STATE OF CORRUPTION: How the Vikings Stadium Deal Went Down And Took Honest&Open Government With It.
“(We) want to respect the business privacy of the Vikings.”
— Minnesota State Senate Majority Leader Dave Senjem.
The OTHER Occupy Minnesota and the siege of The People's Capitol
Room 400 North in the State Office Building was a busy place Wednesday evening. People came and went, lots of them, and all of them were power players in the Vikings Stadium drama. Ostensibly, two or three members of the Legislative Conference Committee were meeting — but never more than that number. The six-member conference committee, appointed Tuesday night by House and Senate leaders to reconcile differences in the two versions of the $1 billion stadium bill that had been passed by both bodies, only needed four legislators for a quorum, and a quorum would trigger the state’s Open Meeting law, requiring that the doors to the deliberations be opened to the press and public. If you thought that was going to happen, you are still clapping for Tinkerbell.
Room 400 has a sign on the door saying it can hold up to 80 persons. It is a big room for a six-member committee that couldn’t let more than three of its members inside at any one time. But it needed to be large. Here is a partial list of the VIPs who came and went: Minneapolis Mayor Raymond Rybak; Gov. Dayton’s stadium point man Ted Mondale; Dayton’s chief of staff, Tina Smith; at least two of his commissioners in charge of budgets and revenues; lobbyists for the Vikings, including Vikings VP and CFO Steve Poppen; House GOP Majority Leader Kurt (I’m against it!) Zellers; House DFL Minority Leader Paul (I’m a liberal!) Thissen; several other senators and representatives not on the committee; staffers, secretaries and hangers-on galore. But not one member of the unwashed public or the Capitol press corps. And get this: There was another, adjacent meeting room, with a connecting door, so that if a quorum-inducing 4th member of the conference committee should inadvertently (or deliberately) walk in, one of the others could quickly slip through the door into the adjoining room – thus preserving the sanctity of the Open Meeting Laws! (Although, truly, there was no way for anyone to know how many of the committee members were present at any time as no outsider — meaning taxpayer or reporter — could see what was happening or be certain who was present.)
Notes left in Room 400 after secret stadium negotiations: Nothing about fishing.
The Room 400 meeting, known as a “pre-conferencing” meeting — was not publicly scheduled or posted. But it is where the deal went down. The farcical and official conference committee meeting was scheduled in Room 15 of the Capitol for 9 p.m. and did not begin until 11. There you are, Mr and Mrs Taxpayer. Don’t blame us! You missed the public meeting!!!
The “pre-conferencing” — an obscenity intended to provide ass-cover — went on for several hours. All the while, the wise-guys going in and out cracked jokes about how it wasn’t a meeting; they were just talking about the fishing opener. Someone should have barged in and, if necessary, got themselves arrested to defend the public interest. But that didn’t happen: The state’s non-profit pubic interest groups, the “progressive” organizations still dizzy with glee at being FOD’s (friends of Dayton), the churches, the advocacy groups for the poor, the civil liberties and good-government groups — all have stayed silent during a lengthy, furtive, closed-door giveaway of hundreds of millions in scarce public dollars to the NFL and Zygi Stardust. None of them even made a peep when Dayton, who campaigned on a promise to keep his calendar available to the public, reneged on that promise – at exactly the time he started dancing with Zygi, (sometimes even neglecting other duties).
You can call it the Silence of the Sheep.
After the shenanigans in Room 400 finally were done, I went into the room, strewn with sandwich wrappers, empty coffee cups and abandoned notes on what had been worked out in the crowded meeting: I found no notes about how many walleyes you can have in possession. Instead, there were a series of numbers and calculations about sales tax rates and charter amendments and counter-offers and pro-stadium headcounts, including a list of DFL representatives, with 37 of their names highlighted in yellow markers — the ones who had pledged to vote YES on the stadium — and another three names circled in red, apparently as possible Yes votes. In the end, in the wee hours of this morning, 38 DFLers voted for the stadium– providing 54 percent of the votes for passage.
