According to the Star Tribune, negotiators are close to an agreement on a new Vikings stadium:

Minneapolis, the state and the Minnesota Vikings have reached a tentative agreement on a new, $975 million stadium on a site at or near the Metrodome and on how to divide the costs, multiple sources said Friday.

Under the preliminary deal, the city would contribute $150 million in construction costs to the downtown Minneapolis project. The state would add $398 million, while the Vikings would pay $427 million. The city also would pay approximately $180 million in operating costs over the next 30 years, multiple sources close to the negotiations said.

For the life of me, I can’t imagine why our elected officials and civic leaders in Minneapolis could possibly want this.

Residents of Minneapolis will have the privilege of paying $330 million over the next 30 years to finance the venture. That means we’ll be paying higher taxes to subsidize afternoons of entertainment for hundreds of thousands of non-residents each year, the vast majority of whom will not spend a single dime in the city.

That’s not all, though. Minneapolis residents will reap the benefits of having a wasteland of parking lots on the edge of downtown. As we drive past the vacant lots, we’ll be filled with warm feelings thinking about the fun tailgaters have in those lots for a total of 12 hours a year. As an added bonus, we’ll also get to experience horrible traffic on Vikings game days.

Minneapolis City Council members, please don’t waste our money on this. Let’s send the Vikings elsewhere.

You all know I’m against public money for a new Vikings stadium. But momentum continues to grow, so let’s forget about that for a moment and talk about the merits of the plan that’s coming together in the wake of Mark Dayton’s declaration that the Metrodome site is the only viable option.

I opposed public financing for a Twins stadium, too, but as long as we were building it I thought its Warehouse District location was fantastic. The Vikings stadium, on the other hand, doesn’t belong in the city.

Baseball (and to a lesser extent hockey and basketball) is a great amenity to have downtown. It brings 30 to 40 thousand people downtown, and it brings them often — at least 81 days a year. And while it brings a lot of folks downtown, it’s not so many that parking is a disaster. How much good it does for the local economy is debatable, but all things considered, baseball is good for the city.

Football, on the other hand, not so much. It brings 60 to 70 thousand people, most of whom want to tailgate. As a result, it requires vast parking lots. Those parking lots sit unused nearly all the time, as there are only 8 games a year. Most days, the Metrodome site is overwhelmed by empty parking lots. I can’t understand why Minneapolis would want to keep a stadium on that site.

Now that the Metrodome site is The Site, it’s too late. But Minneapolis shouldn’t have gotten into the stadium bidding in the first place. They should have been happy to see the Vikings go to Arden Hills.

The Vikings are demanding hundreds of millions of dollars from Minnesota taxpayers, but they’re not above being picky over how those hundreds of millions are distributed to them. In a letter on Monday, the Vikings reluctantly agreed to help the City of Minneapolis with a proposal for a stadium on the Metrodome site, but they’re not happy about it. In fact, they implied that the city would need to pay them to get a brand new stadium on the Metrodome site:

It is imperative that your analysis of Minneapolis stadium sites include all costs associated with each site.

…the Vikings estimate the team would generate $12.3 million less each year at TCF Bank Stadium than at the Metrodome.

My heart aches for the Vikings. They would lose a small amount of revenue while the taxpayers built them a brand spanking new stadium! Oh, the humanity!

I really don’t have an opinion on a preferred site for the Vikings — I’m not trying to take a position on the Metrodome site one way or the other. But am I wrong to say that the Vikings’ argument here takes a whole lot of chutzpah?

It’s no secret that casinos bring in a lot of money. That’s why plans for a new Vikings stadium rely on new revenue from expanding gambling. As MPR’s Tim Nelson explains, though, gambling would be a new and somewhat speculative revenue source, and bond underwriters are nervous about it:

…new gambling proceeds, be they from a racino, a downtown Minneapolis casino or new pull-tabs… are not a known or guaranteed revenue source because they’d be brand new….

That may require “credit enhancement” from the state to make the bonds affordable, which is to say, a pledge that taxpayers will co-sign the stadium mortgage, even if gambling pays the bills.

…So-called appropriation bonds are one solution. They’d have the Legislature paying the debt service with 30 years of appropriations, backfilled by the gambling proceeds flowing into state coffers.

In all honesty, it’s unlikely that there would ever be a problem. As I said, gambling brings in a lot of money. Nevertheless, it’s important not to forget that even if we use a scheme like new gambling revenue to finance the stadium, we the taxpayers are ultimately on the hook.

While begging for hundreds of millions of dollars in public subsidies, the Vikings will spend some of their own money on ads pushing the subsidies:

The Minnesota Vikings are rolling out an ad campaign that makes the case for a new stadium with footage of heroes like Bud Grant and the promise of jobs and economic development.

