Hey, Neil, the rejection was over a point of order raised by the Speaker of the House. Your "overwhelmingly rejecting" comment is inaccurate in that the implication is the racino concept was rejected. Granted, it's an uphill battle against the tribal casino lobby and their political influence gained through millions in contributions, but that's still no reason to misrepresent the situation. Attaching an amendment to use racino revenues for Vikings stadium to an ag bill was overwhelming rejected as inappropriate--out of order.

Apologies if it was misleading. In any case, though, if Hackbarth thought his best bet of getting the amendment considered was to tack it on to an unrelated bill, and then that got shot down, it doesn't bode well for its chances this session.

Neil,

It does not appear you follow Minnesota politics too closely. The Hackbarth Amendment not only provided funding for a Vikings stadium but also had funding for early childhood education, biosciences and agriculture and rural economic development. It was not unrelated to the bill at hand.

The Speaker of the House, who is running for Governor, has accepted campaign cash from Minnesota's tribal casino interests which currently have a tax-free monopoly on casino gaming. That fact, more than anything else, explains why the procedural vote went the way it did.

By the way, I understand your blog is opposed to any public financing of sports stadiums. I will tell you that Minnesota just opened a stadium for the Twins and that over 9,000 people worked on building the stadium. The Vikings estimate that it will take over 10,000 workers to build a football stadium. With unemployment at nearly 10% and higher among the skilled trades, I think it's hard to argue that it's a bad idea to put people back to work by building a stadium with gaming taxes (which are totally voluntary).

Chris, meet Gibson. You might want to get together and decide on whether this post was inaccurate because it didn't acknowledge the "unrelated" claim, or because it did.

As far as being opposed to any public financing, that's not true — if taxpayers get their money's worth for their expense, I don't see anything wrong with that. Creating 10,000 temporary construction jobs at a half-billion-dollar-plus expense, though, is a pretty lousy payoff — as economist Allen Sanderson is fond of saying, you could create more jobs than that by taking the money up in a helicopter over your city and throwing it out the window.

Neil,

I don't know how you can say that building a $500 million stadium with 10,000 skilled labor jobs is the same as throwing money out of a helicopter. It's called infrastructure and is no different than building roads, bridges or other public buildings.

The difference here is that the state isn't using income taxes to build the stadium but is financing the project with voluntary money. If you don't want to build the stadium or fund rural economic development programs then don't go to the racino. But there are many who do want to engage in that activity and would be happy to build a stadium.

Neil,

I don't know how you can say that building a $500 million stadium with 10,000 skilled labor jobs is the same as throwing money out of a helicopter. It's called infrastructure and is no different than building roads, bridges or other public buildings.

The difference here is that the state isn't using income taxes to build the stadium but is financing the project with voluntary money. If you don't want to build the stadium or fund rural economic development programs then don't go to the racino. But there are many who do want to engage in that activity and would be happy to build a stadium.

The point that Sanderson is making is that spending money on anything — even throwing it out of a helicopter for people to pick up, or, as Keynes famously suggested, burying it in bottles and paying people to go dig it back up — is going to create jobs and economic activity. If the state is going to spend $500 million, 10,000 temporary construction jobs is about the lousiest payoff you could conceivably generate — you'd be far better spending it on something more labor-intensive and less steel-and-concrete-intensive (schoolteachers are a good example).

And economically, "voluntary" money is no better than involuntary money, since money spent at slot machines is money that people don't have left to spend somewhere else. So it's not like the money is being created out of thin air.