Other clues in the notes closely predicted the exact amount the Vikings would be asked to put up for the stadium and exactly what time the final House vote would come. Is there anyone, anywhere, who believes government should turn the keys over to monopoly businesses in secret meetings? If so, I will meet you at dawn, with revolvers.
Here’s what one vote tally sheet looked like:
Rounding up the usual suspects: Is your DFL "representative" here?
By the way, this billion-for-billionaires Wilfare handout is a DFL deal, now. The Democrats own it, lock, stock and backroom deal.
After leaving Room 400, the legislators said they were going out to get something to eat. That was just one of the plethora of lies. It turned out the secret meeting just moved to an inner office in the trooper-protected warren of Gov. Dayton’s offices, where no one knows who attended an hours-long negotiation Mazola Party that lasted until, finally, late at night, they were ready to let the “public” part of the charade begin. There were reporters and photographers and lobbyists and grinning polls in the public meeting room when the “conference committee” finally convened. But other than a handful of insomniac Vikings fans, I couldn’t find one damn member of the general public.
As outrageous a travesty as this might be, it has become SOP at our Capitol, which is falling down. The only different thing about it — and this is a huge difference — is that this charade was not an attempt to fund public education or to reach a budget agreement between parties. This was a naked transfer of wealth — from the people to the plutocrats. And it was done — despite some 11th-hour lying by Sen. Julie Rosen, the chief author — entirely behind closed doors, from start to finish. Rosen herself admitted that the deal had been put together in secret at a press conference I attended in March, the one at which Dayton refused to respond to Ralph Nader’s criticism that the stadium deal was a “reverse Robin Hood.”
The Open Meeting laws, passed in the 1970s and which once gave Minnesota the reputation of having clean government, are as obsolete as a hat rack. They are so routinely flouted that the Center For Public Integrity gives the state a failing grade for openness in government and criticizes Minnesota’s increasingly secretive practices. Long story short: Yes, as we all learned in school, the corrupt days of smoke-filled rooms are gone. But that’s only because smoking is no longer permitted. Everything else is as corrupt as it used to be, and I don’t even rule out the bags of cash from the equation. There is no way to know what is going on, or whom is diddling who, and that’s the way that is preferred by politicians who have contempt for the public and the process that they are supposed to follow. And the Democrats, whose party pushed for Open Meeting laws in the 1970s, are as bad as the Republicans. Or, actually, worse.
Let me paint a picture of what it looked like this week at the Capitol, which it was under siege from raggedy-ass Occupy Minnesota protesters, no doubt would have quickly been cleared by security. Instead, it was under siege from purple-painted Vikings fans, few of whom seem to hold day jobs, who squatted on the Capitol steps, clustered in the Rotunda and sat around looking like tired Visigoths who had just discovered chairs after an exhausting year of sacking and plundering someone’s state treasury.
Ours.
The Vikings arm-twisting operation was given a headquarters inside the building, near the old Supreme Court chambers. Operatives, lobbyists and Vikings officials infested the ante-rooms near the Senate chambers, standing in the shadows and summoning weak-spined lawmakers to one-on-one meetings where they were browbeaten, cajoled and whipped into shape. If I could have somehow gotten Jesus to come, I would have asked him to bring his whip. In 40 years of Capitol watching, I’ve never seen anything so nakedly corrupt.
Give credit to a handful of courageous, truth-telling lawmakers — most of them Republicans — who dared to say what was happening. I think it was Sen. Sean Nienow, a Republican from Cambridge, who openly discussed the lobbying pressure and the den of Vikings who had been given offices in the Capitol, and who said during Tuesday night’s voting that the public would be shocked if it “could see what is going on here.”
It’s time, Minnesota, to open your eyes.
The only thing open about it was the open contempt for the people who will pay for Mark Dayton’s absurdly named “People’s Stadium.
Where the deal went down. Along with Democracy.
