State Rep. Morrie Lanning, R-Moorhead, announced Thursday that he won’t seek a sixth term. Lanning’s announcement comes less than a month after Gov. Mark Dayton signed the Vikings stadium bill of which he was the chief House author.

Left for dead in April, the Vikings stadium bill sprinted to passage in the session’s closing days. What happened?

If appropriation bonds are deemed unconstitutional, the state’s means of raising $348 million disappears.

Less than a month ago, the Minnesota House and Senate looked poised to adjourn without passing any major pieces of legislation. Most notably, a bonding package and a Minnesota Vikings stadium appeared to be dead in the water.

The Minnesota House gave its final stamp of approval to a $975 million Vikings stadium bill in the early hours of the morning on Thursday, one of the chamber’s final legislative acts before adjourning sine die. The House passed the stadium conference report on a 71-60 vote at 3:30 a.m., just an hour and half after the bill was unanimously approved in committee.

The Minnesota Vikings will be responsible for $477 million – or nearly half the total cost -- of a $975 million football stadium under the terms outlined in a conference committee report outlined on Wednesday.

After a pair of marathon floor debates, the House and Senate passed legislation this week authorizing construction of a $975 million stadium for the Minnesota Vikings.

After weeks of committee hearings, each one bearing new amendments and surprises, the already-dramatically divergent House and Senate stadium proposals faced an onslaught of on-the-fly amendments on the floor this week, and some major changes were adopted.A conference committee made up of six legislators is expected to meet sometime on Wednesday.

The $975 million package, which would construct a new stadium for the team near the Metrodome site in Minneapolis, passed on a 73-58 vote, with more DFLers voting for the package than Republicans. All told, 40 DFL votes were cast in favor of the bill, with 33 Republicans voting “yes.” Many expected there to be 68 votes total for the bill -- the exact number needed to pass -- with the GOP and DFL caucuses evenly splitting the total.

When the sun rose on Tuesday, April 17, the slow death of the Minnesota Vikings stadium bill appeared complete at last.