Ater a long holiday weekend in Albert Lea — meeting with area residents affected by the state government shutdown — District 27A Rep. Rich Murray on Wednesday talked with Gov. Mark Dayton in a one-on-one conversation about how the shutdown is affecting local residents.

Murray said the conversation with Dayton was about 15 minutes by phone and took place shortly after the governor’s meeting with House and Senate leadership on Wednesday. At the time of the conversation, Dayton was frustrated that he had made another budget proposal that was rejected, Murray said.

“After talking with hundreds of people at the parade and visiting with 40 or 50 people one-on-one, what I’m hearing is, ‘Get it fixed,’” Murray said. “They’re not worried about it being a tax increase or cuts. You guys have had enough time to get this done.”

Murray said in the last couple days he’s met with people who have been laid off or given notice of a layoff that is resulting from the shutdown.

“These people are stressed,” he said. “They’re not only stressed about themselves, but they’re stressed about the people they serve.”

“This is starting to hurt a whole bunch of people that I don’t think anyone intended to hurt,” Murray added. “The very people that the governor’s trying to protect are the ones that are being hurt.”

The representative said he stressed to the governor that the state needs long-term structural reform. The two specifically talked about education and health and human services reform issues.

“There’s a number of areas we need to work on to make things work more efficiently,” Murray said.

He said the governor was receptive to his ideas, and after the conversation Murray left a message for House Speaker Kurt Zellers, explaining how the conversation went.

No new talks between the governor and House and Senate leadership had been scheduled as of Thursday morning.

The state has been in a shutdown for six days as of Thursday morning.