Nine million dollars a year and no grass?

It came up near the end of the House debate on Thursday night over the new University of Minnesota football stadium. As the House was preparing to vote on the $248 million stadium plan DFL Rep. Mary Murphy asked why the open-air stadium would have artifical turf instead of real grass. The bill's author, GOP Rep. Ron Abrams, said the stadium will get so much use that real grass couldn't take the pounding. He said in addition to the football team, intramural squads and others will use the facility.

That was probably one of the more minor points brought up in a long debate over the new stadium, but when state taxpayers are being asked to pay $9.4 million per year for 25 years you can understand why people are concerned. Still, the bill passed easily on a 103-30 vote. MPR's Tom Scheck (or the AP's Brian Bakst depending on when you read this)has more about some of the other issues involved.

Just about everyone at the Capitol said this would be the easy stadium to pass, and it sure looks that way given the vote. Now that the House has dipped its toe into public funding for stadiums, will it go all the way with a Twins ballpark? In some ways the Hennepin County sales tax plan seems like an easier vote for most lawmakers than the gopher plan. It seems like a stretch that lawmakers would also pass a Vikings stadium this year, but who knows?

Could Minnesota end up requiring every state resident to have health insurance ala Massachusetts? MPR's Laura McCallum reports that Gov. Tim Pawlenty is thinking about it:

Massachusett's Republican governor, Mitt Romney, has pushed the plan, which was approved this week by a Democratic-led Legislature. It would allow uninsured low-income people to get subsidized policies and would require everyone in Massachusetts to be insured by mid-2007. Pawlenty says he likes the idea of mandating health coverage for people who don't have insurance.

"In some cases you just have young primarily men who are working who probably could afford it who choose not to get insured, they're kind of flippant about health insurance, and when they get sick, it shifts the costs to the rest of us, because we pay the bill, and that's not fair," he said.

Pawlenty says his administration is working on a plan similar to Massachusetts'. He says there are bare-bones health plans available for as little as $200 a month, and insurers should do a better job of marketing them.

He said that in his State of the State speech as I recall, and we should do a little more checking up on that.

Something interesting is going on here at MPR today. The mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul are here along with a bunch of city staffers to talk about way the cities can work together. The whole thing will be capped off with an hour of Midday at noon. This is the first time I can remember something like this happening here, and I'm betting it will be worth a listen.

Speaking of Midday, I have to do the program next week because Gary Eichten is taking the week off. (I hope you'll listen anyway) In any case, that means my writing this page could be spotty, but I'll try to get to it.