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March 01, 2012
Vikings stadium plan to be unveiled at 9 am today
The Minnesota Vikings stadium plan that was "tentatively" reached a week and a half ago is finally set to be officially announced today, in a press conference at 9 am Central. No details have leaked yet on the major questions about the plan — namely, how the public money would be raised, whether the city or state would get a cut of stadium revenues, whether the Vikings would offset the city's $6 million a year in operating costs, a projected $55 million shortfall between how much the city is pledging and how much it can raise, and how to get past the Minneapolis city council's insistence that the deal follow the city law requiring a public vote — but we should know more in a couple of hours. Maybe.
Honestly as long as there is at least a referendum I can live with the idiocy. If the people of Minneapolis want to be the latest community to hand out hundreds of millions to a private company in exchange for a few tens of millions in benefits then more power to them I guess.
But if they make an exception to the rules again it is just another sign of how our broken our current system of governance is.
I suppose I should at least be happy I don't live in Nigeria, but we have to be able to do better (for example what happened in Miami is inexcusable)...
Posted by Joshua Northey on March 1, 2012 10:15 AM
Still requires legislative and city council approval. So it's just a lot of grandstanding right now. I'm sure this is being done so they can put pressure on the city council to say "Why are you preventing progress?", but we'll see if they fall for it.
Posted by Geoff on March 1, 2012 07:38 PM