If ballpark moves forward, will transit tax go with it?

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.

But university officials insisted Thursday that the memorabilia tax's chance of being adopted -- still very much in doubt -- was not tied to the stadium's overall prospects.

Transit tax obstacle

For the Twins, the biggest -- and possibly last -- hurdle involved separating the stadium from the metrowide sales tax.

Even though it is largely unrelated to the Twins stadium proposal, the one-half percent metrowide sales tax lingered Thursday as having the potential to scuttle the project.

If the conference committee were to pass one bill containing both the stadium and the metrowide sales tax, the legislation would have to be voted on as a package on the House floor, where there would likely be ample opposition to the tax. In addition, legislators would either have to accept or reject the proposal in its entirety without being able to offer amendments.

Under the proposal, neither the metrowide sales tax nor the Twins stadium plan calling for a 0.15 percent countywide sales tax increase in Hennepin County would be subject to a referendum.

Sen. Linda Higgins, DFL-Minneapolis, said jettisoning the transit plan could cost the Twins votes on the Senate floor, where the stadium could be decided by a handful of votes.

"We'll lose some votes from the senators for whom transit was really a bigger issue than the ballpark," she said.

"I'm leaning toward passage of it," she said of her own vote.

Hennepin County Commissioner Mike Opat, the lead county negotiator on the Twins stadium, agreed that the opposite scenario could also be true: that the metrowide sales tax could pose problems politically for the stadium in the House.

For Hennepin County, the metrowide sales tax could have an added impact: Not only could the county have a 0.15 percent sales tax increase for the stadium, but the metro-wide sales tax could add another one-half percent increase. "I don't know," Opat said of the implications. "I haven't thought about it."

Jerry Bell, the chief stadium negotiator for the Twins, was blunt. "It doesn't relate to the ballpark proposal," he said of the metrowide sales tax. "I'm not going there."

Bell said the plan was Kelley's idea, adding: "Ask him."

According to preliminary estimates, the 0.25 percent metrowide sales tax proposed earlier would still raise substantial money for transit. A committee official said the tax would raise $125 million annually during the early years and roughly $225 million a year after that.

But a sales tax, according to Kelley, would not be subject to a referendum and would only be put in place if all seven metro county boards voted for it. "If one county didn't approve it, under our proposal, then we wouldn't go forward and do it," he said.

Hennepin County Commissioner Peter McLaughlin, who voted for the Twins stadium plan, testified earlier this week before the conference committee for the metrowide sales tax. He said that he felt the Hennepin County Board would support the metrowide sales tax, but that he did not believe the idea would sink the stadium.

"It won't come down to that," McLaughlin said.

He added: "I think we're either going to get ballpark -- or ballpark and transit" separately.

Despite the outward signs of progress, each side remained wary.

Kelley's unwillingness to move ahead Thursday evening with a stadium without assurances on transit prompted Finstad to complain about a lack of trust and to wish for a time when "a handshake and a face-to-face conversation means something."

Kelley replied that he wanted something more. "You never know when there might be a fumble," he said.

mkaszuba@startribune.com • 612-673-4388 pdoyle@startribune.com • 651-222-1210