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March 22, 2012

Vikings bill sponsor: No action without Minneapolis council's okay

The Minnesota Vikings stadium bill's future just looks dimmer and dimmer: Now the legislation's chief house sponsor, Morrie Lanning, says it won't move forward unless a majority of the city council signs a letter of support. Which, unless Gov. Mark Dayton's powers of personal persuasion are awesome, looks pretty unlikely right now, for values of "right now" equal to "ever."

Let's recap quickly all the roadblocks in the way of the Vikings getting their $600 million or so in public boodle:

  • The Minneapolis city council won't okay the plan without a referendum, which would almost certainly be defeated.
  • Charitable gambling operators are afraid (reasonably so) that legalizing electronic pulltabs to fund a stadium would cut into their revenues. The bill is currently being rewritten to try to assuage their fears, but no word on how that will work, or where additional revenue would come from if needed.
  • The speaker of the state house would have to grant special dispensation for the bill to move ahead at this late date, and he's made no commitment to do so.
  • Did I mention that the legislative session ends on April 30?

Given all the reasons to think that the Vikings plan is a horrible, horrible deal for Minnesotans, all of this is pretty reasonable, actually — it's no crisis when elected officials refuse to push for legislation that is hated by pretty much all their constituents except the ones that own sports franchises. Not a crisis, that is, unless you're a newspaper editorial writer.

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