To the $1.1 billion in subsidies for the $1 billion Minnesota Vikings stadium (yes, the stadium is getting more in subsidies than it’s costing to build), we can now add a few million more: The city of Minneapolis is proposing to spend as much as $65 million to build a public park and parking lot adjacent to the stadium, plus $6.4 million for skyways (enclosed bridges between buildings, which Minnesotans use to get around in the winter without braving the frigid outdoors) connecting new 20-story office buildings that would be built next to the stadium.

The total public cost, according to documents released by Minneapolis mayoral candidate Cam Winton, would be:

Yes, that’s right: The city blacked out the totals, since it is refusing to disclose how much it would pay the owner of the adjacent land (which happens to be the Minneapolis Star-Tribune newspaper) for the five blocks of property that would become the park and the new development. According to Minnesota Public Radio, “City officials cited routine non-disclosure for prospective real estate deals in which public bodies might be involved.”

Meanwhile, a county traffic expert is warning that the plan to close down two city streets to make way for the park would create traffic nightmares. Which seems like the sort of thing that should have been worked out before approving billions of dollars in public money, but, well, there’s been a lot of that going around with this project.

Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton may have come up with the nifty idea of diverting cigarette tax revenues from the general budget to help pay for a Vikings stadium, but that doesn’t mean the state is giving up on its original plan of getting Minnesotans to gamble their money away to pay for the new NFL facility. So both state officials and local charity groups have announced a statewide publicity tour in June to convince people of the total awesome coolness of the new e-pulltabs that nobody wants to install or play at the moment.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune article on this includes the first photo I’ve seen of the actual e-pulltabs, so let’s take a look and OH GOD UNCLE SAM WANTS ME TO DEPOSIT MY IMMORTAL SOUL IN HIS TOP HAT!

“Our hope,” Allied Charities director Al Lund told the Star Tribune, “is we increase money for our [charity] missions by selling more games, which in turn provides more tax revenue for the state, and ultimately we hope enough revenue to pay for the stadium.” Come on, people of Knucklehead’s! The fate of Minnesota depends on your misplaced faith in the law of averages!

Heads up, everybody, Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton has a new plan to pay for a Vikings stadium, and it doesn’t involve gambling of any kind at all. Well, not the fun kind of gambling where you can win cash prizes, anyway, but just gambling with your health: The state would take the first year’s $24.5 million windfall from a new cigarette tax and pour it into the stadium fund. And if gambling revenues continued to fall short, the state could tap $20 million a year from a new provision to get Minnesota-based corporations to pay their full taxes on in-state sales.

All of which is well and good, except that both of these taxes were already in the state budget plan, and expected to put money into Minnesota’s general fund. Dayton is only proposing to use them for the Vikings stadium — instead of the far simpler method of just appropriating money straight from the general fund — because he promised that no general fund money would go to the stadium, and since these are new taxes that haven’t hit the general fund yet … well, let’s let Minnesota Revenue Commissioner Myron Frans explain it:

“These are new revenues coming in to the state for the first time. And the same thing is true of the new electronic gaming situations for gambling, that was a new revenue source and it all goes into the general fund. It’s just that the Legislature designates some of those funds to be used for certain purposes.”

Yes, right, money is fungible, so it doesn’t really matter which pocket you take it from, we get that. None of this changes the fact that the gambling plans were put into place specifically to fund the stadium, while the cigarette and sales-tax provisions would be there to fund schools and such if the state doesn’t give the proceeds to the Vikings.

Though really, maybe the best way to look at this is that Frans has a point: All tax revenues could go to the general fund if you wanted them to, so no matter how you raise the money, a stadium subsidy is a public cost. In fact, the same thing goes for those e-pulltabs and e-bingo and all the other e-things that Minnesota is trying to use for stadium funding: The state could be using those revenues for other services if it wanted, too, so it’s not really found money, either. So really the way to look at this is that no matter how they end up paying for it — gambling, smoking, bake sales — Minnesota taxpayers are out $1.1 billion on the Vikings deal, and it doesn’t really matter how they pay for it, one way or another they’ll pay. Um, that was your point, right, Myron?

And we have our first renderings of the proposed $1 billion stadium plan, and, uh, yikes. Vikings execs had promised “a bold, iconic, geometric structure with long sloping, angular facets that are primarily directed toward the downtown Minneapolis skyline,” and it’s certainly “sloping” and “angular,” not to mention really odd in many ways, from the ten-story-high entry doors to the thin strip of seating in one end zone that just hovers there against a glass wall, with the fans presumably to be teleported out in case of emergency or, you know, if they just have to use the bathroom.

The slanty roof is apparently to keep snow from building up on it and doing this, and having half the roof made of glass (actually ethylene tetrafluoroethylene, the polymer used for the outside of the Beijing Olympics’ Water Cube) will let in light and avoid needing a retractable roof, so that actually makes sense. As for the rest of it, it’s definitely not as crazy (or “innovative,” as the architecture critics like to call it) as the Atlanta Falcons stadium plans. Whether it makes for a better place to watch a football game I’d have a hard time telling you from the renderings.

