House vote puts steam into building Northstar line

02/24/2005

Mike Kaszuba and Conrad Defiebre, Star Tribune
February 24, 2005

From Minneapolis on up to Big Lake, and at other points along the projected route, the Northstar commuter-rail line appears suddenly to have downhill momentum.

Tuesday’s overwhelming vote by the state House of Representatives to include $10 million in a bonding bill for the oft-stalled project was seen by critics and supporters as a victory for the project. “We believe it’s about to happen,” said Dan Erhart, an Anoka County commissioner who said he spent much of the past two days making and getting congratulatory phone calls.

“This is more than a transportation project,” he added. “This has a lot to do with how we live.”

Though hurdles remain and opponents hint at using blocking tactics as a funding plan is finalized, the state’s first commuter-rail line was endorsed by a House whose members had stymied it for five years.

And even though the money was short of the $37.5 million that Gov. Tim Pawlenty said was necessary to move the $265 million project forward, many feel an agreement is within reach as legislative conferees take up the issue in the coming weeks.

“I’m actually a little bit in shock,” said Debbie Cocchiarella, a Big Lake resident who helped organize NO NOrthstar, an opponents group. Cocchiarella, a day-care provider, said she watched the House vote on television in her living room. “We only got a measly 12 votes.” She said the project, a 40-mile rail line linking the fast-growing northwest suburbs to downtown Minneapolis, would not alleviate congestion and would be a “devastating money pit.”

Only a few miles away, however, Terry Nagorski was celebrating. “People want this,” said the Sherburne County commissioner. He said he was nonetheless surprised by the 121-12 House vote. “I didn’t think it was going to be that far apart.

“It’ll go through [now],” he added. “You got the governor behind it, everybody else.”

At the Capitol, the mood at least in some corners was similarly confident. “It’s a done deal,” said Rep. Alice Hausman of St. Paul, the lead DFLer on the Capital Investment Committee.

In Ramsey, where a multi-million-dollar town center is being built near the rail line, City Administrator Jim Norman said he was encouraged. While the town center is designed to thrive without commuter rail, “the Northstar project will make [our] project much more sexy.”

For Northstar supporters, the House vote was another sign of the importance of November’s elections when the House Republican majority lost 13 seats—some held by GOP legislators who represented districts along the route but had in the past blocked the commuter line.

For Pawlenty, whose change of heart on commuter rail two years ago may have saved the project, the House vote came just two weeks after the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) said it had classified the Northstar line as “not recommended” and would remove the project from preliminary engineering status unless the state “demonstrates progress in advancing the project.”

On Wednesday, FTA spokesperson Karen Aldana was more cautiously optimistic. “If [the state] can demonstrate sufficient funding commitments and a satisfactory project cost effectiveness result, FTA can reevaluate the project.” Though the line is not now recommended by the federal agency, said Aldana, “it does not preclude the project from being recommended at some point in the future.”

With a 2008 scheduled opening, much remains to be done. Land for three of the six train stations and accompanying park-and-ride lots has been bought, but negotiations with the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad, which owns the tracks the commuter line would use, have been slow.

In a sign of the complexity of the talks, project officials said that more than $500,000 has been budgeted for negotiations on a series of agreements. An agreement with the railroad on the final design, officials said, may come by April.

“Like everybody else, they say, ‘Show me the money,’ “ Tim Yantos, executive director of the Northstar Corridor Development Authority, said of the railroad. Still, Yantos said he expected a construction agreement with the railroad to be ready within a year.

However, he said legislative opponents, especially Rep. Phil Krinkie, R-Shoreview, could try to block the authority of local governments to raise their $44.2 million share of the project from taxpayers. “He could very well do that,” Yantos said of Krinkie, who is chairman of the House Taxes Committee.

Other supporters also pointed out that even with the $37.5 million this year, the line would need an additional $50 million in future years to keep the state’s pledge to fund $88.3 million of the project’s total cost.

Krinkie meanwhile vowed to keep fighting. “It ain’t over until it’s over,” he said. “Obviously, with the overwhelming vote for the bonding bill, Northstar is likely to get state funding.

“But I have no idea whether it gets built or not. Part of it depends on how gullible the legislators and the citizens of Minnesota are,” he said.

Some supporters, though, remained cautious. “It’s not a done deal until the governor signs it and they start selling the bonds,” said Bob Benke, project manager for the North Metro Mayors Association, which represents nearly two dozen northern Twin Cities metro suburbs. “We have a ways to go yet.”

Dan Murphy, a Northstar opponent living in St. Joseph, said he was simply discouraged. “I think we need a new governor,” he said, but added, “I see the handwriting on the wall.”