Governor Mark Dayton and Republican legislative leaders reached agreement late Monday –very late Monday – on a state budget agreement. It was too late to get the budget work completed by the end of the session at midnight Monday, but the agreement was solid enough for Dayton to call an immediate special session. The agreement includes $660 million in tax relief, which Republicans had been pushing for, and $50 million to expand pre-school availability in the state, which the governor has been demanding. Another $300 million will be spent to fix roads and bridges, part of the Republican transportation plan to invest more in roads without raising the gas tax or license fees.

There’s a lot of work that needs to get done before the deadline of 7 a.m. today, but at least there is hope that with the agreement in principle, the logistics of preparing and printing up the budget bill won’t take much longer.

There were the requisite compromise comments on Tuesday. “I think it really represents true compromise. We’re getting some things we wanted, the governor is getting some things he wanted,” House Speaker Kurt Daudt. We’re pretty happy with that.”

“It’s not everything that I want,” Dayton said of the agreement. “You give and take.”

Yes, give and take. Everyone knows that nobody gets their own way in these situations, but everyone spends most of the session refusing to budge from what they want. It isn’t until the last possible minute that people start compromising. We suppose it’s to try to get more in negotiations than you give up, but it certainly makes for annoying legislative sessions.

Oh, well. Better to have an agreement late in the session than no agreement until after a government shutdown.