The Minneapolis city council, as expected, voted 7-6 yesterday to approve the $1 billion Minnesota Vikings stadium deal, which could involve more than $1.1 billion in taxpayer subsidies. (It's part of the special nature of stadiums that public subsidies can exceed the actual cost of building the thing — though come to think of it, not all that special, as I recall at least one factory subsidy somewhere in the South that collected more in tax breaks than it cost to build.) Now the stadium just needs to be approved by a vote of the city council today.
Yes, the same city council. See, yesterday's city council vote was by the Committee of the Whole, which includes all 13 members of the council, which referred it to the full council today, which will cast the same vote ... you don't really care about all this, do you? Suffice to say that the council has signed off on the stadium, and now it will get built, and it will cost the Vikings a lot but the public even more (and the Vikings will get to sell naming rights and such to make their money back while the public won't), and then it will open and every will rave about how beautiful it is. And then 20 years later, we can start talking about tearing it down and building a new one again.
from Field of Schemes http://www.fieldofschemes.com/news/archives/2012/05/4961_vikings_stadium_32.html
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