St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter and Craig Leipold, owner of the Minnesota Wild, again made their pitch to state lawmakers for nearly $400 million in state appropriation bonds to fund a makeover of the Xcel Energy Center and the city’s RiverCentre convention center.

They found a more receptive audience in a key Senate panel Tuesday than they did last week with a committee composed of House lawmakers.

They also found a sponsor. State Sen. Clare Oumou Verbeten, DFL-St. Paul, has signed on as an author of the bill, which is still being composed and has yet to be formally introduced.

St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter answers questions about the Xcel Energy Center during a Minnesota Senate Capital Investment Committee hearing in the Senate Building in St. Paul on Tuesday, March. 25, 2025. Joining Mayor Carter is Minnesota Wild Owner Craig Leipold. The city of St. Paul and Minnesota Wild are funds to renovate the Xcel Energy Center. The request is for the state to pay for half of the projected $769 million cost. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

State senators from both parties talked up the importance of having the city-owned X — and the Wild in particular — anchor a downtown that has lost workers, businesses and vitality since the onset of the pandemic and remote work.

State Sen. Karin Housley, R-Stillwater, agreed that downtown St. Paul had become a more desolate and sometimes scarier place in recent years, and she noted the positive impact the Nashville Predators — Leipold’s former National Hockey League team — have had on boosting their downtown after its dog years.

A year-round destination

The mayor reiterated claims that a $769 million renovation of the 25-year-old arena and convention center complex — which already draw some 2 million visitors annually — could boost downtown spending by another $110 million each year. Calling the design of the X outdated, Carter talked up the importance of creating a year-round destination, with cafes, pubs or other exterior, public-facing attractions that would draw interest even when the Wild are not playing.

“Most people come in and out of there and don’t realize this whole huge place, this professional sports arena, has one escalator to get people in and out,” said Carter, addressing reporters after his presentation to the Senate Capital Investment committee. “From a safety perspective, from an ingress and egress perspective, from an accessibility perspective … this arena really is archaic in its design.”

The city has released renderings and other project details on its website at stpaul.gov/xcel-arena-complex-renovation.

Still, the prospect of a $385 million ask from appropriations bonds is no small request given a state budget forecast that predicts deficit spending by the year 2028-2029.

Members of the House Capital Investment Committee appeared more skeptical last week, when state Rep. Maria Perez-Vega, a DFLer who represents downtown, listed a string of human service and infrastructure needs in her district and criticized Carter and Leipold for not first sharing with her the specifics of their request.

Lawmakers have said the appropriations bonds could be paid back in 20 years, adding some $33 million annually to the debt service paid through the state general fund, though Verbeten said her bill would instead call for a 30-year payback window.

“We’re fortunate we don’t have to tear down the arena and start over and rebuild what we have inside,” said Leipold, addressing lawmakers. “If we were going to start over, it would be about $1.1 billion.”

A rendition of the proposed renovation of St. Paul’s Xcel Energy Center. (Courtesy of the City of St. Paul)

Other requests for appropriation bond dollars

The arena complex isn’t the only project seeking state backing through appropriation bonds.

Michael Vekich, chair of the Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority, told lawmakers Tuesday that he would seek $30 million in state funding toward $85 million in security improvements around U.S. Bank Stadium in downtown Minneapolis, including bollards, anti-climb fencing and crash-rated fencing up to standards recommended but not required by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Vekich said the project is “focusing on the hardening of the perimeter,” he said. “U.S. Bank Stadium is nine years old and the facility is in overall great shape.”

State Sen. Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis, said while he had not voted for the stadium bill a decade ago, “we do have an obligation to keep this a world-class facility, and “it does make sense for the state to participate.”

Lawmakers noted that a Taylor Swift concert across two nights last June resulted in record hotel occupancy and hefty spending in downtown Minneapolis.

Why appropriation bonds?

The Senate Committee on Capital Investment on Tuesday received a presentation from Senate counsel Stephanie James outlining key differences between appropriation bonds and general obligations bonds, which are used more commonly to fund public projects. Among the differences, appropriation bonds can be used more flexibly than the latter, can be spent on privately-owned projects that carry a public purpose, and require a simple majority of lawmakers for approval instead of a three-fifths supermajority vote.

They’re paid back through annual appropriations that must be reauthorized by the state Legislature, making them riskier investments for bond holders, and therefore carry a higher interest rate. Appropriations bonds helped pay for the Minnesota Vikings stadium in downtown Minneapolis in 2014, the Lewis and Clark regional water system project near the intersection of Minnesota, Iowa and South Dakota in 2016, and environmental clean-up at a series of sites in 2021.

St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, left, talks with state Sen. Clare Oumou Verbeten, DFL-St. Paul, following a Minnesota Senate Capital Investment Committee hearing in the Senate Building in St. Paul on Tuesday, March. 25, 2025. The city of St. Paul and Minnesota Wild are funds to renovate the Xcel Energy Center. The request is for the state to pay for half of the projected $769 million cost. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Sports stadiums aren’t the only tools that city officials are looking to as they hope to revive two struggling urban downtowns.

