What difference does a building make? The 2017 Legislature's first days were nothing short of thrilling. But the oohs and aahs heard as legislators took their seats Tuesday had little to do with the 39 new faces in their ranks or the new GOP alignment of the two chambers.
Cass Gilbert, take a bow. The State Capitol, your Minnesota masterpiece, is gleaming again. And there are signs that it can still work a bit of its intended magic.
"If there is any example you need of what bipartisan cooperation can do, I think you would agree, it would be the Minnesota State Capitol," said KSTP-TV's Tom Hauser as he introduced the legislative leaders' panel at the annual session-starting Minnesota Chamber of Commerce dinner Wednesday. The assembled business moguls — who are not usually given to cheering big-government spending — applauded.
Senate DFL Minority Leader Tom Bakk added that the "tremendously refurbished" Capitol reflects a pride that Minnesotans still want to feel in their state government. It conveys a needed message: "Let's not let Minnesotans down."
To date, taxpayers have spent a cool $310 million to bring the 1905 seat of state government both back to its original glory and up to 21st-century codes, and the spending isn't done yet. Construction workers in hard hats still toil alongside lobbyists, legislators, journalists and gawkers in the corridors. Gov. Mark Dayton's bonding request includes nearly $19 million more for the Capitol, much of it for security upgrades. The work won't be done much before a gala reopening planned for Aug. 11-13, if then.
But the Capitol's hefty renewal price tag registered nary a negative tweet, even from the most tightfisted Tea Partiers. Maybe they see how important the iconic building is — maybe now more than ever.
Minnesota missed its Capitol in the year and a half that it was shuttered, save for the House chamber during the 2016 session. I'm not talking about sappy sentimentality here. I'm talking about lawmaking dysfunction.
The 2015-16 sessions were among the most unproductive in the state's modern era. My claim: It was not a coincidence that those were years when the Capitol was out of commission.
To be sure, the closed Capitol was far from the whole sorry story of the last two years. But it mattered that legislative leaders could not slip quickly downstairs to confer with the governor and his staff, or down the hall to talk to each other face to face. That end-of-session negotiations happened at the governor's residence, two miles removed from rank-and-file legislators and other providers of reality checks. That the voices of the people that the rotunda was designed to amplify weren't audible to legislators as they cast their votes.
In the final, crucial minutes of the 2016 session, it mattered that the session's ill-fated magnum opus, its bonding-transportation bill, had to be run through a tunnel under University Avenue rather than toted a few steps between the Senate and House chambers.
And last summer when Minnesotans ached to the point of outrage over the police shooting of Philando Castile, it mattered that they could not congregate on the Capitol steps, where they could make an impact without being obstructive to local streets and highways.
The Capitol's grandeur is about more than aesthetics, allowed Brian Pease, the Minnesota Historical Society's Capitol site manager. It's about reminding all comers — from the governor to the schoolkid on his first visit — that what state government does is important and worthy of respect.
"That was Cass Gilbert's original intention," Pease said. "In the rotunda, you have the visual beauty, but you also have a sense of aspiration, a sense that we are part of a bigger picture."
That sense has not been in sufficient supply at the Legislature in recent years. State politics has devolved into mean-spirited mudfights and state policy innovation has stalled. Legislators have struggled to do the least that's needed to keep government operational. With government divided between the two parties again, expectations for this session are not high.
Make that "were not high." It's hard to gaze up at the newly brilliant azure interior of the Capitol dome and not feel a larger sense of possibility.
Lori Sturdevant, an editorial writer and columnist, is at lsturdevant@startribune.com.
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