Brewtown Gumshoe: Milwaukee Bucks

Showing posts with label Milwaukee Bucks. Show all posts

Saturday, October 30, 2021

Keep It Simple, Stupid

Visit Milwaukee is claiming the Bucks Championship Had $58 Million Economic Impact.

That's possible. Anything is possible. But claims of such an impact are dubious at best.

As Roy Cordato's article noted:

Economic impact studies are everywhere.

Whether it’s to support a new highway project, special tax breaks for solar energy, the building of a civic center or sports complex, or to promote subsidies for Hollywood film producers, you can find an economic impact study, often touting how great the project will be for the state or local economy.

The formula is simple, predictable, and effective. A special interest group that stands to benefit from the project funds an economic impact study that purports to provide hard numbers on the number of jobs, the increase in wages, and the additional output that will be generated by the project or subsidy, and it will do this on an industry-by-industry basis. It makes grandiose claims about how much overall economic growth will be enhanced for the state or region generally. Once the report is completed, the special interest group that paid for the study will tout these results in press releases that will be picked up by the largely uncritical media establishment, ensuring that the political decision makers and others who determine the fate of the project receive political cover.

These studies all have several things in common. First, they typically use proprietary, off-the-shelf models with acronym names like IMPLAN (Impact Analysis for Planning), CUM (Capacity Utilization Model), or REMI (Regional Economic Model, Inc.). Rights to use the models are purchased by professional consulting firms who are hired by the interest groups to do the studies. Furthermore, seldom do those who actually perform the studies have formal training in economics. Instead their expertise is in using one or more of the aforementioned proprietary models. And finally, all of these studies ignore basic principles of economics and, as a result, do not meaningfully measure what they claim to be measuring—the economic impact of the public policies and projects that they are assessing.

One big problem with economic impact studies is the idea of substitution. If money that would have been spent elsewhere was simply spent on the Bucks, growth did not occur. Spending that would have occurred in one spot was merely spent in a different spot. The project (the development, the event, etc.) hasn't catalyzed growth. They haven't made an economic impact. They've merely realigned spending.

Now, this isn't to say all projects are unable to spur growth. But unless the impact study accounts for concepts like substitution and opportunity cost, it's mostly measuring the rewards that will go to primarily absentee owners.

Milwaukee Magazine had their own questions regarding the local economic impact of the Bucks championship run.

The sparkling, shiny, loud things (sports and entertainment events) often get attention, articles and praise. Yet, as far as being supposed economic catalysts, all too often, the economic benefits and impact are ephemeral to non-existent.

Maybe it's time we stop deluding ourselves in the belief that all activities and projects can be or need to be fun and exciting. Clean water, smooth roads, public transportation, quality schools, affordable housing and health care, and maintained infrastructure provide a better return on investment and generate much more growth than any stadium or convention center could ever hope to.

Saturday, June 1, 2019

Weekend Reading

Robert Mueller Blows Trump's 'No Obstruction' Lie To Bits
Top CEO Salaries Keep Rising
Joblines Bus Will End After August
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos Pitches A Fit Over A State Budget, Again
Is Uber's Stock Scam Evidence Of A Successful Business Model?
China Is Not The Source Of Our Economic Problems - Corporate Greed Is
Taking Aim At Tax Incentives
Wisconsin TV Station Reports "Immense" Bucks Arena Windfall After Talking Only To Guy Who Cut Bucks Arena Deal
When Winning Isn't Really Winning
Should Cities Regulate How You Design Your Home
Why Public Spaces Are Critical Social Infrastructure
Mueller's Illegitimate Hoax Investigation Somehow Just Led To Another Indictment Involving The Trump Campaign
When Socialists Swept Milwaukee
The Rise Of Corporate Market Power
Do Tax Breaks Help Or Hurt A State's Finances?

