politics

With a proposed new stadium for the Minnesota Twins sitting at the finish line, Senate DFLers and House Republicans remained deadlocked Thursday over whether to tie its prospects to providing more money for transit.

Senate DFLers, led by Steve Kelley, DFL-Hopkins, said they were willing to unhitch a transit initiative from the stadium in return for having it considered elsewhere at the State Capitol during the session's waning days. House Republicans remained adamant that the $522 million Twins stadium not be linked to a metrowide sales tax for mass transit.

"We have not decided to go down the road -- or the train tracks -- of the transit proposal," Rep. Brad Finstad, R-Comfrey, chief House author of the Twins plan, announced as an evening negotiating session began.

But Kelley was equally insistent that until the metrowide sales tax was seriously considered by Republicans beginning this morning, DFLers were not willing to set the Twins stadium sailing toward approval. Hardening his position, Kelley again proposed that the metrowide sales tax be one-half percent -- a reversal from the day before, when he had agreed to lower it to 0.25 percent. "I think getting something on transit would help a lot," Kelley said.

As the evening wound down, Finstad said the two sides had taken a step back. "We got further away," he said.

Throughout the day, Twins stadium supporters appeared to be concerned that the stadium -- the subject of a decade-long struggle -- still might become ensnared in a series of larger, end-of-the-session issues that continued to separate DFLers from Republicans and Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

Backers of the Minnesota Vikings and University of Minnesota stadium projects, meanwhile, spent the day either waiting or wondering how it all fell apart.

With the proposal for the Vikings effectively killed late the night before in a House-Senate conference committee, the team spent Thursday looking ahead to next year.

Rep. Andy Westerberg, R-Blaine, the chief House author for the Vikings stadium, said he might attempt to revive the plan by pushing for a House floor vote.

But even the Vikings' top spokesman said the team's stadium quest was over.

"He's going down swinging, and that's OK," Lester Bagley, vice president for public affairs and stadium development, said of Westerberg. "It's frustrating to get as close as we got."

Bagley said the team, over the past three weeks, was ultimately unable to get the governor and the Republican-controlled House "to lean into" the team's stadium proposal and give it the political traction it ultimately lacked.

Gopher talks

A separate House-Senate conference committee, in the meantime, was scheduled to meet again this morning to try to reach an agreement on a $248 million stadium for the University of Minnesota football team.

Though several large issues remained, Richard Pfutzenreuter, the university's chief financial officer, sat outside the House chambers Thursday and continued to express optimism.

"It's really now down to naming [rights] and the student fee level," he said.

House and Senate DFLers remain split over a stadium naming-rights agreement with TCF Financial Corp., a company chaired by William Cooper, a former state Republican Party chairman. Senate DFLers, led by Sen. Larry Pogemiller, DFL-Minneapolis, also have objected to a House plan that would increase student fees $50 a year to help pay for the stadium.

Pogemiller and other DFLers had proposed a 13 percent sports memorabilia tax as a way of paying for the stadium without using the state's general revenues.