Gov. Mark Dayton and Republican legislative leaders reacted forcefully Tuesday to claims that much of the state's proposed $35 billion budget had been put together in private. "I would flatly reject that these were done in secret," said House Speaker Kurt Zellers. Speaking to reporters after announcing that a special legislative session would begin in just four hours on Tuesday afternoon, Dayton and Zellers said the proposals with few exceptions were similar to legislation that lawmakers had considered before Minnesota's 19-day state government shutdown. After being closed since July 1, the State Capitol was reopened early Tuesday by Dayton in advance of the special session. During the shutdown, as talks between Dayton and the Republicans continued in private, citizens and lobbyists were barred from entering the building. The DFL governor, along with Zellers and Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch, announced a state budget agreement Tuesday that would quickly go before legislators who would be barred from making amendments. The proposals will go before legislators at 3 p.m., and there will not be public hearings on the legislation beforehand. But Zellers and the governor said the legislation was nearly identical to budget bills that had been debated during the Legislature's regular session, which ended May 23. "These are conference committee reports" from the Legislature's regular session, said Zellers. He said much of the legislation had received a "full vetting through the legislative process for a very long time. "Yeah, there are some changes in there --some minor changes in some [cases], some major changes in others," he added. "Viewers will be able to watch the [special session] on the Internet. You'll be able to look at the bills online." Dayton agreed. "The public will have just as much time to read the actual finished product as literally any of us," he said. "We started with the conference reports as the framework, and then basically it was more a matter of subtraction [of money], and very little addition." The governor also said he did not make the decision to close the State Capitol during the shutdown. "This building was closed, as was the State Office Building, because of the [judge's] court order," he said. "That was a decision that it was not an emergency facility" that needed to be kept open. "That was the decision we lived with," said Dayton.