Saturday, October 21, 2017

Wisconsin Reading

During "Recovery" Much Of Wisconsin Stayed Subpar
The Two Wisconsins
The Man Who Beat The Highway Lobby
Little-Known Wisconsin Finance Authority Draws Scrutiny For Debt Deals Worth Billions
Wisconsin, Midwest Rejecting Coal
What Happened To Wisconsin?
Abele Battles Board On Budget
An Arena Fairy Tale With Blurred Morals
WEDC Failing To Track Job Creation, Retention
Rigged: How Voter Suppression Threw Wisconsin To Trump
Taxes Down, But No Impact On Jobs
The Bizarre Politics of Ald. Tony Zielinski
Zielinski Bashes Barrett, Flynn
Missing Out: Recent Tax Cuts Slanted In Favor Of Those With Highest Incomes
Middle of The Pack: Wisconsin Government Revenue Is Similar To That Of Other States

Friday, October 7, 2016

Fear The Deer

[source]

Friday, February 26, 2016

Mitchell Park Domes

It's time to re-imagine the Mitchell Park Domes

If we can spend $250 million in public funds on a basketball arena whose owners will charge us dearly to enter, surely we can invest a much smaller amount in a green wonderland that’s truly public.

Sunday, August 16, 2015

More On Scott Walker's Stadium Corporate Welfare

Scott Walker Takes $250 Million From U. Wisconsin, Gives $250M To Billionaire Sports Team Owners

On Wednesday, Walker signed a bill that would spend $250 million of taxpayers’ money to build the new arena. Last year, the team TISI +% was purchased by two billionaire hedge fund managers, Marc Lasry and Wesley Edens. In what’s become a standard ploy, the new owners threatened to move the team if they didn’t get a new arena.

As the Washington Post reported on Thursday, one of the team’s other owners is Jon Hammes, one of Walker’s top campaign fundraisers. Hammes’ son recently donated $150,000 to a pro-Walker super PAC. For the Hammes, this must feel like a pretty good return on investment: $150K plus some fundraising work in return for $250 million. (Obviously, Walker will deny that there’s been any quid pro quo. But Walker has been working on this deal for months: according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal, he included $220 million in state money for the arena in his budget back in February, but state lawmakers took it out.)

Scott Walker's Misguided Stadium Deal

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker on Wednesday signed a bill approving $250 million in public funding for a new arena serving the Milwaukee Bucks, which seems to fly in the face of both Walker's presidential campaigning as a fiscal conservative and his insistence that there isn't enough money for things like public education or living wages. In July, when Walker signed the state's new budget, he cut funding to the University of Wisconsin by $250 million.

The usual pitfalls involved in stadium financing are apparent here: unrealistic calculations of return on investment, an underestimated true cost to taxpayers, misplaced priorities, fishy-looking political relationships. Walker can talk all he wants about lowering taxes and cutting waste, but when all is said and done and you include $174 million in bond interest over 20 years, he's sinking upwards of $400 million into a stadium for a team owned by billionaire hedge-fund managers in a state with a projected $2.2 billion deficit. Owners Wesley Edens and Marc Lasry will kick in $150 million, while former owner and senator Herb Kohl is contributing $100 million, but $93 million in bonds by the Wisconsin Center District will be paid for by an extension of taxes on hotel rooms, car rentals, and food and beverage sales.

Scott Walker is America’s biggest hypocrite: The “fiscal conservative” is giving $450 million to wealthy sports owners

Tomorrow, Scott Walker will stand on a stage at State Fair Park in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and betray virtually every conservative economic principle there is by handing out up to $450 million in taxpayer money to wealthy sports owners to pay for private infrastructure at a time when public infrastructure is crumbling.

The massive sum will go toward the building of a new sports arena for the Milwaukee Bucks basketball franchise, pleasing the team’s billionaire hedge-fund-manager owners, who threatened to move the team if they weren’t given taxpayer tribute. Conservatives in recent years have feigned concern about corporate welfare, and this deal is really the ultimate expression of it: hundreds of millions of dollars from teachers, waitresses, factory workers and shop owners funneled to pay for an aristocrat’s show palace rather than needed public service.

Of all the things desperately wrong with this, perhaps the most salient is the fact that the “old” arena, the BMO Harris Bradley Center, is only 27 years old, inaugurated in 1988. Incredibly, this makes it the 3rd-oldest arena housing a professional basketball franchise, behind only Madison Square Garden in New York and the Oracle Arena in Oakland, both of which have been substantially renovated over the years.

