Stadium thread

[CalVike]

IT PASSED !!!

[CalVike]

@SaveTheVikesOrg: After 12 hours of debate the Minnesota Senate passes the #Vikings stadium bill! Thanks to fans for all your efforts! #MNLeg #ConfCommNext!

[Demi]

Woohooo!

[PotGoblin]

omg hell has frozen over

now for the House and Senate to iron out the differences. hopefully they don't drag that out as long as possible

[CalVike]

@RachelSB: Final #mnleg #vikings vote: 38-28

[CalVike]

@johnkriesel: The #Vikings stadium bill passes the Senate 38-28. Next stop: conference committee then back to each floor for a final vote. #mnleg #skol

[CalVike]

@Stowydad: Vikings stadium conf. committee: Hoppe, Lanning, Morrow for House and Rosen, Reinert and Ingebrightsen #mnleg

[The Breeze]

Sounds like they may have worked it out.

[VikingLord]

While this is good news, the real test is the vote on the Frankenstein that will come out of the conference committee. Assuming the Senate puts pro-stadium legislators on that committee, that process should be fairly quick and get the best deal possible. If the Senate sends one or more anti-stadium types to that group, things will get a lot more interesting.

The really crappy part of this is, it's very easy for legislators to now vote against the bill since the conf committee bill will invariably strip out a lot of things. All of those amendments in both houses provided a lot of potential political cover for a high-profile debate. It's not beyond reason to think that some legislators will turn their backs on the stadium now claiming that some provision that they needed was stripped out of the bill and they can no longer support it. I hope there aren't many of those in the legislature, but these bills didn't make it out of their respective chambers with enough of a margin for me to feel confident about that final vote. In fact, this has the feel of that 2004 (?) bill to build the Twins a new stadium. That also made it to conf, but it failed on the final vote IIRC for many of the same reasons this might.

It'll come down to whether many of these reps want to lead or pander.

[CalVike]

http://www.minnpost.com/politics-policy ... etter-most

Interesting read on how MN has negotiated one heck of a deal.

[CalVike]

At this point, a key consideration is which amendments the Vikings are willing to openly accept. They would be wise to be strategic. Give up the soccer and agree to put in $25M more in exchange to regain naming rights, etc. Likely this will pass easily unless the Vikings take a hard line. Even then, it may pass. IMHO, it hasn't helped that the Wilf's were largely invisible in the last 3 weeks. Legislative egos demand the big cheese not the flunky (Bagley).

[CalVike]

@brentkoivisto: RT @Stowydad: #Vikings bill rollcall. I'll post link when our version clears wire 22 D-16R were yes. 8D- 20R were no #mnleg.

Me: It's interesting that the GOP put up 33 in the House and 16 in the Senate, in both cases one short of the half support to make it truly bipartisan. Dems as the minority carried it through in both chambers.

[mansquatch]

As is typically the case, the MN Republican party is politically stupid. This coming from someone who is a staunch conservative.

Thanks to the Democrats for getting the right thing for the fans done.

[Sutsgold]

Has anyone heard if the new stadium seating will require a Personal Seat Liscence? That would suck fo the common fan!

[CalVike]

http://www.minnpost.com/politics-policy ... dium-begin

Good article on where it sits today.