A rivalry older than any in pro sports broke out Tuesday as the Vikings stadium bill continued to move through the legislative process.
St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and members of the St. Paul delegation told legislators that if Minneapolis is going to get a Vikings stadium, then the capital city wants some stuff, too.
MinnPost/Steve DateMayor Chris ColemanAnd so it was that the Senate Jobs and Economic Development Committee passed an amendment that would pay off the $43 million the city owes on bonds for its RiverCentre convention center. The city also wanted more than $30 million paid off for the Xcel Energy Center as well as $20 million in funding for a new regional baseball park in downtown St. Paul.
“St. Paul needs to be part of the equation,” Coleman told members of the Senate committee.
Coleman said he’s all in favor of a Vikings’ stadium in Minneapolis, but …
“My concern is that the solution comes at the expense of St. Paul,” he said. “Our region is a region – it is the Twin Cities. There are two sides to the equation. You can’t have one side healthy while the other is struggling.”
Blunt pitch for St. Paul votes
Sen. Jim Metzen, DFL-South St. Paul, who presented the St. Paul amendments, was blunt about what he was doing.
“We’re doing good things for Minneapolis, but in St. Paul we need some help,” he said. “I think we can deliver a couple of St. Paul votes [for the stadium] if we can do this.”
The jobs committee moved the bill along with the special St. Paul provision, but it’s expected that the language will be eliminated by the Senate Finance Committee when it reviews the stadium bill Wednesday morning.
The reality, it appears, is that the stadium bill can’t have all sorts of goodies dangling from it if it is to fund the stadium.
St. Paul, it’s clear, is going to get something. But it’s going to be far less than it was seeking Tuesday. Look for the city to get the $20 million it has been seeking for a Lowertown baseball park as the most likely “sweetener.”
What was interesting about all of this is that old St. Paul-Minneapolis resentments, which seemingly have cooled in recent decades, still exist.
Coleman kept using the word “fairness.” Minneapolis, he said, is getting all the goodies.
Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak tried to stay out of the feud, saying, “I have no intentions of pitting city against city.”
But it’s a provision in the stadium bill that Minneapolis is demanding that has St. Paul fuming. That provision would allow Minneapolis to use money from the extension of the hotel/restaurant/bar sales tax to pay for renovation of Target Center, which competes directly with St. Paul’s Xcel Energy Center.
That provision, which had been stripped from an earlier Senate bill, was put back in the stadium bill by the Jobs committee. Without it, Sen. Julie Rosen and Rep. Morrie Lanning, the chief authors of the stadium bill, said Minneapolis will not be willing to be a “local partner” in the $1 billion stadium package. And that would kill the deal.
Coleman and members of the St. Paul delegation say the provision gives Target Center and Minneapolis an unfair advantage over St. Paul. Real and imagined slights from the past were brought up by the St. Paul crew about how the Legislature has done more for Minneapolis than for St. Paul.
Minneapolis legislator pushes back
Sen. Ken Kelash, DFL-Minneapolis, objected to St. Paul’s complaints.
Kelash suggested that the Minneapolis Convention Center taxes be expanded to St. Paul and then St. Paul could pay for all the things it says it deserves.
As for “fairness” surrounding the Target Center and Xcel Center, Kelash said, “Target Center would be just fine if Xcel wouldn’t have been built.”
On and on it went. They got more. No, they got more.
Finally, Sen. Carla Nelson, R-Rochester, couldn’t stand it anymore.
If legislators keep adding little presents to the bill, the whole thing would be brought down.
“This is the very sort of thing Minnesotans don’t like,” she said.
These last-minute efforts to get a goodies from the stadium bill is further proof how the bill continues to gain momentum, said Sen. Geoff Michel, chairman of the jobs committee.
“The boat is moving — people are trying to jump aboard,” Michel said.
Legislators still are shaking their heads over the sudden shift in attitudes about the stadium bill.
Sen. Terri Bonoff, a member of the Senate Finance Committee that is to hear — and pass — the bill in the morning, said the game-changer was the “no’’ vote by the House Government Operations committee eight days ago. That was followed by a visit to Minnesota from the NFL commissioner.
Suddenly, the public mood seemed to change, she said. Legislators were hearing from all sorts of people concerned that the Vikings would leave. “Get it done!” became the message legislators were hearing.
Legislative games — and movement
To get it done, all sorts of legislative games are being played.
For example, there’s a mighty ongoing effort to keep the bill out of the Senate Taxes Committee.
Michel said today that the tax committee chairwoman, Sen. Julianne Ortman, R-Chanhassen, doesn’t want the bill in her committee.
So, for the moment at least, legislators have stripped some tax language from the bill. For instance, originally, materials used for stadium construction were going to be exempted from state sales taxes.
That exemption currently is not in the bill.
Putting in goodies for St. Paul, which are believed to be doomed, is another bit of legislative manipulating going on to keep the bill moving to a floor vote.
It’s also believed that House and Senate stadium bills will be essentially the same by the time they hit the floors of the respective chambers. That’s to avoid the danger of what could happen in a conference committee.