We don’t upgrade anything in this country after 27 years. There are pipes carrying water to homes that date back to the 19th century. In Milwaukee, in fact, hundreds of those pipes burst at a record pace in 2014 due to the cold weather. Seventy-one percent of Wisconsin roads are in mediocre or poor condition, and fourteen percent of its bridges are structurally unsound. If you wanted to prioritize infrastructure projects needing attention in the Badger State, “replacing the arena we built in the late 1980s” would fall down the list, somewhere below “make sure the thing Wisconsinites are riding on in cars doesn’t crash to the ground.”

Scott Walker Push For Milwaukee Bucks Arena Subsidy Could Benefit His Fundraising Chief

Real estate mogul Jon Hammes, who has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican candidates and causes, is a prominent member of the investor group that owns Milwaukee’s NBA team. Last week CNN reported that he also will serve as the Walker campaign’s national finance co-chairman. Days after that appointment, Walker’s Republican allies in the Wisconsin state Senate backed the governor’s proposal to spend public funds on a new arena for the Bucks.

In his speech announcing his presidential candidacy, Walker presented himself as a free-market conservative and derided what he called a “top-down, government-knows-best approach” to economic policymaking. Hammes serves on the board of a conservative think tank called the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute that says “competitive free markets, limited government, private initiative and personal responsibility are essential to our democratic way of life.”

But under Walker’s proposal, the government would redistribute taxpayer money to a project benefiting Hammes and other Bucks investors.

Did Bucks Investors Pay Off Walker?

“However, before Walker proposed the arena deal, Hammes had donated more than $15,000 to his gubernatorial campaigns, according to state campaign finance data,” the publication reported. “Federal records also show that over the last decade, Hammes has donated almost $280,000 to Republican candidates and third-party groups — including more than $14,000 to the Wisconsin Republican Party. Hammes Company in 2010 donated $25,000 to the Republican Governors Association, which that year spent heavily in support of Walker’s first run for governor. Jon Hammes also contributed $500 to Walker while he was a Milwaukee county executive… Hammes became one of the part owners of the Bucks in 2014. A little more than three months later, Walker unveiled his proposal to spend a quarter of a billion dollars on a new arena for the team.”

Monday, July 13, 2015

Stadium Welfare

Sunday, July 5, 2015

Proposed Milwaukee Arena Musings

These are just a few more of my thoughts regarding the Milwaukee basketball arena boondoggle playing out.

A recent Milwaukee Biz Times article, Milwaukee County comptroller's report raises questions about arena funding, raises a number of issues, but fails to analyze the implications.

Part of the arena plan is for the county to contribute $4 million per year for 20 years. As Dan Bice explains in a separate article, "The county would 'certify' its uncollected debt, allowing the state to hit up Milwaukee County residents for at least $80 million over the next 20 years. The state would cut its aid to the county if it failed to gather up at least $4 million in any year under the proposal."

As the Milwaukee County comptroller, Scott Manske, reported, "While the county is able to make a $4 million annual payment out of existing cash flows from receivables, it is unlikely the county will be able to generate an additional $80 million over 20 years for payments on the arena debt based on the changes to the collection of its receivables."

The Biz Times article does give space to Patricia Jursik's view that this funding mechanism for the county is a "trick" and "a con game." Jursik stated, "The county executive's deal is unconscionable since this bad debt collection will fall mostly on the poor, the elderly, those suffering medical setback or loss of a job. Does the Buck's organization really want to be associated with such a deal?"

Sadly, this is followed by quotes from the usual cast of characters bloviating the usual arena platitudes. The arena will improve quality of life and it will create temporary and permanent jobs.

If work associated with development creates jobs and grows the property tax base, what is the excuse for not spending more on other development projects - roads, bridges, trains, greening public buildings, etc.? If public spending has such good a return on investment, why do the proponents only support such spending when the primary recipients are privately-owned developments?

The article continues, "Arena supporters also say the county should sell 9.8 acres of land in the Park East corridor to the Bucks ownership group for $1 to assist the plans for $400 million in ancillary development around the arena." The article then gives Tammy Maddente, VP at First Weber Group, space to opine how $1 for the land would be a great deal.

