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CATHY WURZER: A stadium advisory panel created by the Minnesota Twins says Twins owner Carl Pohlad should pay $150 million toward a new outdoor baseball stadium. A draft report obtained by the Star Tribune from Minnesotans for Major League Baseball says that amount would cover about half the cost. The other half would be financed through taxes, as opposed to a direct public subsidy.

Meanwhile, the Vikings are already lobbying the legislature for help in funding a new football stadium. Joining us to discuss the latest in the never ending stadium saga is Minnesota Public Radio sports commentator Jay Weiner. Good morning, Jay.

JAY WEINER: Good morning, Cathy.

CATHY WURZER: Parts of this Twins plan, Jay, sound pretty familiar to me. What about you?

JAY WEINER: Well, certainly the public funding piece is very old, as it were. It started way back in the Target Center days. And it's basically a tax increment financing plan.

And that is the way that this group says the public should fund the half of the Twins ballpark is by capturing what's called the increased taxes from the ballpark. Rather than sending those taxes to the general fund, as they would go, you capture them and help them to fund the ballpark. And that has been shot down pretty much repeatedly since people tried to buy out Target Center in 1994, and then went through all the reincarnations of the Twins ballpark plan.

What is relatively new is the fact that these folks are saying that the team owner has got to give at least half of the cost of the ballpark. And there are some implications there, not only for the Twins, since Pohlad has never committed ever to give half, but also for the Vikings, because Red McCombs has been saying that he would give up to a quarter of the cost of a new football stadium, because that's the NFL model. And I think now what we've got floated out there is the concept that no matter what the stadium is, an owner should give half of the money. And that does raise the stakes a bit, at least in this town, for how much the team owner should give.

CATHY WURZER: Would this idea fly in the legislature?

JAY WEINER: I think, though, what Senator Mo said in the Star Tribune this morning is true that the tax increment financing method seems to have been there, done that. So they still needs that to figure out that important piece of what is the public's contribution to this, if any. And I don't sense that there's been a lot of movement on that. Once the Vikings start to make their march over there at the Capitol, we'll then begin to see some other ideas, I think. But you know as well as I that the public piece is the one that's going to be the hardest one, not the private piece.

CATHY WURZER: Well, let's talk about the Vikings. The NFL Commissioner was in the Twin Cities last week. He met with some legislative leaders. At the beginning of December, city officials in San Antonio said that they were working on plans to lure the Vikings to San Antonio. Where does all this stand right now when it comes to the Vikings and a new stadium?

JAY WEINER: Well, first of all, I think that San Antonio is a relatively long shot. They've got a stadium that needs to be refurbished far more than our dome. And they are also taking a run at the New Orleans Saints. So they're just trying to grasp at any team that's available. And because McCombs lives in San Antonio and knows the mayor, that seems to be the prime prospect.

I think that we need to watch how well the Vikings do in the playoffs, and whether that creates some sort of new buzz for a stadium. But I think that Tagliabue was pretty clear that the NFL is not in the business of breaking a lease. And the Vikings lease does run through the year 2011.

Whether there will be sentiment to change anything, I can't imagine that. What I do know is that it's going to be very hard for a lawmaker to say that a new stadium should be built when there's already a public agency, the Metropolitan sports Facilities Commission, that has a lease with the team. So I think the refurbishing plan of the Sports Facilities Commission is one that might be on the table.

But I also think that the Vikings are going to have to make do with the dome for a while. That would be my feeling unless there's just this crazy, crazy sentiment that says the Vikings won the Super Bowl, if that should happen, and they deserve a stadium. But I don't feel the ground moving on that either.

CATHY WURZER: All right. Jay Weiner, thanks for joining us.

JAY WEINER: Sure.

CATHY WURZER: Jay Weiner is Minnesota Public Radio sports commentator.