{"id":717,"date":"2012-05-02T19:06:38","date_gmt":"2012-05-03T00:06:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/?p=717"},"modified":"2012-05-02T19:09:01","modified_gmt":"2012-05-03T00:09:01","slug":"my-fantastic-stadium-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/2012\/05\/my-fantastic-stadium-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"My Fantastic Stadium Plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Watching the legislative session from the sidelines, instead of being in the trenches, is an interesting experience. It\u2019s certainly been fun to watch the fecklessness, especially with regards to the stadium issue, which reached a new low yesterday when the super-secret GOP plan<\/a> to pay for the stadium with general obligation, a.k.a. taxpayer bonds, was put forward. A plan that seemed to have the support of, well, a few people within the caucus I guess. Good enough for this legislature!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

One thing that this episode has shown beyond a shadow of a doubt (and which is deserving of its own blog post) is that the \u201cleaders\u201d of the majority in both the house and senate are anything but. Instead, in both bodies there are several Republicans who are jockeying for position and trying to wield influence. Never have I seen a speaker be completely mum on such a high-profile bill, with an \u201cAww, shucks, who knows what I think of this bill?\u201d attitude. Speaker Sviggum supported the Twins stadium bill, concealed carry, etc. Speaker Kelliher supported the gas tax increase. This session will be defined in part by any Vikings stadium legislation passed. You can\u2019t punt on this bill (no pun intended).<\/p>\n

Even with the weak leadership, it\u2019s hard to see how this proposal came forward. The one constant about a Vikings stadium is that the public does not want to see taxpayer money spent on it. A rather delicious quote from Tony Cornish<\/a> sums it up (and shows a bit of insanity in our public discourse): \u201cMy constituents are saying pass this thing, and do whatever it takes, short of having it come out of our pockets.\u201d \u201cWe want something but we don\u2019t want to pay for it\u201d does sum up the attitude of lots of people in this debate, and this proposal makes everybody pay for it. Not a winner.<\/p>\n

So as long as we are tossing out random stadium plans, how about mine? The biggest trouble with the current plan is that nobody believes that electronic pull-tab revenue will pay for the state\u2019s share. I don\u2019t buy it either. And while I don\u2019t like using gambling revenue at all, it seems that\u2019s where people have gravitated (and that\u2019s called compromise!). So let\u2019s keep that, but also require the Vikings to backstop revenue shortfalls and cost overruns.<\/p>\n

But wait! The Vikings will never agree to that! What if, though, that the Vikings can get a very low- or no-interest loan from the state to cover those cost overruns. The loan would come due after 30 years, or whenever the Vikings were sold to new owners. The sale clause could even include the greater value of a percentage of the capital gain, or the money borrowed from the state, whichever is greater. That way, the state would capture part of the increase in value from a stadium.<\/p>\n

And if that\u2019s not good enough, cap the Viking\u2019s backstop and say that cost overruns over that amount (make it high, so that it is very unlikely to come to this) would be paid by some other random sales tax. Memorabilia, luxury boxes, I don\u2019t care. Important thing is that it caps the Viking\u2019s share, even though that share would be a loan.<\/p>\n

Of course, one objection to this would be that by loaning the Vikings the money, state taxpayers would be on the hook. Perhaps. I\u2019m not sure how you could finagle it with other bonds and so forth. However, the chances that the Vikings would declare bankruptcy and be unable to pay the money back would be relatively low. It would be much more likely that they would be sold to new owners, which would repay that loan in one fell swoop.<\/p>\n

Is my idea crazy? Maybe. But compared to using bonds for a stadium, it\u2019s the Principia<\/a><\/em> of stadium plans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Watching the legislative session from the sidelines, instead of being in the trenches, is an interesting experience. It\u2019s certainly been fun to watch the fecklessness, especially with regards to the stadium issue, which reached a new low yesterday when the super-secret GOP plan to pay for the stadium with general obligation, a.k.a. taxpayer bonds, was… Continue reading My Fantastic Stadium Plan<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[212],"class_list":["post-717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-stadium","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=717"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":720,"href":"https:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717\/revisions\/720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}