Should the state, county and city now have to pay for the sites of private developments. If this arena proposal is such a great deal for everyone involved, shouldn't the Bucks have to at least pay the market rate for the land. Should the public just give away its assets to private developers?

It's amazing how many professional stadiums have been built in Wisconsin, yet it seems we've learned nothing and logic is absent from the discussion.

As I've said many times, if these arena developments were such no-brainers, economic catalysts, why aren't market forces lined up to grab a piece of this low-risk, high-reward income stream? If, comparatively speaking, this arena-investment has such a great return, greater than alternative investments, why is the public footing most of the costs and taking on most of the risk? Why, suddenly, when it comes to building sporting arenas, is the market so bad at allocating resources?

Of course the answer is because these are bad investments. They money spent is basically corporate welfare and the supposed benefits are always exponentially exaggerated. And, don't forget, the costs are always much more than initial estimates.

To borrow a descriptor from Antonin Scalia, this arena-funding scheme for the county, along with the assumed and inflated ancillary outcomes, is complete jiggery-pokery.

Sunday, April 26, 2015

Bonds & Bondage: Indentured To The Sports Entertainment Cabal

The parade of boosters continues. The chairmen of Johnson Controls and Briggs and Stratton, and the former chief executive of Bucyrus International feel Investing Public Money In A New Arena Is A Smart Bet. Seeing as all three are millionaires, I'm curious how much of their own money they'll be betting? [Just an aside: the belief that there is a smart "bet" is actually what is known as the gambler's fallacy - "When an individual erroneously believes that the onset of a certain random event is less likely to happen following an event or a series of events. This line of thinking is incorrect because past events do not change the probability that certain events will occur in the future." Regarding stadiums and arena building, history shows us these are not economic catalysts, and to believe the latest construction is going to be "the one" is delusional.]

Robin Vos has called on the city and the county to "Step Up Their Game." The $50 million they've proposed, thus far, just isn't enough, according to Vos. The city and the county need to offer more corporate welfare to the Bucks billionaire owners.

Even the Commercial Association of Realtors is actively lobbying legislators in favor of more public funding for a new arena. But they're just hoping for a commission on the imagined new units in the area that they'll be able to sell. Too bad, according to the state's proposal, much of the development could be exempt from taxation. Add that to the fact that these are mostly low-wage jobs, most observers should see this is not a "good bet."

State Representative John Nygren also feels Milwaukee Needs To Commit More Money To New Arena. His main reasoning is that other cities have been blackmailed out of a higher percentage of the total project costs, hence, Milwaukee should put up the same amount of welfare as other cities. He cites flawed and inflated research from other boosters. But the ruse comes crashing down when Nygren writes, "The arena alone provides thousands of jobs and the gross dollar impact of the BMO Harris Bradley Center, both direct and indirect, on the Milwaukee metro area totals $204.5 million annually. However, should we do nothing, taxpayers are still left on the hook for $120 million in maintenance costs and debt related to the Bradley Center." How can anyone claim the Bradley Center is the huge economic driver and money-maker if after all its "greatness" since being built in 1988 it still owes $120 million (debt plus repairs)? Maybe it's time to get out of the stadium subsidization business. If it's so profitable, why are we in debt $120 million because of it?

It's a wonder the Moderne was constructed and all the redevelopment of Pabst City has occurred despite the fact that we haven't had a new arena. How necessary is all this money for an arena? The area is growing despite the "old" Bradley Center and the perpetual cellar-dweller Bucks.

I should note, I'm not saying public financing should never be used on projects. But it is one thing to build housing, provide good jobs, and redevelop blighted areas, it's quite another to subsidize billionaire sport team owners.

According to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the actual cost to the taxpayers, including debt service, could be as much as $488 million. Other monies include: $150 million will be from the new owners; Herb Kohl would kick in $100 million; and $220 million in bonding would come from the State.

Tax-exempt bonds are a loophole that has allowed sports stadiums to get a giant federal tax break for nearly 30 years. Bond buyers don't have to pay taxes on their earnings. President Obama's latest budget would bar the use of tax-exempt bonds to finance professional sports facilities. Just like the good little party and plutocratic shill he is, Paul Ryan Opposes Obama's Plan To Bar Tax-Exempt Arena Bonds. Sometimes you really have to wonder if our elected representatives have Wisconsin's best interest at heart or just their paymasters'.

