By Mike Kaszuba
Two days before the Minnesota Vikings play their biggest game of the year, the state's top budget official and the Vikings' lead stadium spokesman are headlining a construction conference Friday in Minneapolis.
Though they are scheduled to speak nearly three hours apart, the appearance of Minnesota Management and Budget Commissioner Tom Hanson and Vikings stadium spokesman Lester Bagley is bound to set tongues wagging about the prospects for a new Vikings stadium. The team's appearance Sunday in the National Football Conference championship game has led many media outlets to speculate whether the team's chances of getting public subsidies for a new stadium may well be tied to winning the Super Bowl.
At the conference, Bagley is scheduled to touch on such topics as "working with legislators and the governor", "building a public/private partnership to get the deal done" and -- perhaps most interesting -- "owner expectations and timeline and what the deal looks like." With the Legislature set to convene Feb. 4, and legislators and the public split on the idea, the Vikings have not released details of a proposed funding plan for a new stadium.
Hanson, for his part, is scheduled to speak at the conference on federal, state and stimulus dollars that can be used for construction, including "what projects qualify."
