The state House of Representatives adjourned at 6:52 Saturday morning at the capitol building in St. Paul after passing a massive budget bill compromise, ending the special session of the Minnesota legislature.
Both the House and Senate met for nearly 21 hours to finish work on the budget and other bills they failed to pass when the regular session of the legislature adjourned on Monday.
The $48.3 billion spending plan now goes to Gov. Walz for his signature.
When guidelines for the special session were set, all sides agreed at a 7:00 a.m. Saturday adjournment.
They beat the clock with eight minutes to spare.
The voice vote in the House was unanimous after Speaker Melissa Hortman asked members to vote on the measure to end the session.
"The motion passes, sine die," said Hortman, banging the gavel to end her first session as house speaker, a post she rose to after Democrats wrested control of the chamber during the 2018 elections.
"We're very happy with the steps we are making today," she said. "Minnesotans asked us to pass a budget that really valued education, to provide world-class schools for every child in the state, more affordable and accessible health care."
House Republican leader Kurt Daudt, who lost the speakers' post, took the time to blast the majority party.
"On the very first day, we warned Minnesotans what was going to happen, and Democrats said they were going to do it different," he said on the floor of the House. "Instead, we had the least transparent, and least productive session in state history."
Republicans maintained control of the state senate, which helped convince Gov. Walz and Democrats to give up on a gas tax hike in exchange for continuation of the health care provider tax.
"That is a substantial accomplishment," Hortman said. "That is the primary task of this session was to protect that health care for those 1.1 million people."
Daudt was critical of the health care provider tax.
"Democrats kept their promise and forced Republicans to raise health care costs," said Daudt, bleary-eyed after the long hours and at first mis-speaking before gathering himself, with a short laugh. "This is a $2.3 billion tax increase on Minnesotas' health care. The sickest Minnesotans will pay the bill. It's bad public policy."
That agreement paved the way for the budget compromise last Sunday, less than a day before the state-mandated adjournment of the legislature.
That left little time for lawmakers to review and act on finance bills that were part of the budget compromise, prompting Gov. Walz to call the special session, Minnesota's fifth for budgetary reasons since 2009.