Bruce Murphy, in numerous articles analyzing the subject, wrote about a Secret Tax Subsidy Society. Basically discussing how most of the details of the costs are hidden from taxpayers until it's too late. Murphy has even opined Bucks Owners Must Build Without A Subsidy. Here Murphy highlights the fact that other cities (only a few) have actually built stadiums with complete private financing, while also pointing out that the Bucks owners are billionaires and can afford to build the stadium. He also notes, "A study by University of Michigan professor Judith Grant Long found that, in recent years, the average public-private partnership has saddled cities with 78 percent of the cost and the teams with 22 percent. In 2010, she found, 121 professional sports facilities in the five major sports leagues required $43 billion in investments in new construction or major renovations."

In looking deeper into the State's plan for funding a new arena, Murphy discovered some disturbing facts:

Though the deal as revised by legislators calls for the state to provide $150 million in funding and the city and county to cough up as much as $100 million, in addition to providing a huge tax exemption to the Bucks, the “sports and entertainment district” spelled out by Gov. Scott Walker’s administration gives all control of the district to the state. It calls for 11 board members, with nine appointed by the governor, one by Milwaukee’s mayor and one by the Milwaukee County Executive. The language calls the sports district a “local government unit,” but the overwhelming majority of state appointed board members leaves no real power to local governments in Milwaukee. When asked, Walker’s spokesperson Laurel Patrick offered no answer as to why the board membership was structured this way.

The proposal also fully protects the state’s investment, noting that “if the team breaks or otherwise fails to fulfill its obligations under the lease, the professional basketball team would have to pay the state an amount sufficient to retire the state appropriation obligation issued for the sports and entertainment facility.” But there is no such protection for any investment provided by the city or county. Patrick offered no explanation for why the proposal offers protection only to the state...

Then there is the matter of the proposal’s lavish tax exemptions for the Bucks. The language of the proposal is quite sweeping, calling it not an NBA arena, but a “Sports and Entertainment District,” and specifying that a property tax exemption will be extended to “parking lots, garages, restaurants, parks, concession facilities, entertainment facilities, transportation facilities and other functionally related or auxiliary facilities or structures.” It would appear that nearly anything the Bucks owners develop in the area is going to be exempt from property taxes.

It was hardly coincidental that when the Bucks owners made their recent announcement of a $500 million, downtown development plan they called it a new “sports and entertainment district” and a “dynamic entertainment district (that) will serve as a destination that draws the people of the region together.” It suggests that the owners and Walker made sure each was using the same language. Indeed, the Bucks’ proposal for an entertainment district calls for building a separate “state of the art” practice facility, a 60,000 square foot public plaza and a new parking facility. By a neat coincidence, the state proposal for the district specifically awards an exemption for a practice facility and “parks” like the public plaza the Buck plan to build. Additionally, any “restaurants” or other “auxiliary facilities or structures” would be tax exempt...

In short, Walker will assure the estimated $10 million in state income taxes on ballplayers isn’t lost, but has created legal language that allows the Bucks a massive property tax exemption. Not only will the $500 million arena be tax exempt, but so will the beer garden, practice facility, public plaza, probably any Bucks apparel and merchandise shops and who knows what else? Assuming everything within the entertainment district will cost at least $700 million (a very conservative estimate) and figuring that value times the current property tax rate of $29.97 per $1,000 of value, that would equal a property tax payment of nearly $21 million per year, meaning local taxpayers would lose far more in tax revenue than state taxpayers would gain. Over the likely 30-year life of the arena that’s a total property tax exemption of $629 million. (That might be a high estimate as property tax assessments for new buildings are often set below construction costs. On the other hand, I’m applying the current tax level for all 30 years of use, while the buildings’ value and taxes are likely to rise over time.)...

The proposal’s language also specifies that the “income of a sport and entertainment district would be exempt from the state corporate income and franchise tax.” This language is very broad and would seem to include anything the Bucks develop under the banner of an entertainment district. Given the state corporate income tax of 7.9 percent, this exemption could be huge and wipe out most of the $10 million in annual income taxes Walker says he wants to protect.