UPDATE: Click here for State of Corruption II: A “People’s Stadium” for Zygi
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the anti stadium people lost
Brilliant insight!
Actually, Ben, the people of Minnesota lost – far more than they appear to understand.
Great work Nick! This stadium deal was no surprise to me. It was just like the Metrodome Deal. Just keep hammering away at it until the public is so tired of hearing about it that they are just glad to have it over with. Interestingly, the hole for the Dome was being dug BEFORE the deal was made. Go figure!
I want so much for the Vikings to stay in Minnesota, but I’m ashamed that this is how our state is getting the job done.
Thanks so Much Nick for revealing what really happened and we only guessed. Clearly a crime was committed with enthusiastic inclusion of the Leadership of both Corrupt parties.
However, Let’s be clear, this did not happen by itself. This was organized, funded, produced and directed by a sports monopoly, The Vikings. We have to realize that pro-sports are a pack of thieves and none of us are safe until they are all gone. All of them.
The question is, is there anything we can do about it.
John Kolstad/Mpls – now we’ll be $3 billion in debt with the Twin and vikngs Palaces. But this will put Rybak in the Gov’s office after Dayton and President after Obama, at least that is his plan.
This is an outrage! I can’t even read the letters in the pictures.
I suggest you consult a familiar caregiver or personal attendant, and inquire whether a) You forgot to click on the photos to see a larger version or b) You are an idiot. If the answer is b) You are an idiot, please be very gentle with yourself.
don’t make fun of idiots, it’s not very nice.
I see Wagenius is not highlighted. She’s my rep. Did she vote against it then?
Rep. Wagenius voted NO.
Wagenius voted no.
I have not read the article yet but I doubt the Vikings stadium deal took down honest and open government. That happened a long long time ago.
Yes, you are right. But it at least happened in regard to actual public business. Not to help a billionaire pad his bank account. Tip: Next time, read the post first.
Great job of documenting the decline of openness in Minnesota government. I long for the days when Rep. Irv Anderson as Speaker would not only force openness but stop Conference Committees from meeting late at night to allow the average person to be there.
This has been a travesty of process from start to finish.
We still have structural shortfall in the billions of dollars, owe money to our schools and have raided the Tobacco Funds which should have been available for future generations to use.
Where did the DFL lose its way?
The DFL lost its way because of the clout Minneapolis has and the fact that the Mpls DFL is dominated by Rybak and his supporters. Rybak has been pulling the same thing in Minneapolis, and City Hall has been just as full of the kind of corruption Nick describes since the beginning of the Rybak administration.
Nick, are there any court cases that hold that a conscious circumventing of the intent of the open meeting law — and this is almost clear from their own statements in various media sources — constitues a violation of that law? I looked at the text of the law online, but it doesn’t include any provision like this.
Thanks. This is a very well done yet disturbing piece. I hope this gets a lot of reads. It’s important.
After reading this article and clicking on the pictures I realized how much I hate hotdogs.
After reading your comment, I realize how much I hate wienies.
Thanks Mr Coleman. Somebody gets it. First we had pink slime now purple slime. How does one renounce a city citizenship ?
For the past few years I’ve spend most of my time in Minnesota, after living for many years in Delaware. I’d think Delaware has a well-deserved reputation as a corporate plantation, while Minnesota is seen my many as relatively open and progressive.
How depressing to find that Minnesota’s political system is just as corrupt, special-interest-controlled, and disregardful of the public interest as Delaware’s.
I see nothing wrong with negotiating with members from house and senate in private. Doesn’t matter what they say, it matters what’s on the bill being votes on. Thing you guys just try to create drama out of nothing.
You see nothing wrong with violating the open meeting laws? Then you should run for election to the Legislature. You will fit right in.
I don’t think this was simply legislators chatting – as Nick has written: there were Vikings reps, and there is an inner-room adjoining that anyone could have come-in or gone-out of. They likely did have a quorum at some point. They were breaking the law, negotiating with public money behind the public’s back.
