{"id":50374,"date":"2015-01-13T06:00:08","date_gmt":"2015-01-13T12:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=50374"},"modified":"2015-01-13T06:46:44","modified_gmt":"2015-01-13T12:46:44","slug":"golf-clap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=50374","title":{"rendered":"Golf Clap"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The House GOP caucus is making some encouraging noises these days; speaker of the house Kurt Daudt is <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.mprnews.org\/capitol-view\/2015\/01\/daudt-no-funding-for-southwest-light-rail\/\">putting the kibosh, for the session, on funding for the Southwest light rail <\/a>pork train:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Daudt said the 16 mile light rail line is not a priority for House Republicans .<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-style: italic;\">\u201cWe are not interested in moving forward on the Southwest light rail project. I think we need to get real with our priorities in Minnesota on how we spend our transportation dollars. Our plan is to spend them on roads and bridges.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-style: italic;\">Gov. Mark Dayton said he isn\u2019t willing to fund the Southwest Light Rail project until the Minneapolis Park Board\u2019s objections are resolved. The park board is funding a study to determine whether a deeper, more expensive tunnel is a better option to protect city parkland than the Metropolitan Council\u2019s plan that features a shallow tunnel.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-style: italic;\">Sen. Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis, said Senate Democrats are committed to funding the project.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-style: italic;\">Dibble, who chairs the Senate Transportation Committee, released his transportation funding package today. It would rely on $800 million in new revenue through a wholesale gas tax hike, and higher license tab fees. The plan also borrows $576 million for new roads and bridges and includes a half cent sales tax in the metro area to pay for transportation projects.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s good to see the House GOP come out of the gate taking a serious stance on something. \u00a0It&#8217;d have been nice to have seen more of this during, say, the Vikings Stadium jamdown, but better late than never.<\/p>\n<p>More importantly? \u00a0 The GOP controls half of a third of Minnesota&#8217;s government. \u00a0We get it &#8211; negotiation and compromise is going to be involved. \u00a0But it&#8217;s so good to hear House GOP leadership smell the coffee, and stop\u00a0<em>leading\u00a0<\/em>negotiations with the &#8220;compromise&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The House GOP caucus is making some encouraging noises these days; speaker of the house Kurt Daudt is putting the kibosh, for the session, on funding for the Southwest light rail pork train: Daudt said the 16 mile light rail line is not a priority for House Republicans . \u201cWe are not interested in moving [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[132,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mn-legislature","category-trains-and-automobiles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50374"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50386,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50374\/revisions\/50386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}