Strib reports:
The draft bill, details of which leaked out Thursday night, leaves the site for a stadium open to bid solicitations. It lists various funding sources for the state's share, including a sports memorabilia tax, sale of stadium naming rights, a surcharge on the income of pro-football players and a sales tax on luxury boxes.
Local governments are invited to propose stadium sites along with plans on how to cover their share of the costs. The bill would allow them to levy a half-cent sales tax on entertainment, lodging, food, beverages and tickets.
Jurisdictions that don't land the stadium could levy taxes to support their own facilities "of regional or state significance," as long as 40 percent goes to the Vikings stadium.
The Vikings would be required to pay a dollar for every $2 of public money spent on the stadium, and would have to cover cost overruns.
The stadium bill, sponsored by Sen. Julie Rosen, R-Fairmont, and Rep. Morrie Lanning, R-Moorhead, is expected to be introduced next week. Both have been under pressure to delay the bill until the state's projected $5 billion deficit is addressed.
Rosen said Friday the time had come.
"The reality is that people need to know that this can't wait until next year," she said. "Everyone knows this is a job creator. The time to discuss the stadium is now that we're close to finishing the budget."
That is an excerpt, so read the entire item for a fuller understanding.
What, "reaiity" is that individual talking about? Has Zygi been serving her purple Koolaid?
This cannot wait until next year, why? Because it will be the Los Angeles Vikings otherwise? The Sendai Vikings where they can tear down that reactor-power station complex and install a glow-in-the-dark stadium? The Shanghai Vikings?
LA had a team, and it moved to St. Louis. St. Louis! That tells you something. Al Davis moved there briefly, and moved back to Oakland. This speaks.
And that sentence, "Rosen said Friday the time had come." Friday was All Fool's Day, so there's something to that statement.
My suggestion is the City of Becker should make a proposal. Extend the Northstar line to Becker, Zygi would negotiate and pay that, and then City of Becker would use its credit, and volunteer contributions from the community, to build a $1.5 billion stadium; terms to be that Vikings would pay half a billion a year to Becker, over five years to service and retire debt and turn a modest profit; whereupon Becker would deed the stadium to Zygi for one dollar.
That does not seem at all out of line to me, indeed, it has advantages over the reported proposal that public money would outspend Zygi, two to one, and for lack of any good reason for that none was given, except, "Everyone knows this is a job creator."
That "job creator" is a new GOP buzzword creation. It means, roughly, "the wealthy."
As in Dayton reasonably says, "Tax the rich," and the owned and paid for Republicans say, "You want to tax the job creators, that means they will all move to Iowa and North Dakota."
The GOP seems to be intent on disadvantaging teachers these days. They had best be careful. Doing that means all the teachers will move to Iowa and North Dakota.
And don't call them teachers anymore. They are "student knowledge creators."
We surely do not want our "student knowledge creators" to all leave us, so how can we give them a share of the Viking income, to induce them to stay?
That is what the legislature should be concentrating on, leaving stem-cell science alone, and limiting their duly displayed public-show Ludditism to play to the like-minded, in their home districts. It has no place on the St. Paul hilltop.
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The opening image is from an All Fool's Day report by Strib, here. Another suggestion to the legislature is if they adopt the Roman bread-and-circus approach for the peasantry, they had best not neglect the bread part. Rome had a share of peasant rebellions, and they can be ugly. Tea bags aside, Bachmann aside, there is more possible ugliness than that.