I recall in the years past, during the Twins’ stadium extortion hey-day, that some attempt was thwarted in the legislature and their front-man-shill at that time (whose name escapes me – older gent with an acne pock-marked face) was quoted in the Strib as saying “Father forgive them – they know not what they do.” This was – I kid you not – about three days before Good Friday. I’m not religious, so was not offended in any ecclesiastic way, but was mightily miffed at the hubris of this dick. I was within inches of sending him a package at his Twins office (complete with my name, of course): a loaf of Wonder Bread and a tin of sardines, with an enclosed note saying, “You seem to be trying to channel a ‘higher power’ during this holy week of Easter: test it out – turn these into a fric’en stadium.” I’m ashamed to say I backed-down on my resolve for purely personal reasons: it was the height of post-9/11 Bush-regime paranoia, and I assumed I’d end-up being interrogated and/or water-boarded by Bush “brown-shirts.” I also worked for a major local newspaper at the time – which happens to rabidly support ANY stadium that anyone wants to build (they had a staff editorial writer shilling for it full-time back then) … figured I’d probably get fired when the Twins dude came after me. Some six or eight years later, despite the fact that there’s just as many of these pro-sports and government-types who have a Jesus-complex, there’s nothing overtly visible today but squadrons of Judas Iscariots. I want to stand in the capitol rotunda and hand-out ropes. Thanks for sticking to this thankless task of reporting, Nick … this level of corruption and wheeling-dealing must make even an old pro of a journalist like you sick to your stomach. One lives long enough to think “I’ve seen everything” – then something like this splatters on the street in front of you. We’ve gone from the “We had to destroy the village to save it” thinking of Vietnam to the “perversion of everything that American stands for to protect America” behavior of the Bush regime, to this blatant wheeling-and-dealing perversion of the rule of law and state government in the name of … what? Making sure a billionaire and his millionaire employees can have a new “Pleasure Dome” to play in. Screw open meeting laws – just weasel around them; screw the Minneapolis City Charter – don’t let the citizens of that city have a lawful vote on whether they want to pay for this, just weasel around it and cut them out. I’m sad, I’m pissed-off, and I never thought I’d hear myself say (or type) this – but I’m turning-in that DFL card and re-registering as an Independent … a pox on all their houses. This was equal-opportunity corruption, mendacity, and pissing on the collective shoes of Minnesota taxpayers. There are no clean hands in this fiasco – not in Rybak’s office, not in the governor’s office, not in the legislature.
Damn Nick, if I had known you wanted someone to barge in and be arrested I would have gladly down it. Let it be known, I did speak out against the final bill at the conference committee. I was there, unfortunately to the bitter end.
As usual, great article from Mr. Coleman. Thank you for shining a spotlight on these cockroaches.
Nick…I was part of the Perpich Administration that passed the original stadium bill in 1978 that resulted in the construction of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in 1980 at a cost of $50,000,000. Not much money for a building that served everyone well for over 30 years.
During the time I was Governor Perpich’s Communications Director “openness” was his passion. He even wanted to take the door to his office off of its mountings so people could see how government operated but was criticized roundly as “Crazy Rudy: so he abandoned the idea. Not so “Crazy” now, is it?
Each day I posted a list of all of his meetings both in the office and at the residence and we even opened all the meetings held in his office to the press and the public. Interestingly that openness was objected to by people who were meeting with the governor and many refused to do so. One of the objections to his open meetings was the then head of the ACLU. The pressure became so great that we had to change the policy if any business was going to get done, but I did provide a summary of the meetings to any and all media that sought them.
The original stadium bill was discussed and approved in the light of day with the media in attendance. It was a hard fought issue but in the end it passed the “smell” test. Rudy would be disappointed had he witnessed what you described. As a former journalist and press secretary I am appalled.
