Associated Press
ST. PAUL, Minn. — The Minnesota Senate’s Rules Committee kept the Vikings stadium subsidy moving Monday, while a House committee worked to revive the stadium push in that chamber.
The Rules Committee voted to bypass normal Senate rules, keeping the stadium bill alive past standard legislative deadlines. The Senate’s stadium bill is scheduled for another committee vote on Tuesday. A spokesman for the Senate’s majority Republicans said he expected a debate and full Senate vote as early as Thursday or Friday.
Meanwhile, the House Ways and Means Committee convened Monday night for a hearing on a bill to give tax relief to Minnesota charities that profit from games of chance in bars and restaurants. The proposal would authorize them to offer new electronic versions of some of their games.
The measure has been closely linked to the stadium push, since some of the new tax revenue from the gambling expansion is earmarked to pay the state’s share of the $975 million proposal to replace the Metrodome, which Vikings and NFL say is no longer sufficiently profitable.
Stadium supporters moved to attach the larger stadium proposal to the charities bill, hoping to give the stadium effort a boost after a separate House committee voted to reject it last week. Their hope was to angle the stadium bill toward a House floor vote, arguing that, despite significant pockets of opposition in House and Senate committees, the proposal nonetheless deserves an up or down vote in both chambers.
“People deserve to know where their legislator and senator stands on it,” said Rep. John Kriesel, R-Cottage Grove, the sponsor of the charitable gambling expansion. Kriesel supported attaching the stadium bill to his proposal.
The Senate and House stadium bills recently have gained momentum after NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell visited the Capitol last Friday to urge lawmakers to approve a new, downtown Minneapolis home for the Vikings or risk losing the team to another city.
Under the bill, the Vikings would pay $427 million of the construction costs for the new stadium, which would be built on the Metrodome site. City and state taxpayers would be on the hook for the other $548 million, or 56 percent of the total cost.