enactment of at least a portion of the new budget before July 1.

Dayton has said he won't sign any budget bills until an agreement exists on all of them. But when the alternative is the layoff of thousands of state employees, the disruption of public work and a blow to the state's economy, the option of enacting at least a partial budget looks more appealing.

Dayton should do one thing more: He should flesh out the spending side of his "meet in the middle" offer. To date, he has only released details on the tax increase on upper-income earners he wants a settlement to include.

He has seemed reluctant to shoulder the political burden of both tax increases and deep spending cuts. But that's the burden of leadership that both sides in this dispute must bear.

A sense of urgency and impending peril ought to stir not only policy makers now, but average Minnesotans as well. Voters need to become informed and engaged. Their messages to elected state leaders may be crucial in averting a shutdown and setting this state on a better course.

In the next 11 days, leaders ought to strive for statesmanship rather than brinksmanship. They ought keep their deliberations and positions as respectful and transparent as possible. And citizens ought to speak out.

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