Gov. Mark Dayton will deliver his (late) State of the State address at 7 p.m. on April 23 from the Minnesota House chambers.

The 67-year-old governor was away from Capitol in the early part of this year as he recovered from hip surgery. Then, once he returned to the Capitol, he proposed the April 23 date and got a caution signal from lawmakers.

"Well, you know we might not be in session then," Dayton said he got in response. Lawmakers had been hoping to finish their work before their mid-April break.

"We certainly don't want them to use the excuse of the State of the State as the reason they are coming back," he said last week.

Since then, lawmakers realized they would be back at the Capitol after their break, giving him certainty that the April date would work.

The date Dayton has settled upon is later than any governor's State of the State address since Gov. Floyd B. Olson's December address in 1933, according to records kept by the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library.

Two governors in recent memory did not give State of the State speeches -- Gov. Jesse Ventura skipped the big speech in 2000 and Gov. Rudy Perpich did so in 1986.