April 26, 2005
Return of the Twins stadium, cont'd
With billionaire Minnesota Twins owner Carl Pohlad making his official pitch yesterday for a $478 million stadium in downtown Minneapolis - $353 million of which would be paid for by county taxpayers - more details and hints of what's to come are leaking out in the Twin Cities media:
- The latest deal has two things going for it over past proposals: It wouldn't use any state money, only a county sales-tax surcharge; and by using sales tax money instead if stadium revenues or user fees, it would allow the use of tax-exempt bonds, lowering the project's financing costs. (Thank you very much, U.S. Congress of 1986.)
- Gov. Tim Pawlenty took up his accustomed position straddling the fence on the stadium issue, declaring the plan to raise the Hennepin County sales tax by 0.15% to be "reasonable," but not specifically taking a position on the plan. As for Pawlenty's previously stated "strong preference" for a voter referendum on any stadium deal - something the Twins desperately want to avoid, since public opinion is strongly against stadium subsidies - the governor remarked obliquely: "As to whether we have a referendum or not, I don't think it's going to be a deal-breaker. But I know it's going to be an issue in the Legislature."
- Pawlenty added that the public-private split being proposed is "within a national pattern of owners paying one-third" of the cost of stadiums. Actually, though the most recent stadium deal, for the Washington Nationals, has the team putting up only about a fifth of their stadium cost, other teams have been chipping in much more of late: The St. Louis Cardinals are paying about two-thirds of the cost of their $387 million stadium opening next year, and the New York Yankees have proposed a similar split for their own planned stadium. (Also, not to nitpick, but Pohlad's $125 million contribution would only be about one-quarter of the total stadium cost - and it's as yet unclear if he could recoup some of his expenses via such things as the sale of naming rights.)
- Asked, after commenting that "now we are committed to stay here," if the Twins would remain in Minnesota even without a new stadium, Pohlad replied: "That's a question I don't want to answer until I am presented with the question." Uh, Carl, I think that was the question.
- Next stop for the plan is the state legislature, which must sign off on the county tax hike. House speaker Steve Sviggum and senate majority leader Dean Johnson are both in favor of this latest stadium plan - in part because their constituents wouldn't have to pay for it, unless they chose to go shopping in Hennepin County - but many Hennepin County legislators appear to want a voter referendum on the issue. The Twins will likely attempt to push through a stadium bill before the legislative session ends in a month, but more likely will have to wait until 2006 to make their pitch.
One eager convert to the stadium cause looks to be St. Paul Pioneer Press reporter Aron Kahn, who described the Twins plan as one that "appears so simple, so deferential to the state treasury, that even longtime opponents of publicly financed stadiums had trouble getting their ire in gear" - only to turn around and later quote state senator Jane Ranum, a "longtime critic of stadium subsidies," as saying it's "totally incomprehensible" to propose public stadium funds during a state budget crisis. Sounds to me like she's got her ire on quite well.
Posted by: George Ebertin at April 27, 2005 01:37 AM
Posted by: Neil at April 27, 2005 01:45 PM
