"$450 million dollars," Representative Hausman told Capitol reporters, "The $70 million for Central Corridor leverages that amount of federal money: $450 million."

At one point Pawlenty liked the Central Corridor project enough to include it in his own bonding proposal, but he used his line-item veto to knock it out of the bonding bills delivered to his desk by lawmakers.

"And I would venture to say there is not another Governor, Republican or Democrat, in any other state in the nation who would let $450 million in federal money slip through their fingers," Hausman remarked.

She made her comments standing outside Governor Pawlenty's office, flanked by other members of the Saint Paul delegation, and transit backers who held up giant mock checks in the amount of $450,000,000.

"Those are federal dollars," Hausman said, "And if they don't come here they're going to Sacramento, Miami, Charlotte, Salt Lake City or Phoenix."

When Pawlenty cut the project out of the bill vetoed the bill April 7th, he said he still had concerns about the total cost and the fact that the University of Minnesota hasn't agreed to the route the other stakeholders approved.

On Friday he was out of town for the fishing opener, but a day earlier told reporters he'd consider another bonding bill only after he reaches a deal on the balancing the overall state budget.

"Whether there's a bonding bill or not will hinge on whether we have a budget deal and what that looks like," Pawlenty said.

He's been in private negotiations with legislative leaders from both parties for the past several weeks, but they haven't come to terms on how best to erase the $935 million projected deficit for the current budget cycle.

"We'd like to get a deal," Pawlenty explained, "If the pattern of history is true in these matters they'll start sending us bills that are close to what we like then they'll put a couple stink bombs in there that they know we can't sign."

That, he said, would result in a special session being called. And then there's an option that's even more troubling for most lawmakers, a rare process known as "unallotment" in which the governor can unilaterally chop away on existing programs until the budget is balanced.

Hausman, as head of the Capital Investments Committee in the House, was the one of the main architects of the bonding bill the Governor signed in April after chopping out $208 million. Many of the projects that fell to the wayside were in Hausman's district, including the Central Corridor and the Como Park Zoo gorilla and polar bear exhibits.

Pawlenty found many of the projects wasteful, and items that came at the expense of some of his targetted favorites including the Minneapolis Veterans Home and Lake Vermillion State Park.

Hausman Friday told reporters that this version of the bill is totally clean.

"This is my spreadsheet," she said holding up the line-by-line breakdown of her bonding bill, "It has one project, the Central Corridor, 70 million dollars."

She said that amount would still leave wiggle room within the overall $825 bonding limit set by the Governor earlier in the session, allowing lawmakers to give him something for the veterans home and the proposed new state park.