Doug Belden, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn. –
Harsh words are flying at the Capitol in advance of a 1 p.m. meeting between Gov. Mark Dayton and the Democratic and Republican legislative leaders on the Vikings stadium.
Dayton held his second news conference in two days to bash the new Republican plan, which GOP leaders unveiled in concept Tuesday afternoon and plan to outline in detail to Dayton on Wednesday.
It calls for the state to pay only for the infrastructure of the stadium and include those costs in the state’s bonding bill. The team would then build whatever stadium they desire.
Dayton called the Republican proposal a “harebrained scheme that would basically destroy the project as it’s conceived, and destroy it as it’s funded, and for all practical purposes destroy it for this legislative session. The Vikings oppose it, the city of Minneapolis opposes it, I oppose it, and here we are with no time left in the session and they don’t even have a firm proposal, and they want us to believe that this is serious?”
GOP House spokeswoman Jodi Boyne said Dayton is talking to the media instead of reacting to the details of the proposal, which is what GOP leaders will present at Wednesday’s meeting, she said.
‘I think it’s unfortunate that the governor has jumped the gun twice on news conferences on a plan that he has yet to see,” Boyne said.
Stadium proponent John Kriesel, R-Cottage Grove, said Dayton should sit down and evaluate the plan on its merits rather than holding a news conference and
throwing around terms like “harebrained.”
“I’ve never been more disappointed in the governor,” Kriesel said. “I expect better.”
Kriesel said he is not familiar with the details of the new GOP plan, but he said the fact is the stadium plan that he and Morrie Lanning, R-Moorhead, have been carrying in the House did not have the votes to pass.
“I thought we were good with votes, but that was a rough estimate,” Kriesel said. “We really would have needed all the maybes to be yeses, and that really doesn’t happen.”
Kriesel declined to give a specific vote count, but he said “we were a bit short.”
Given that that plan wouldn’t have survived a floor vote, the leaders should be commended for proposing something else rather than letting the stadium die, Kriesel said.
He said “an overwhelming majority of our caucus” supports the new approach.
Dayton did not seem in a receptive mood in advance of Wednesday’s meeting.
He called the GOP plan “laughable” as well as “extremely, extremely disappointing and profoundly disturbing” and said “to have somebody trying to pretend that they’re being serious and sincere in offering this kind of scheme, I just find offensive.”
He called the plan’s unveiling Tuesday “one of the most cynical attempts at political gamesmanship that I’ve ever seen in my 35 years around here.”
“When you say you’re negotiating, you negotiate. You’re not plotting something behind people’s back,” Dayton said. “I can’t deal with people who are untruthful. I can’t deal with people who don’t keep their word. I can’t deal with people who say one thing and do another.”
He said the stadium project is “on the way to the ground right now,” and the only way it can be saved is for GOP leaders to schedule a floor vote on the original plan. But he said he is not willing to give in on taxes and bonding – the other two end-of-session issues still in play – to get the floor votes. “I’m not going to compromise the fiscal stability of Minnesota,” he said. If the Republicans want to strike that bargain, “I deplore it.”
