Stadium authority erupts in controversy over leadership roles

By MIKE KASZUBA

The controversy over the role of Michele Kelm-Helgen in the building of the new Minnesota Vikings stadium erupted again Friday.

The Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority, which oversees the stadium's construction and which Kelm-Helgen chairs, adopted a pay equity report, but not before she was questioned over whether she was essentially voting for a future pay increase for herself.

Kelm-Helgen, who was appointed as chair by Gov. Mark Dayton, and was a former top deputy to the DFL governor, made an emotional defense of her job performance and said she was "exhausted" by the bickering over her $127,000-a-year job that this week stretched to the Republican-controlled Minnesota House.

Friday's acrimony, which followed a similar dispute last month, was another rare public airing of a behind-the-scenes dispute at a public board that typically is otherwise enmeshed in the nuts-and-bolts progress involving the Vikings' $1.062 billion stadium in downtown Minneapolis. And as before, the debate centered on Kelm-Helgen's full-time role and how it meshed with Ted Mondale, the authority's executive director, who earns $162,245.

At one point, Kelm-Helgen traded heated comments with John Griffith, a board member who has been an executive vice president at Target Corp. She said Friday that Griffith had earlier this year privately warned the board's attorney that he would publicly criticize Kelm-Helgen if she insisted that she be included in a pay equity report that might lead to another pay increase.

She said that Griffith told the attorney to warn Kelm-Helgen that "if you do not agree to take yourself out of the equity report, I am going to make an issue of her" job. Kelm-Helgen added that she had "never felt more threatened by board members."

Griffith denied he had made a threat, and pointed a finger at Kelm-Helgen during one exchange. "I never made any threatening comments to you to be passed along to the chair," said Griffith, who directed part of his response to Jay Lindgren, the board's attorney. "I have built a reputation in this city for 30 years."

Lindgren agreed, and added that "I don't believe that was done in a threatening tone."

But Kelm-Helgen quickly added: "It felt threatening to me."

She also accused Griffith and others of continually trying to diminish her role, telling her she should instead "just go be a talking head and a lobbyist" for the project instead of immersing herself in the stadium's many intricate details.

"I am a full-time, benefited, regular employee," she added moments later. She also made public a written memo Friday saying she would "hereby waive any interest in additional compensation for my service as MSFA board chair at this time."

The meeting came two days after Dayton had joined in the controversy, criticizing a House Republican proposal to eliminate Kelm-Helgen's salary. Rep. Sarah Anderson, R-Plymouth, the chair of the House State Government Finance Committee, said the stadium authority seemed to have an executive director and a "pseudo executive director," referring to Kelm-Helgen.

"So now you have a House committee popping off and saying, well, she can't be paid a salary?" the governor said. "It's none of their business."

During a lull in Friday's meeting, which ended with both sides trying to downplay any long-term political rift, Mondale declined comment on the dispute. ''I'm going to go back in right now," he said as he sidestepped reporters and headed back into the meeting. "Things are a little hot in there."