Citing what he described as the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board’s actions to hold up the Southwest light rail project, Gov. Mark Dayton on Tuesday recommended cutting the board’s budget by $3.77 million over the next biennium.

At a press conference to announce his overall budget, the governor said he wanted to cut funding “due to the board’s continuing efforts to obstruct progress on the Southwest Light Rail Transit project.” He recommends that the board not be eligible for funding through the Metropolitan Council parks fund and the state natural resources fund.

“I don’t think they should be paid by the taxpayers of Minnesota to cause this kind of mayhem,” he said.

The Park Board, which opposes co-locating freight rail, light rail and a bike/pedestrian trail over the Kenilworth Channel between Cedar Lake and Lake of the Isles, has questioned the legality of the Metropolitan Council’s process and asked the Federal Transit Administration to intervene with the $1.653 billion project.

Even so, Park Board President Liz Wielinski denied obstructing the light rail line and instead pointed fingers at the Metropolitan Council in a statement Tuesday.

“I am extremely disappointed that the governor wants to punish the Park Board and more than 15 million users of regional parks in Minneapolis because the Met Council did not do their job in their pursuit of taking park land,” Wielinski said in the statement.

Wielinski said the Met Council has not provided the information necessary for the board to evaluate whether the bridge or tunnel option will have the least impact on park land.

The board’s resistance comes despite the fact that the project has received approvals from all of the local governments along the 16-mile line between Minneapolis and Eden Prairie. If the project appears to be divisive, it jeopardizes the chance for funding at the federal level, Dayton said. The FTA is expected to cover 50 percent of the project’s cost.

In recent months, the board has approved $500,000 in engineering studies for a tunnel option to prove that there is an alternative to the Met Council’s plans for the bridge.

Dayton also argued that if the board has enough money to hire consultants, it didn’t need state funds. Wielinski said in the statement that state funds have not been used for the engineering studies.

If funding is cut, it would create “a tremendous and unjustifiable burden” on Minneapolis taxpayers to fully fund the parks system, she said.

The governor doesn’t have the final say on funding for the Park Board. State legislators will decide whether to uphold his recommendation when drafting their own budget proposals.