Like many states, Minnesota has a part-time legislature. It means that, absent a special session, there’s a finite window within which to get legislation introduced and passed.
In 2010, the process of getting legislation regarding a new stadium for the Vikings got started too late. This year, steps already are being taken to ensure that doesn’t happen again.
Mike Kaszuba of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports that Senator Julie Rosen, a Republican, will introduce a bill in late January, not long after the annual session opens. She said it “might be very similar” to a plan that fizzled out in 2010, which would divert sales tax money currently being used to pay for the Minneapolis Convention Center.
Another obstacle comes from the lack of a local government that is clamoring to host the stadium, and thus to fork over some of the cash to build it.
Though the effort to get a stadium built would have happened without the events of recent days, Rosen acknowledged that, as a result of the collapse of the roof at the Metrodome, "[t]he discussion perhaps has been ramped up.”
Indeed it has. As we’ve said a time or two this week, folks in Minnesota have been visited by the Ghost of Christmas Future, which has shown the locals what life would be like with the home team playing a home game in a place other than their home of the last 50 years. Next Monday night’s game could provide a very different glimpse; by turning back the clock to the days of Metropolitan Stadium, maybe the new venue in Minnesota will have neither a an inflatable roof nor a retractable roof but no roof at all.