Dayton, GOP plan all-day meetings

Gov. Mark Dayton and the Republicans' two top legislative leaders said Wednesday that they will spend all day Friday and Saturday behind closed doors trying to resolve the state's $5 billion budget deficit.With eight days left before a possible state government shutdown, Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch and House Speaker Kurt Zellers emerged from an hour-long meeting with the DFL governor to announce that the all-day sessions would hopefully lead to an agreement."Whatever it takes -- we said all day Friday, all day Saturday," Koch told reporters.Added Zellers: "It's the three of us alone in a room."But while the two Republican leaders said that they planned to push Dayton to reach agreement on individual budget bills – such as funding for transportation and K-12 education – on a one-by-one basis, a Dayton spokesman said afterward that the governor had not backpedaled from his pledge to first arrive at an overall state budget figure and not resolve the budget on a piecemeal basis."He's open to trying any and everything to get resolution on the budget," Bob Hume, a Dayton spokesman, said of the all-day meetings.