House Speaker Kurt Daudt said legislative leaders had reached a deal on pay raises for the governor's cabinet.
The raises granted earlier this year, some of them as much as $35,000, have upended the legislative session and exposed a gulf between Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk, DFL-Crown and Gov. Mark Dayton, even though they are both DFL elected officials.
Daudt, R-Crown, said the deal would again require that the Legislature approve future commissioner pay raises, which ended with 2013 legislation that gave the governor discretionary power to set his cabinet salaries.
The deal would also delay the current round of raises until July 1. Finally, a stopgap spending bill expected to pass the House today for several state agencies will include a reduction commensurate with the raises given to those agency commissioners.
Daudt said he wanted to end the disagreement so the Legislature could move ahead on the stopgap spending bill: "Some of this is money that would help keep the St. Peter security more secure," he said, referring to the troubled Minnesota Security Hospital psychiatric facility.
"And so this is pretty needed funding, and we wanted to make sure we got that funding out the door," Daudt said.
