Vikings Message Board.Com

CalVike wrote:Positive steps. Getting closer. House hearing Mon night.

http://m.startribune.com/news/?id=145595145&c=y

@andersonj: Stadium bill passes and moves to House Rules Committee.

dead_poet wrote:Downtown East Stadium Conceptual images

See the rest here: http://blog.vikings.com/

CalVike wrote: Not certain, but end of April is a target I have heard.

Bill Carson wrote: Starting this weekend they have a 10-day Easter break.

PurpleMustReign wrote:Because they've been working so hard?

Vikings stadium bill moves forward thru House Rules committee, on its way to Gov Ops. Committee - Charitable gambling advances as well.

The nearly $1 billion Minnesota Vikings stadium project also needs a Herculean lift to get into the win column.

The stadium proposal has passed out of just one House committee and is stuck in its first Senate panel, unable to get the votes to move along.

Last week, the powerful House Rules Committee convened early in the morning to grant the proposal a special waiver for missing a key deadline.

Vikings Vice President Lester Bagley, who has led the team's lobbying effort, sat silently in the back of the hearing room late last week holding a giant cup of Starbucks coffee. "I think there are a lot of good discussions and energy that is going to move our issue forward," Bagley said earlier. "There's good momentum for a Vikings stadium solution this session."

But unease over the project is tearing at Republicans' desire for lockstep unity.

Sen. Mike Parry, R-Waseca, drew criticism from Vikings fans for withdrawing a proposal to allow electronic pulltabs, with the extra revenue going to charities and possibly for the state's nearly $400 million share of a new football stadium.

Rep. John Kriesel, the GOP sponsor of the same bill in the House, told Parry he thought the maneuver this late in the session seriously jeopardized the project. Kriesel became furious with Parry for sending an e-mail to a Vikings fan saying that the two legislators met to "clear up the confusion about the bill."

The Cottage Grove Republican said Parry's e-mail "was incredible, misleading and inaccurate," and still believes the senator's move has made the project more difficult.

State Rep. Ann Lenczewski, DFL-Bloomington, said legislators from either party lack the stomach for a highly controversial stadium vote.

"It's pretty obvious it is a next-year agenda item. It is an election year, for God sake," she said. "If [Speaker] Kurt Zellers wanted to pass the stadium bill, he would have done it by now. He knows it."

Zellers, a five-term legislator, noted that the final weeks and days of a session can be wild and unpredictable, with initiatives that seemed dead suddenly re-emerging in the swirl of a final deal.

"Until the session is over," he said, "everything is always in play."

dead_poet wrote:Minnesota legislators inching closer to stalemate
With all 201 legislative seats up for election in November, the testy climate at the Capitol is setting up another possible stalemate, in which legislators might opt to take their grievances to the campaign trail.
http://www.startribune.com/politics/sta ... 46375.html

Stadium bill to be heard Monday, April 16, in House Government Operations Committee.

HardcoreVikesFan wrote: The day I see pigs flying outside my window is the day the Vikings Stadium will be passed.

"50-50, which is perhaps the best odds we've ever had," is how Lester Bagley, Vikings vice president for public affairs and stadium development, described the chances of a stadium bill passing this year.

The Legislature returns from a 10-day break Monday, April 16, with the goal of adjourning by month's end.