Clearly wacky-looking geometric designs are the wave of the future, thanks in large part to computer-aided design and new construction materials. And if you’re spending a billion dollars on a football stadium, just about all of it via public subsidies, you presumably want something really striking to show that you’re getting something really new, not just the old kind of new you had before. Still, you have to wonder whether is just going look dated and goofy 20 years from now, like some other attempts at modernism — though come to think of it, that’ll probably be about when the Vikings owners are ready to demand an even newer stadium, so maybe it’s all according to plan…

Electronic bingo games to fund the Minnesota Vikings stadium launch this week, so gamble early and gamble often, because if this doesn’t work, either the Vikings or state taxpayers are really screwed! We’re talking to you, patrons of Knucklehead’s Bar and Grill!

Speaking of e-bingo, I’ve been puzzled by the repeated claims in newspaper coverage that the key to the success of e-bingo is that unlike regular bing, you can play against people from the entire state at once. And that helps exactly how? Let’s listen while the Minneapolis Star Tribune explains it:

To attract new players with the allure of a megajackpot, it needs a lot of players. For example, if 100 machines are being played at $1 each, a $40 prize would be split by the winners. If 1,000 machines were in play, the regular prize would hit $400. In each case, a certain percentage of the wins would be sent to progressive jackpots.

Woohoo, $400 jackpot instead of $40 jackpot! But, um, also 999 competitors instead of 99. So your average payout on a $1 bet is still going to be the same 40 cents as it was before — it just means you’re going to win ten times the money one-tenth as often.

E-bingo test player Rona Nesser tells the Star Trib that “more education would be helpful,” but given the way the odds work out, it sounds like Minnesota and the Vikings may be betting on keeping their prospective gamblers as in the dark about how the games work as possible.

Another day, another Minnesota state legislature panic attack about how the hell to pay off the Vikings‘ new stadium now that Plan A has crashed and burned. The latest proposal: state rep Ann Lenczewski has proposed applying Minnesota’s 6.875% sales tax to sports team merchandise and luxury suites at pro sporting events, and using the proceeds to help pay off the stadium bills.

This isn’t the worst idea — sales taxes in general may be regressive, but taxing sports-related sales in particular tends to come out of the pockets either of fans or of team owners (depending on whether you think people will be willing to spend more on an item if it’s tax-free). A memorabilia tax, in fact, was part of the penultimate stadium deal agreed to last year, though it was later removed. On the less bright side, non-Vikings sports teams will likely be outraged at their fans having to pay for a new NFL stadium, plus a memorabilia tax likely wouldn’t bring in all that much money anyway.

Meanwhile, Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority chair Michele Kelm-Helgen insists that the authority is going to break ground and start selling bonds by October, regardless of whether anyone knows how the bonds will be paid off. Though of course, everyone, including bondholders, knows how the bonds will be paid off if push comes to shove:

“If nothing changes and the shortfall continues and they [sell] the bonds, the money will come out of the general fund,” said Sen. Sean Nienow, R-Cambridge, who plans to introduce a bill this week to put stadium construction on hold until the issue is resolved. “And three-fourths of the general fund goes to education and health care.”

It’s going to be very interesting to see how initial debate on Nienow’s bill goes. And whether, if it starts to gain traction, Minnesota gets another visit from Roger Goodell.

The scramble to find a new revenue stream to pay for the Minnesota Vikings stadium has included just about every gambling-related activity known to humankind, but sadly has omitted the most-fun-to-type previously floated source of Vikings funds, racinos.

Until now!

Rep. Tom Hackbarth, R-Cedar, and John Derus, a board member of the Running Aces harness track in Columbus, are promoting the idea of installing slot machines and additional electronic games at the state’s two tracks — Running Aces and Canterbury Park in Shakopee.

The problem with racinos — man, do I love that word, probably because it reminds me of this — remains the same: It would horn in on income currently earned by Native American tribal casinos, which would almost certainly sue. As Gov. Mark Dayton said of the racino idea last year: “Passage of racino legislation to fund a new stadium is speculative. Even if it were to pass, several years of litigation in federal courts should be expected. Proceeds from racinos could not provide the assured revenue stream to back state-issued bonds until that litigation was resolved.”

Of course, the bonds are already about to be sold, so there’d be nothing stopping the state from issuing them and then hoping that racino money would come pouring in once the litigation is over. It couldn’t work out much worse than Minnesota’s last leap of faith.

This is what it’s come to in Minnesota: The state is now planning on spending money to encourage residents to gamble more in bars, in hopes that they’ll generate enough revenue to pay for the new Vikings stadium. Which they almost certainly won’t, so the state is considering selling more lottery tickets, too. Or maybe letting people bet on computer-generated horse races. And some people are extremely not happy, though the not happiest appears to be the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association, which is not happy because this would mean competition for its casino revenues, not not happy because the government is trying to raise money by getting drunk people to gamble their paychecks away.

And in case you’re wondering how much gambling it takes to build a football stadium, The Deets has an estimate for you: 94 million hours’ worth. As Deets proprietor (and MinnPost writer) Ed Kohler notes: “When Governor Dayton talks about the jobs the Vikings stadium creates, he shouldn’t focus solely on construction workers. He should also consider the 21 gamblers he created to subsidize each of those construction jobs.”