Stadium Blog Post

What comes after the Shutdown Session? A Stadium Session, of course.

April 23, 2006
Star Tribune
Lori Sturdevant

To explain this year's more positive outlook for the construction of one, two or even three proposed sports stadiums, allow a recitation of the pre-session words of House Speaker Steve Sviggum.

Long about mid-February, he was asked how his Republican majority intended to overcome the do-nothing reputation the Legislature so richly earned in 2004 and 2005.

Sviggum took umbrage at the question's premise. The 2005 Legislature may have taken an extra seven weeks and shut down part of state government for seven days in order to get its work done. But it authorized a big pot of money for education, initiated a system of performance pay for teachers, and passed "the best public safety bill in the country."

"We have not been a do-nothing Legislature," Sviggum said. Then came the telling addendum: "But some folks don't think we've done anything until we've done something on stadiums. And saying no is not getting it done."

A lot of reasons have been advanced for the palpably more positive reception this year's Legislature is giving proposals to build new homes for the football Gophers, Twins and Vikings. To wit:

The Twins deal involves no state money. It affects only those who pay Hennepin County sales tax, and they only pay 3 cents on a $20 purchase. If you represent Baudette, supporting the Twins bill is an easy vote.

The possibility that, without new facilities, the Twins might leave town is more plausible, now that they are legally unbound by a lease at the Metrodome.

After 11 years of lobbying by the Twins, four or five by the Vikings, and more than two decades of crying by the Gophers faithful, stadium opponents have grown weary -- while the deeper-pocketed professional pleaders just keep coming.

The Vikings are now in the genial hands of Zygi Wilf, whose breathtaking development proposal for the stadium and its environs gives their proposal credibility as a replacement for the Metrodome and an economic plus for the state. There, too, Anoka County commissioners are willing to pull the tax trigger for a portion of the costs -- thereby sparing legislators that indelicacy.

All of that is valid. But it might be, too, that extra propulsion behind stadium bills is a desire to wipe away the do-nothing rap left by the Legislature's skimpy output in 2004 and 2005.

To read more, go to http://www.startribune.com/314/story/385854.html