Bonding bill clears committee in House

By Brad Swenson

Pioneer Staff Writer

      Passing a second hurdle Wednesday, Bemidji’s $30 million bonding package needs one more stop before hitting the Minnesota House floor.

      The House Capital Investment Committee approved on a voice vote the Republican leadership’s $683 million state buildings project bill, Rep. Doug Fuller, R-Bemidji, said Wednesday.

      The packing includes $28.9 million in Bemidji projects, including $18 million for a new hockey arena at Bemidji State University, $10 million for emerging technologies co-location and renovation at BSU and Northwest Technical college and $900,000 for Paul Bunyan Trail acquisition in the city of Bemidji.

      Considered every two years, the state building projects bill also provides opportunity for pork-barrel projects leading up to the November election, some say. Even the chairman of the panel which crafted the bill would have liked it $200 million lighter.

      The full bill now heads to the House Ways and Means Committee for a probable vote Tuesday before reaching the House floor, said Fuller, who is carrying the Bemidji portions.

      “Everything will be amendable there as well,” Fuller said, adding that only $500,000 was cut from the bill as a duplicate item. “There were no substantial changes that came out of committee.”

      After the next stop, “the big fight will be on the House floor,” he said. The DFL-controlled Senate is waiting until the House passes its bill before announcing its state projects bill, rumored at $890 million.

      Some provisions of the bill remain controversial, such as $37.5 million for the Northstar commuter rail project between Big Lake and Minneapolis, which even Capital Investments Chairman Phil Krinkie, R-Shoreview, opposes.

      Other provisions are questioned as political handouts, including the hockey arena to BSU, which was not included on either Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s bonding list or the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities priority list.

      Fuller got questions on that during Wednesday’s panel hearing, with the BSU project funded instead through the Minnesota Amateur Sports Commission rather than MnSCU.

      And at least one media report noted that while Bemidji was recommended for a hockey arena, House Republicans denied funding a “$22.1 million high school for the tax-poor Red Lake Indian Reservation,” which Pawlenty had included.

      “There are people who look at the bonding bill as pure pork, but one man’s pork is another man’s steak,” Fuller said, arguing against the idea that the BSU arena is pork because it isn’t on either Pawlenty’s or MnSCU’s list.

      “To me, ‘pork’ insinuates that I’m getting it for political reasons but that is not the case,” said the Bemidji Republican. “It’s been a lot of work getting this through committee, setting up times and getting other legislators to understand what it is.

      “I also look at pork as being things that don’t fit the standard of what the state has a role in funding,” Fuller added. “The arena’s being built on a state university campus, so the Legislature has the responsibility of maintaining and keeping those institutions vibrant.”

      As the arena will be on the BSU campus and operated by BSU, it doesn’t meet the criteria of being pork, he said.

      Going through the MASC takes the project out of competition with classrooms, Fuller said. “The Amateur Sports Commission was created when it got involved in building the St. Cloud State rink. … Anytime you have an athletic facility being compared with academic facilities, the athletic facility is always going to face challenges.”

      Fuller also said the Red Lake School District project wasn’t sacrificed for the Bemidji hockey arena. First, the Red Lake project costs twice as much.

      Under state bonding, Fuller said, BSU’s $18 million for the arena involves only $12 million in actually bonding. The remaining $6 million is debt service or user finance from the institution, in this case, probably through lodge box leases and other revenues, he said.

      Red Lake’s total $22 million would come from bonding.

      “Secondly, I could go to the next legislator and say the arena project came out of the governor’s efforts to end homelessness, or it came out of the Minnesota Zoo,” Fuller said. “You can make an argument across the whole board.”

      But Fuller recognizes that it could become a political bargaining chip as the Senate, with the Red Lake provision carried by Sen. Rod Skoe, DFL-Clearbrook, will probably include it and not the arena funding. And the school funding is part of Pawlenty’s package.

      “The House knows that it will be an issue that both the governor and the Senate will bring forward,” Fuller said. “It’s an issue that the House has to say that in order to get our priorities in the conference committee, it was one that was taken out.”

      But aside from the physical need of a new facility for BSU’s NCAA Division I men’s and women’s hockey and that the arena can double as a community events center.

      Fuller said the timing was right.

      “The stars only line up every so often for the opportunity to get something like this,” he said. “In my mind, in three years’ worth of effort, certainly it doesn’t fit the criteria of pork. But I’m sure there are people who think the whole bill is pork, and that just makes it all political.”