Gov. Tim Walz announced Tuesday that as of June 1, he would require state employees back to downtown offices at least half-time. Carter noted that City Hall office workers will return to their cubicles three days per week as of April 1.

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Infants need to crawl before they can walk, which is one reason new parents get so excited when their babies become mobile – it’s the first stage on the way to better things.

Similarly, hockey players who have been injured need to begin skating on their own before they can return to practice and eventually return to the game night lineup.

For Minnesota Wild fans eagerly awaiting the return of Joel Eriksson Ek and Kirill Kaprizov from the ailments that have limited them to cameo appearances only in the second half of the season, the hockey version of learning to crawl might be coming this week.

“I would anticipate both players will be skating in the very, very near future,” Wild coach John Hynes said prior to his team’s Tuesday night meeting with Vegas. “Probably earlier than that if possible.”

With 23 goals in 37 games, Kaprizov is still tied for the team lead with Matt Boldy, who has played 71. The Russian superstar has played in just three games since Christmas, and he was shut down roughly two months ago to surgically repair the lower body injury that had him playing at what Hynes estimated was 60 percent capacity.

Eriksson Ek has played in 42 games, with nine goals and 15 assists, but was shelved not long after returning from his stint with Team Sweden at the 4 Nations Face-Off in February.

Both are offensive catalysts on a team that has gone through a notable scoring drought in March. But Wild general manager Bill Guerin insisted at the trade deadline that he expected both of them back in the regular season. With just 10 games left before the playoffs start after Tuesday, that may be a bit of a race to return for both players.

“I think it’s always exciting for them to be able to come back, if and when they do,” Hynes said. “They are both progressing very well. As I said, I would anticipate them hitting the ice here in very short order and get going.”

That potential good news comes on the heels of yet another injury to the defensive corps, after Declan Chisholm left Monday’s game in Dallas in the second period after blocking a shot. Hynes said Chisholm is currently day to day, as is forward Marcus Foligno, who missed his fifth consecutive game on Tuesday.

For the second time in three days, the Wild recalled defenseman Cameron Crotty on an emergency basis from Iowa. He warmed up but did not play, and then was officially sent back down before the game started. Jonas Brodin, who stayed home from the trip to Texas and is taking his return from injury carefully, was back in the lineup on Tuesday.

“If he wasn’t ready to play, he wouldn’t be playing,” Hynes said when asked about Brodin, who he has classified as day to day as well. “Now, in saying that, the intensity level of the games and things like that are hard. So you do have to see how the player responds to coming off of a long=term injury and then and then coming in.”

Milestone watch

Tuesday’s contest versus Vegas was the 300th career game for Wild defenseman Jake Middleton and the 400th for forward Freddy Gaudreau. In addition, goalie Filip Gustavsson got a nice ovation from the crowd when his NHL First Star of the Week honor was acknowledged early in the game.

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By HANNAH SCHOENBAUM

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Utah on Tuesday added new protections for the children of online content creators following the child abuse conviction of Ruby Franke, a mother of six who dispensed parenting advice to millions on YouTube before her arrest in 2023.

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Gov. Spencer Cox signed a law under the encouragement of Franke’s now ex-husband that gives adults a path to scrub from all platforms the digital content they were featured in as minors and requires parents to set aside money for kids featured in content. Kevin Franke told lawmakers in February that he wished he had never let his ex-wife post their children’s lives online and use them for profit.

“Children cannot give informed consent to be filmed on social media, period,” he said. “Vlogging my family, putting my children into public social media, was wrong, and I regret it every day.”

The Frankes launched the now-defunct “8 Passengers” channel on YouTube in 2015 and began chronicling daily life as a seemingly tight-knit Mormon family in Springville, Utah. With its large nuclear families and religious lifestyles, the state is a hotbed for the lucrative family blogging industry. The reality show “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” brought widespread attention to a group of Utah-based Mormon mothers and TikTok creators known as “MomTok” who create content about their families and faith.

The content-creation industry is largely unregulated, but several states are considering protections for the earnings of young creators. Laws in Illinois and Minnesota allow children to sue parents who do not set aside money for them. Utah’s law goes further, allowing content featuring minors to be taken down.

Son’s escape from home leads to investigation

The Franke children were featured prominently in videos posted up to five times a week to an audience of 2.5 million in 2010. Two years later, Ruby Franke stopped posting to the family channel and began creating parenting content with therapist Jodi Hildebrandt, who encouraged her to cut contact with Kevin Franke and move her two youngest children into Hildebrandt’s southern Utah home.

The women were arrested on child abuse charges after Ruby Franke’s emaciated 12-year-old son Russell escaped through a window and knocked on a neighbor’s door. The neighbors noticed his ankles wrapped in bloody duct tape and called 911. Officers then found 9-year-old Eve, the youngest Franke child, sitting cross-legged in a dark closet in Hildebrandt’s house with her hair buzzed off.

The women were each sentenced to up to 30 years in prison.

In handwritten journal entries, Ruby Franke insists repeatedly that her son is possessed by the devil and describes months of daily abuse that included starving her children and forcing them to work for hours in the summer heat without protection. The boy told investigators that Hildebrandt had used rope to bind his limbs to weights on the ground and dressed his wounds with cayenne pepper and honey, according to the police report.