The team said Monday its campaign would run for several weeks and would include radio, print and online ads. Its first TV spots were scheduled to air on ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” matchup between the Vikings and Green Bay Packers.

…Spokesman Jeff Anderson would not say how much the team planned to spend on the campaign, but called it “a comprehensive ad buy.”

Maybe instead of a “comprehensive ad buy,” the Vikes could put that money toward increasing their share of the stadium costs. Every bit helps!

It’s almost certain now that any Vikings stadium will have to be funded by an expansion of gambling. Since Mark Dayton and the legislature ruled out a sales tax, gambling is really the only option left. That’s going to hurt tribes, who rely on gambling to bring in the vast majority of their revenues. So this is really adding insult to injury:

Governor Dayton says he’s open to asking the state’s tribal leaders for a contribution to pay for a new Vikings stadium.

Dayton’s spokeswoman told MPR News that Dayton’s deputy chief of staff met with lobbyists representing the Mille Lacs Band of the Ojibwe and Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community. Those tribes run two of the largest tribal casinos in the state. Dayton told MPR News that he hasn’t spoken directly with tribal leaders but he endorsed the idea of asking them to make a contribution to help pay for a stadium.

Just to let you know, we’re going to fund a new Vikings stadium with a state-sponsored competitor to your casinos. Hey, by the way, would you mind giving us some of your casino revenues, too? Zygi Wilf is really demanding a lot of money.

Speaker Kurt Zellers has taken a wishy-washy, cowardly stance on the Vikings stadium. Knowing that the stadium is unpopular, Zellers has sought to do everything he can to distance himself and his caucus from the political fallout its inevitable passage. Here’s my personal favorite evasion, from a press conference yesterday:

Zellers said he will not propose his own Vikes stadium bill. “I’m far more focused on a daily basis on how we get jobs back in Minnesota”

Now he’s concerned about how we get jobs back? During the legislative session, he was focused on issues like gay marriage. Even when crafting a plan to balance the budget, Zellers’s caucus proposed a plan that would have cost Minnesota 30,000 jobs. Now that the politically-tricky Vikings stadium is up for debate, he finally cares about jobs? How convenient.

This is fantastic news:

Today, Governor Dayton and the Leaders of the Republican and DFL Caucuses in the House and Senate reaffirm that there is not majority support in either body for an exemption from a voter referendum…

Governor Dayton said, “Last Friday’s meeting was very significant in eliminating one proposed source of financing for a People’s Stadium in either Ramsey County or Minneapolis, unless the Vikings are willing to endure the time delay and continuing uncertainty in obtaining voters’ approval. Given this reality, we are now actively assessing and discussing with the team other financing options.”

As bad an idea as it is to hand out hundreds of millions of dollars to a profitable company run by a billionaire, the mechanism of financing it through a single-county sales tax was just as bad. A stadium that is supposedly a benefit for all the citizens of Minnesota should not be financed by taxing the citizens of only one county, leaving everybody else to enjoy all of the benefits but share none of the responsibility.

The legislature deserves a lot of credit for killing this proposal. One of the reasons why this financing mechanism is so crummy is that it would be easy for legislators from counties other than Ramsey to support it. They could ensure that the financing gets done, without having to face a backlash for taxing their own constituents.

Of course, I don’t love exotic financing schemes like a Minneapolis casino, either. If we’re going to pay for this stadium, everyone should pay — we should implement a small statewide tax for the stadium. But at least proposals like expanded gambling, while relying on a small minority to finance the stadium instead of all Minnesotans, finance it on the backs of willing participants instead of unwilling. That’s a small step forward.

The ongoing saga of the new Vikings stadium illustrates much of what is wrong with our political system today. Voters disapprove of giving hundreds of millions of dollars to a billionaire to run his profitable business. Politicians know how the voters feel, and are trying to position themselves so they won’t take the brunt of the blame. Yet somehow, the possibility that we might simply say no never really occurs to anyone.

For the last decade in Minnesota, we’ve been telling citizens they must sacrifice. We’ve slashed funding for higher education, local government aid, health care, and more. We’ve cut state and local government to the bone, eliminating government programs while property taxes and user fees soar. And yet a new Vikings stadium seems inevitable. 

We’re going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a Vikings stadium when we owe our own schools over $2 billion. How is it possible that our priorities are so warped?

That’s just the way our system works these days. As a huge, monied interest, the Vikings and billionaire Zygi Wilf are top priorities. Making the rich richer comes before our true responsibilities. In fact, it’s even worse than that. Because of the expense of this corporate welfare, our students, our local governments, and our roads and bridges will have to be set aside.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone that’s been watching Minnesota politics. It’s just business as usual.