It’s almost comic to hear state legislators repeat the mantra that the city and county must contribute to the Bucks because they will benefit from this huge development coming downtown. In fact, they are getting nothing but a massive non-profit eating up acres of developable land that will now be stricken from the tax base, and at a time when Downtown has become a magnet to new businesses. For the city, county, Milwaukee Public Schools, Milwaukee Area Technical College and Milwaukee sewerage district, this will represent a huge loss of property taxes that could have been paid by business, residential and retail development. This tax exemption is so far-reaching it leaves no way for the city to create a Tax Incremental District to finance a contribution to the proposed arena because no taxes will be collected in the district.

On top of all this, an American City Business Journals report found, "Milwaukee and Green Bay are among 20 markets where total personal incomes (TPI) were deemed to be insufficient for their existing teams, let alone any new franchises. TPI is the sum of all money earned by all residents in a given year." The report, "Analyzed the income bases of 83 major markets across the United States and Canada. It investigated whether those areas have the financial ability to adequately support their existing teams in baseball, football, basketball, hockey and soccer -- and determined whether they have the wherewithal to support new teams."

The promises are false, the costs are high, and the jobs are bad. Sounds more like a stupid bet to me.

For Further Reading:
A Public Plan
Drowning in Delusions
Loot, Loot, Loot For The Home Team
Nudging Away Nonsense
Professional Sports Subsidies
Should Cities Pay For Sports Facilities
Stadium Subsidies
Subsidy Resources
Welcome to Walmart
Basket Case
Buck The System
Buck You
Economic Engine Or Albatross?
Is There Anything A Stadium Can't Solve?
Overblown Bradley Center Impacts
Stadium Swindle
More Bradley Center Bull
Bradley Center Booster Keep Pounding That Drum
Will Herb Kohl Blackmail Milwaukee?

Friday, January 2, 2015

Let Milwaukee Bucks Owners Pay Their Own Way

Under the current plan, private investors would own the team franchise (an appreciating asset with high upside potential) while taxpayers would support an arena (a depreciating asset with a considerable downside). A better deal for taxpayers would be to treat them like investors with an ownership share in proportion to their contribution, entitling them to gains and not just losses. In particular, they would share in the gains in franchise value if the team left town after they built an arena. ...

It is time to pivot away from attempts to gain tax support for the depreciating asset of this business. The economic recovery has been very kind to the high-income owners; they should fund the entire business, both the franchise and the arena. [source]

Sunday, September 14, 2014

Give Taxpayers Better Deal On Milwaukee Bucks Arena

Give taxpayers a better deal on Milwaukee Bucks arena

To break the logjam, here's a hybrid solution that does not require tax gimmicks or out-sized estimates of the public benefits of having a sports franchise: Let taxpayers be investors with a chance to gain, rather than be donors with a guaranteed financial loss. Offer them the opportunity to earn the same rate of return on their tax dollars as the private investors earn on their investment as the value of the franchise rises over time. Their share of the gains could easily be remitted back to the taxing authority and used for needed public purposes and/or tax cuts.

The current NBA business model separates the franchise investment from the arena investment. The franchise is an appreciating asset, as demonstrated by the recent huge increases in franchise sale prices. In contrast, the arena is a depreciating fixed asset, as demonstrated by the claimed worthlessness of the BMO Harris Bradley Center after only 26 years. Under the taxpayer-as-investor proposal, the taxpayers would share in any future capital gains in proportion to their investment in the total value of the enterprise.

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Sunday Reading

Gambling With Civilization
20 Big Questions In Science
Median Wage Falls To Lowest Level Since 1998
Mathematics In "The Simpsons"
U.S. Government Is Not $16 Trillion In The Hole
Talgo Files Claim Against State
Why A Regional Tax Is Needed
The Myth Of The Exploding Federal Government
Collapse Of U.S. Infrastructure Spending
No Evidence Obamacare Forcing Large Numbers Into Part-Time Work
The American Health Care System Sucks
A War On The Poor
New Moves To Bail Out The Bucks

Saturday, October 5, 2013

The Toys Go Winding Down

James Causey, of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, is the latest to jump on the 'Milwaukee must build the Bucks a new basketball stadium or else' bandwagon. He opines, The clock is winding down for the Bucks.