Hoping to strike ‘content gold’

In a memoir published after her mother’s arrest, Shari, the eldest child, described how Ruby Franke’s obsession with “striking content gold” and chasing views led her to view her children as employees who needed to be disciplined, rather than children who needed to be loved. Shari wrote that her mother directed the children “like a Hollywood producer” and subjected them to constant video surveillance. She has called herself a “victim of family vlogging” and alluded in her book to early signs of abuse from her mother, including being slapped for disobedience when the now 22-year-old was 6.

Under the Utah law, online creators who make more than $150,000 a year from content featuring children will be required to set aside 15% of those earnings into a trust fund that the kids can access when they turn 18. Parents of child actors appearing in TV or film projects will also be required to place a portion of their earnings in a trust.

As the Utah Legislature was considering the legislation, a new Hulu documentary titled “Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke” reignited interest in the case.

At a hearing last month, Kevin Franke read statements in support of the bill written by two of his daughters, ages 16 and 11. He filed for divorce shortly after his wife’s arrest and petitioned to regain custody of his children from the state. His lawyer, Randy Kester, did not respond to email and phone messages over the past week seeking to confirm whether Kevin Franke had regained custody in the sealed case.

Eve Franke, the youngest child who police found emaciated with her head shaved, wrote in a statement to lawmakers that they had power to protect other kids from exploitation.

“I’m not saying YouTube is a bad thing. Sometimes it brings us together,” she wrote. “But kids deserve to be loved, not used by the ones that are supposed to love them the most.”

A convicted sex offender is jailed and charged with raping a woman at his St. Paul home on Sunday after meeting her on an online dating app.

Green Isiah Kelly Jr., 38, was charged Tuesday in Ramsey County District Court with third-degree criminal sexual conduct and criminal sexual predatory conduct. He was arrested Sunday night and remains at the county jail ahead of a first court appearance on the charges set for Wednesday. A defense attorney is not listed in the court file.

In 2013, Kelly was convicted of third-degree criminal sexual conduct for raping a woman who had passed out from alcohol at a party in St. Paul, court records show. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison, followed by 10 years of conditional release. Most people sent to prison in Minnesota serve two-thirds of their sentence in custody and the remaining on supervised release in the community.

Kelly was given an additional 15 months in prison in 2020 for repeatedly punching a fellow inmate in the face at Minnesota Correctional Facility-Faribault, according to court records. He was put on intensive supervised release in September.

According to Tuesday’s criminal complaint and St. Paul police:

A 37-year-old woman from Menomonie, Wis., reported to police about 4:15 p.m. Sunday that she had been sexually assaulted less than two hours earlier at a home in the 800 block of Aurora Avenue in St. Paul’s Summit-University area. She identified the suspect as “Isiah,” who was later identified as Kelly.

She told police she had met Kelly through a social media dating app about a month earlier, and that they began texting and made Facetime calls to each other.

She said the first time she saw Kelly she realized the photos he had posted on the dating app were not of him. She questioned him about that and he admitted they were not him. She said she told Kelly that she wasn’t interested in dating him, but was willing to be friends. They then talked casually.

On Friday, Kelly asked if they could get together, and she said she was coming into town the next day. Around 11:30 a.m. Sunday, she agreed to cut his hair and beard, and went to his home on Aurora Avenue to meet him. He took her to a local restaurant. While there, he said he wanted to be in a relationship with her, but she told him she wasn’t interested.

When they returned to Kelly’s home, he asked her to come inside to cut his hair and offered to pay her to do so. “(The woman) was suspicious because (Kelly) was bald,” the complaint states, adding that he then said he’d pay her full price of a haircut if she would trim his beard.

When she and Kelly went into his bedroom, where she thought she was going to trim his beard, he said, “Let’s get down to business” and grabbed her arm and began to kiss her on the neck, the complaint states. She told police she pushed him away and told him, “Not that type of business” and repeated that she did not want to be in a relationship with him and did not want to engage in sex.

Kelly then grabbed her by the arm and threw her on the bed. He ripped off her shirt, pants and underwear and pinned his body against hers as she screamed and kicked at him. She told police she repeatedly yelled, “No! I don’t want to have sex with you!” the complaint says. He then raped her.

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Kelly stopped when someone knocked on the door, she told police. When he answered the door in his boxer briefs, she grabbed her torn shirt and pants but could not find her underwear. She tried to leave the room with one pant leg on but Kelly met her at the bedroom door and told her not to leave. She was able to get past him and leave the home.

The woman drove directly to a hospital in Wisconsin. As she drove, Kelly called her multiple times. She recorded their conversations and provided them to police. Kelly apologized for not listening to her and said he let his “hormones speak for [him],” the complaint states. She told him that she had said “no” and yelled at him that what he did was “definitely not okay.”

After his arrest, Kelly underwent a suspect sexual assault examination. In an interview, investigators asked him if he knew the woman and he corrected the pronunciation of her name. He then said he wanted a lawyer.