Bob: Thanks for your comment. It helps bolster my argument that things have changed radically, and not for the better. I covered the Metrodome project for a while, after the stadium commission began its work, and I remember well how much more open and above board things were then. The current decision-making/negotiating environment is corrupt. You could see it coming back in January, when Zygi Wilf visited Dayton. Zygi got a private meeting while OccupyMN protesters who visited the Capitol that day were forcibly shut out. Mark Dayton is being saluted for his “leadership” today. But if you ask me, he is being saluted by all the wrong people.
I hope Gov Dayton was receiving a middle finger “salute”!
Special Openness
many is the time Dad called me up chucking, as the capitol staff was scurrying around and calling around trying to find Rudy. he stayed true to himself by escaping the monkey house every so often, sneaking up to the Iron Range, and hanging out with the buddies.
Rudy was a real guy, and he didn’t go toe-to-toe with anybody because his pocket just got stuffed. he kept his principles.
Thank Mr. Coleman for letting us know a little insight of what we and many of the opposing legislators who wanted and asked to be involved in, aka. Sen Nienow and Sen Howe. I will go to my grave believing that the Vikings Power machine ran this whole operation, not Mr. Mondale not ms. Rosen, not Mr. Lanning….. the Vikings, Lester Bagley, and his side kick Steve Poppen. One thing was a big surprise to me on the senate floor, when Sen. Warren Limmer pointed out in fact reported to his fellow senators the actual state law that this bill be violating, by giving exclusive rights to an NFL team and family member to bring an MLS Soccer team to MN. The proponents didn’t even seem concerned. I hope the pursue this angle AND I hope Sen. John Marty pursues the issue of this bill trying to get around the Mpls Charter Provision, in proved on the Senate floor that there is NO official Legal opinion whether or not the provision should be followed. I would state it does. We only have a verbal statement by the Mpls City Attorney, who we all can guess that she has already been paid off. It’s time for all of the Mpls residents and non-Mpls residents to call Kevin Reich and Ms. Colvin-Roy to vote against the City Council approving this deal. This is our last effort, even though we may have some legal challenges.
I have a feeling you would not be so outraged. If the deal that was made behind closed doors was one that you supported.
I have a feeling you are the kind of guy who tosses garbage out the car window when no one is looking.
Garbage – Like this post?
I wonder why the Strib doesn’t publish all this. (That’s a joke.)
Most of us did not know what was going on except for the smell.
Thanks, Nick
I am thankful for Nick’s reporting and insights, but I would suggest this is a little over-dramatized. There is an implication that somehow the governor and a few dozen congresspeople went to work the other day asking themselves, “how can I transfer as much wealth as I can from the hard-working people of Minnesota to a slimy billionaire, and do it as quietly as possible?” The truth is that people like football and associate it with national-class cities, and the NFL has a monopoly on it. I don’t approve of either of those things, but that’s the playing field. So given that reality, our state government really was trying to do what they thought had to be done – and managed to at least scrape another $50M out of Wilf in the process. The deal we got is typical or even a little better than typical of stadium deals in medium sized markets. There’s a lot of unsavory shit here, but I don’t think it’s fair to call into question the motivations of our elected leaders in this case.
We “scraped another $50M out of Wilf?” Yes. If you ignore the fact that, in return, Wilf received 100 percent of the naming rights, which are probably worth $200-300 million. But that’s how Dayton — and the media — portrayed it: The heroic Wilfs agreed to pay $50M more. But they’ll never have to pay that phantom money. With the NFL payment, the seat licenses and total control of the naming rights, the Wilfs basically gt a new stadium for nothing.Read the second installment, State of Corruption II. I not only question their motives. I question their intelligence.
Thanks for the post Nick. We don’t agree on much but this is one area that I fully support your post & your comments.
I just read this. It was linked from a thread (involving disclosures surrounding Samuels’ acceptance of an envelope of money) in the http://www.e-democracy.org/mpls discussion forum. I didn’t realize you had your own website; I will be reading it from now on. The information in this article just makes me sick, but the delivery was very well-done. I was supremely proud of Gary Schiff and his vociferous siege against the funding of the public funding of the stadium—and I am hoping that the democratic machine does not derail his bid for Mayor.