The Bill Passes The Senate
By a vote of 38 to 28, the Vikings stadium bill passed through the Minnesota Senate after another exhausting day of debates and re-debates.
After amendments succeeded only to later fail, the Senate ended up including two major amendments to the original bill.
The first amendment ups the Vikings and NFL’s contribution by $25 million, which is considerably less than the $105 million increase that the House called for on Monday.
Second, the Senate’s version of the bill demands no blackouts occur for games played by the Vikings in their new stadium.
Neither the increase in private contribution nor the ultimatum on blackouts are likely to sit well with the NFL, but the fact that this thing has cleared its latest hurdle is only a positive for those that want to see the Vikings tradition upheld.
The House-Senate Conference Committee will now have to find a compromise between the two versions of the bill. Then it needs to go back to both the House and the Senate for another up or down vote.