For five months DFL Gov. Mark Dayton and the GOP-controlled Legislature sparred at the Capitol over how to eliminate the state’s $5 billion budget deficit. But with the legislative session concluded and no end to the budget impasse in sight, the debate will now move beyond St. Paul as legislators face constituents in their home districts.

With just days left before the adjournment of the 2011 regular session, eight Chamber of Commerce leaders from greater Minnesota came to the Capitol Monday to blast the Republican Legislature’s budget proposals.

State lawmakers have made extensive cuts in aids and credits to local governments as a means of coping with multibillion-dollar budget deficits in recent years. And in view of the $6.2 billion budget deficit for 2012-13, more cuts to local government aid are looming. That specter is creating a surprising amount of factionalizing between business groups in different regions of the state.

Lobbyists who have been waiting on pins and needles for the House and Senate to release their committee rosters got an early holiday present on Wednesday, when the Senate GOP sent out a final list of Republican names that will make up the majority in the chamber's 16 committees next year.

As Charley Shaw writes this week, the new Republican majority in the Minnesota Senate appears dedicated to projecting a considerably more conservative face when Session 2011 convenes in seven weeks.

Republicans pummeled DFLers in the suburbs and greater Minnesota on Tuesday night to take control of both chambers of the Legislature for the first time since the modern partisan era started in the early 1970s.

Minnesota Republicans, buoyed by national congressional gains and an increasing tide of conservative sentiment, are queueing up to challenge incumbent DFL state legislators this year.

More than 14 months before the 2010 general election, 19 people have filed with the Campaign Finance Board to run for the state Senate in 16 districts, and 16 have filed to run for House seats.