City Councilmembers Slam, Defend Vikings Stadium Plan

Are a set of Minneapolis City Council-approved taxes actually state resources? That question has Southwest Minneapolis' four councilmembers at odds with each other as they consider Mayor RT Rybak's plan for a partially publicly-funded Minnesota Vikings Stadium.

Councilmembers Betsy Hodges (Ward 13) and Elizabeth Glidden (Ward 8) hold down the opposition camp, while Councilmembers Meg Tuthill (Ward 10) and John Quincy (Ward 11) defend their positions as supporters.

At the core of the disagreement is Rybak's contention that a 1997 amendment to the city charter doesn't apply to his proposal. The amendment demands a city-wide referendum on spending "city resources over $10 million dollars for the financing of professional sports facilities."

In a call to Southwest Minneapolis Patch, Rybak said the referendum wasn't necessary, because the downtown sales tax dollars he wants to re-route aren't really controlled by the city. The taxes currently pay for the Minneapolis Convention Center.

"If we had control over those dollars, I would have used them to reduce property taxes and put cops on the street," he said. 

The legal argument may seem convoluted, but it boils down to this: because the legislature had to give the "ok," and because the legislature specificaly prescribed how the tax money would be used, it's not actually a "city resource." That idea doesn't sit well with Hodges and Glidden. 

"This proposal requires an end run around the voters of Minneapolis," Hodges and Glidden wrote in an op-ed published this week in the Star-Tribune. 

"At the end of the day, the Minneapolis voter is smart enough to know that the intent of what they did (in 1997) was to have a referendum on this kind of situation," Hodges told Patch in an interview.

No matter which side of the argument you agree with, the issue might be moot, said Barry Clegg, head of the city's Charter Commission. 

"The state legislature can do what it wants. you can not like it or shake your fist at it," he told Patch. "It's Law 101—if it's city versus state, state wins."