Gov. Mark Dayton on Wednesday said he is willing to hold up a special session of the Legislature until he gets a repeal of an obscure provision governing the Minnesota state auditor.

Last month, the Legislature approved a Republican-backed measure allowing counties to hire private accountants to audit their books, rather than using the state auditor, starting in 2016. Dayton objected but signed the measure into law because it was in a bill that funded many state government functions.

“I just am strongly opposed to what they are attempting to do here,” Dayton, a former state auditor, said Wednesday. “It just basically wipes out a principal function of a constitutional office.”

Republican House Speaker Kurt Daudt said earlier this week that he could not muster enough votes in the House to approve the change the governor wants in the expected special session to complete the state’s budget.

If the governor refuses to call a special session, Dayton puts at risk a burgeoning $17 billion agreement to fund the departments of Education, Natural Resources, Agriculture and Commerce, the Pollution Control Agency and others. Without a special session before July 1, nearly 10,000 state employees would be laid off, state contracts halted, state parks closed and public schools unfunded.

Since the regular session ended May 18, Daudt and the Dayton administration have been negotiating over the budget measures. The Republican House and the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Senate passed budget bills to completely fund state government, but Dayton vetoed three of those bills last month.

In recent days, those closed-door talks had nearly produced agreement.

“I’m not aware that there’s anything there that cannot be solved, hopefully, today,” Dayton said Wednesday. He said more than 90 percent of the issues on the budget had been resolved.

The House and the governor agreed to spend $525 million more on schools in the next two years than they have been receiving and altered policy language and funding in other areas.

But Dayton said protecting the state auditor’s function is important enough to hold up that agreement.

Among its tasks, the office is required to examine finances of 59 of the state’s 87 counties, with others allowed to hire private firms. The new law would let all counties choose between the auditor and private companies.

“It’s going to destroy the office. It’s a constitutional office and it’s being done by people who don’t understand what the office responsibilities are,” the governor said. “None of those legislators know anything about this office. I served for four years as a state auditor.”

He later corrected himself that lawmakers may know something about the office.

“But they don’t know very much. If they did, I can’t imagine they would support this,” he said.

The auditor’s office says it does about 150 financial and compliance audits every year, reviews 400 single audits, and oversees local government financial information and public pension plans.

“I’m very familiar with what the state auditor does,” said Rep. Sarah Anderson, chair of the House state government committee, which promoted the change. “There is nothing in this legislation that strips away that responsibility or authority.”

Daudt, a Republican from Crown who formerly served as an Isanti County commissioner, said this week that counties have long wanted the ability to hire private auditors. He also said that Republicans conceded on several other proposals in order to win the change in the auditor’s function.

Anderson, R-Plymouth, confirmed that.

“There is a lot that we gave up as part of the compromising process,” she said. She said it would be wrong to hold up a special session over the audit provision.

Revisiting the provision in what is supposed to be a one-day special session would be “a really tough one,” Daudt said.

“I’m not sure we can get the votes right now to repeal that,” he said Monday.

State Auditor Rebecca Otto, a DFLer who won re-election to a third term last year, has been personally lobbying lawmakers and drumming up public opposition against the private audits for weeks.

“Taxpayers were run over in the middle of the night by a couple people that went into a back room and there was no transparency,” Otto said Wednesday. “The people were robbed.”

Minnesota’s constitution specifically delineates the responsibilities of the state auditor. Otto demurred, a little, when asked whether she would go to court to pursue her objection to the legislative action.

“I will do whatever it takes. Absolutely, I will fight this until the very end to make sure that this function is preserved,” she said.

In the predawn hours as the state government measure was being crafted in May, Otto testified against the move and took to social media to protest.

“I was outraged at what they were doing. … I had to make sure that the public understood what was going on,” said Otto, a former state House member. “It is my job to be the steward of this function as the elected official.”

This report includes information from Forum News Service. Follow Rachel E. Stassen-Berger at twitter.com/rachelsb.