Minnesota’s legislative session ended in chaos and with a pile of unfinished work early Monday morning, leaving legislators disappointed as a last-ditch effort to fund both public works projects and road and bridge repairs failed.

“It was the most challenging night I’ve had yet in the Legislature,” said District 27B Rep. Jeanne Poppe, DFL-Austin.

District 27 Sen. Dan Sparks agreed the ending was disappointed and frustrating.

“It was just disappointing,” he said.

As the midnight Sunday deadline to pass bills fell, lawmakers had finalized some pieces of their plans to use a $900 million budget surplus. That includes a package of $260 million of tax credits and cuts to help farmers, parents, businesses and college students. They also passed extra spending on a statewide voluntary preschool program and broadband Internet infrastructure development.

But despite working until the last minute, legislators couldn’t pass the biggest piece, a so-called bonding bill to fund construction projects and transportation projects. That unfinished business hung over the session’s conclusion, immediately sparking talk that the Legislature could return for a special session to wrap it up.

The details of that package — with more than $1 billion in borrowing and a chunk of the state’s budget surplus earmarked for the transportation fixes — were subject to no public hearings and didn’t emerge until just 30 minutes remained in session.

Legislative leaders from the Republican-controlled House and Democrat-led Senate immediately began casting blame on one another for the measure’s failure.

But to Poppe, many of the problems stemmed from poor timing, a lack of compromise and leftover business from last year. She said a big part of the problem was the tax bill and transportation discussions carrying over from last year. That took the focus off the bonding bill, even though both parties were very far apart in transportation discussions.

Both Sparks and Poppe said the legislature will need to be more stringent with deadlines in future sessions to keep business from getting stacked up at the last minute.

Sparks said he wished negotiations could started on Friday to give more time and more transparency for the public.

Confusion on the bonding bill

After neither the House or Senate approved a bonding bill, Poppe noted the conference committee had to essentially write the final bill during negotiations, making for final discussions like never before. Typically, the House and Senate can’t amend the final version of the bill; they can only approve or deny it. But this bill was amendable, making for more confusion and discussion at the last minute.

“It was poorly done because it was done in such a speedy timeframe in the end,” Poppe said.

After the House hurriedly passed the bill, the Senate added a provision critical to urban Democrats that freed up some extra funding for mass transit projects that Republicans have opposed. As a legislative aide ran the bill across the street to the House chamber for final approval, House Republicans abruptly moved to close their session for the year — ahead of schedule, as the Legislature wasn’t set to adjourn until later Monday.

The added provision was over light rail funding, according to Poppe. While Poppe said she doesn’t oppose such transit needs for the Metro, she doesn’t want to risk Greater Minnesota struggling to get road and bridge funding after the Metro gets light rail dollars.

She wants to see solutions for both the metro and rural needs.

“Everybody needs to be able to say that this is a solution for us that will work long-term,” she said.

‘Just stunning’

Poppe voiced frustration that time was mismanaged during the session as both sides failed to recognize that certain things needed to happen, and she said there was a lack of compromise.

“It is just stunning,” she said.

Poppe also criticized House and Senate leadership with having a top-heavy approach where the leaders negotiated issues and then took the deals to the rest of the House and Senate, rather than the two caucuses leading the issues.

“Clearly the process has got to be improved,” she said.

She’d like to see more guidelines and timelines for how they do their work in the future, and she said the full House and Senate need to be more involved in the process.

However, Poppe credited legislative staffers with helping the elected officials interpret and know what was in the final bills as they received things like the supplemental finance and tax bills without time to read the entire documents.

As the November election nears, Poppe says there will likely be a lot of finger-pointing over the failures to reach bonding and transportation deals.

Moving ahead

Both Sparks and Poppe were hopeful a special session would allow them to address needs across the state without letting projects fall further behind, but only Gov. Mark Dayton can call a special session

On Monday morning, Sparks called the possibility of a special session a 50-50, noting the Senate would get in today and debrief a bit after Sunday night’s meetings.

The Democratic governor has insisted that he wouldn’t sign a bill with tax cuts unless it was paired with spending he deemed essential, including $100 million to boost broadband Internet, another $100 million to tackle racial economic disparities and $25 million for a new preschool program. Though the Legislature approved those initiatives, only the preschool measure was fully funded to Dayton’s liking.

Dayton’s office has said he’d withhold comment until the final pieces of the Legislature’s spending plans fell into place. He has 14 days to decide whether to sign those bills, and Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk Bakk said he met with Dayton earlier Sunday to make his case.

“I told him, ‘Governor, I think we’ve sent you a couple good bills,’” Bakk said.

The tax measures sailed through easily in both the House and Senate. They included a new tax credit for college graduates with loan debt, expanded aid to parents with childcare costs and some property tax relief for farmers and businesses. Some Democrats objected a handful of reductions on tobacco taxes — including removing the automatic, annual tax hikes on cigarettes and other products that lawmakers approved as part of a major tax increase in 2013.

Despite not reaching deals on transportation and the bonding bill, Sparks thought the tax band supplemental budget bills would provide some meaningful relief.

Sparks noted a big issue was that the sides weren’t able to compromise.

Sparks said he was pleased to be able to pass a few bills he worked on with compromises from Republicans and Democrats, such as things like telecommunications reform, utilities railroad crossings, retainage for sub-contractors and agriculture policy.

Poppe was also pleased with the passing of some smaller ag policy bills, and she agreed the tax and supplemental budget bills will do a lot of good things.

“I think we had a decent tax bill that Republicans and Democrats support,” Poppe said.

In another piece of unfinished business, the Legislature also failed to pass upgrades needed for Minnesota driver’s licenses to satisfy the federal government. Lawmakers worked for weeks to find a compromise to comply with the federal Real ID Act, which officials say will require new IDs be in place by 2018 to board domestic flights.

It would be up to Dayton to call lawmakers back to St. Paul for a special session, and legislative leaders would need to sign off on the agenda ahead of time.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.