The coveted next spoke of a Twin Cities light-rail system was brought back from the brink of veto oblivion in the deal that ended the legislative session Sunday, while a new state park and a nursing facility at the Minneapolis Veterans Home also won 11th-hour funding.
The proposed light-rail line between the downtowns of Minneapolis and St. Paul will be funded with $70 million; $20 million will be spent on a new state park on Lake Vermilion in northeast Minnesota, and $35 million will go to the veterans home to pay for the new nursing facility.
In the prolonged horse-trading that produced the state's new borrowing bill, which easily cleared the Senate and House Sunday, both sides got the major projects they had wanted since the start of the legislative session. The light-rail line was a special priority of the DFL-controlled Legislature. The park and nursing facility were pet projects of Gov. Tim Pawlenty.
Complaining that the overall price tag of an earlier bonding bill was too steep, Pawlenty had line-item vetoed the Central Corridor's $70 million, even though he had originally included the project in his own bonding proposal. The state dollars are needed to leverage $450 million in federal funds and begin the line's construction in 2010.
Another potential obstacle -- the U of M's objection to running it through campus along Washington Avenue -- hasn't yet been resolved, said House Capital Investment Chairwoman Alice Hausman, DFL-St. Paul.
"We're silent on that," she said. "I really think everybody is of a mental frame that we're all together on this and going to make this work."
University officials also have agreed to remain silent on the issue for now. Results of a cost-effectiveness analysis of the university's preferred route, through Dinkytown, are expected this week.
Park land purchase