Local taxpayers should not expect Kohl to foot the entire bill for a new or renovated facility. No owner will take on such a task. But, remember, taxpayers didn't pay for the Bradley Center. The facility was a $90 million gift from the late philanthropist Jane Bradley Pettit. And although everyone groaned about the stadium tax — that we all still pay — most of us are glad we have Miller Park.

"Everybody was bitching about the tax, but the stadium is pretty, so everything is OK." That's not a justification for spending millions of taxpayers' dollars.

Plus, most of the taxpayers probably never even go to a Brewers game. The majority of residents paying the stadium tax most likely never attend a game.

The Bucks averaged 15,035 people per home game last year. The five counties paying the stadium tax have a combined population (as of 2012) of 1,761,778. That's less than 1% of the five-county population per game attending a game. If we assume no person in the five-county area saw more than 1 game over the course of last season, based on last years attendance, that would still be less than 35% of the five-county population that went to a Bucks' game. [(15,035 * 41 home games)/1,761,778]

The Milwaukee Brewers' attendance in 2013 was the lowest its been since 2006. Miller Park is a lovely stadium...it should be, it was built in 2001. The primary reason for increased attendance was not the new stadium, it was fielding a competitive team. Hence, the Brewers are back to their losing ways and less people are showing up.

In 2013, the Bucks had the 4th worst attendance and the 13th worst record. If the public must fund stadiums, can we at least have a clawback provision which assures that teams spend a certain amount on payroll? If they don't, they need to repay the subsidy. If we have to fork over cash to fund a private operation, we need some assurances that we'll be getting a competitive team (or at least a team trying to be competitive) for our investment.

Causey concedes stadiums are a low priority, "Milwaukee has a number of problems more pressing than a new sports arena. Our schools could use more funding, poverty is a very real problem and some of our roads and streets have so many potholes that you have to play dodge ball with your car. These issues will still exist with or without a new Bucks facility."

Or we could take the money to address those real problems instead of spending it on a sport stadium.

Yet, we really need this stadium?

For Further Reading:
Buck The System
Buck You
Big League Confusion
Stadium Swindle
More Bradley Center Bull
The Time Is Now?
Is There Anything A Stadium Can't Solve?
The Legalized Bribery That Is Sports Subsidization
It's A Scandal! It's A Outrage!
Bradley Center Boosters Keep Pounding That Drum
Overblown Bradley Center Impacts

Sunday, June 30, 2013

Big League Broke

Over the past few years, here in Milwaukee, we've heard evermore rumblings regarding a new, or remodeled, basketball arena. The usual cast of characters has steadily increased their rhetoric. For them, the bottom line is that these arenas, stadia, etc. are economic engines. If your city wants to be "big league," every 20 to 25 years or so, the public must subsidize the remodeling of an existing arena or the building of a completely new arena.

Yet, Don Walker recently reported, Head of Wisconsin Center District Says It Has No Money For Arena. From the Wisconsin Center's website, "The Wisconsin Center District (WCD) is a government body created in 1994 to fund, build and operate the Delta Center in downtown Milwaukee, and continue operating the existing venues now called the U.S. Cellular Arena and Milwaukee Theatre."

I thought the boosters were claiming these convention centers and arenas were economic catalysts? How can these facilities be considered catalysts or game-changers if there isn't any money to show for them?

We're an important part of the economic fabric, business is booming ... nonetheless, we're broke.

Typical businesses have an accounting item called replacement reserves. It's just what it sounds like - a reserve of money to replace and fix things. It's an annual expense item, a reserve of money, just in case there are issues that need to be addressed to allow a continued income stream to the facility, building, etc.

Stadiums, and their ilk, seem to operate under the facade of being economic igniters, yet they have no money for repairs, nor do they have any (or hardly any) money for renovations. Wisconsin continually has pumped money into the Bradley Center, Miller Park and the rest of our white elephants. If you can't fund your own operations, you're not a game-changer, you're a charity case.

The cost to the public for these arenas does not support the return we receive on our investment. The public needs to get out of the business of being responsible for building the playing fields for professional sport teams.