BREAKING: Bucks deal agreed to, also not agreed to

access_time personNeil deMause

This just in from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s reporter on the Bucks arena deal:

So there you go, indeed. All signs are still pointing to a vote of some kind today, but who the hell knows when or on what. I’ll update this post as things progress, though given that I’m just sitting here watching Twitter like the rest of you, you may see it as soon as I do.

 

UPDATE (12:48 pm): Stein has an update:

UPDATE (1:21 pm):

That’s Central time, so everybody meet back here in 39 minutes.

UPDATE (2:01 pm): They’re still working on the bill, but Jason Stein has some hints what’s in it:

That “debt stuff coming out” doesn’t mean the county wouldn’t still have to pay for it — it would — just that it would have to look under the sofa cushions for $4 million a year instead of having the state find it by garnishing poor Wisconsinites’ paychecks. In other words, it’s Chris Larson’s “optics” change to make the subsidy look less, you know, creepy.

So the only real change here is the ticket fee, which if it’s a significant amount could be an actual shifting of costs to the Bucks owners, since ticket taxes typically cost teams, not the public. (Think of it this way: If there’s a 10% ticket tax, that’s 10% the team can’t charge you without you giving up and watching at home.) The Bucks only sold $17 million in tickets last year, so even a 10% tax (which we’re almost surely not talking about) would only generate a couple million dollars a year, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the $457 million current public cost.

I’ll be checking in on and off today — if you really want to follow all the ins and outs of this, I’d suggest following Stein on Twitter. Otherwise, check back way later for the denouement.

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21 comments on “BREAKING: Bucks deal agreed to, also not agreed to”

  2. Mark, and they do not fear ridicule for approving horrendous deals. State bill will force MKE county, with an alredy starved budget, to pony up $4 million a year and a city convention district to borrow $93 million against their will and not start to pay back that debt for 13 years. “If you’re not on the table you’re on the menu!” Even Sen. Darling, on the convention center board, is merriily cooking its goose.

    Only a hedge-funder would dream up a plan for no payments for 13 years! Maybe the state will borrow money from one of Wes Edens many sub-prime mortgage firms. He just bought 3 new ones this week.

    Plus the city deal on the table is designed to run local businesses out so the Bucks can have a mega-sports-bar mall. All while mouthing glib platitudes…

    The Dems are falling in line like the Milwaukee-bashing GOP folks (led by Scooter Walker).

  3. Nothing yet, but if you’re trying to watch live, you get the bonus of the session when the state of Wisconsin basically decided, “Yeah, open records? That’s not going to happen in this state anymore.”

  5. Top item scheduled here:

    http://www.wiseye.org/Programming/CoverageSchedule.aspx

    Clicking the “LIVE” link takes you to here:

    http://www.wiseye.org/Home/AirVideoStream.aspx

  7. Neil, they might impose the ticket fee on all arena event tickets, which still might not make a big dent.

    However, the Bradley Center already charges a ticket fee which goes to maintenance. Even so, the BC never kept up (even with a free arena) and hit up the state for $10M in bailouts since 2006.

    Since the Bucks will manage the arena and collect all revenue (with the state nominally owning it), any ticket fees will come right out of the Bucks revenue stream. A real no-go! Just like they won’t let naming rights pay off anything in this 50-50 public-private partnership. They need to get all the rewards and taxpayers get all the bragging rights…

  8. Okay, current ticket tax is $2 a head, and raises about $1.5 million a year:

    http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/bmo-harris-bradley-center-to-raise-its-ticket-fee-for-athletic-events-b99213522z1-247119251.html

    So to get any significant contribution to a new arena, they’d need to at least triple that. Not holding my breath.

  9. Ticket tax in the amendment to the bill is still $2, with the money going to the district and the state. Nothing to MKE.

  10. Michael: So the ticket tax would be the same as at Bradley Center currently? Where are you seeing that?

  11. Okay, just found this:

    “Barrett says a ticket surcharge ($2 per ticket) is now part of the bill. 75% of that money would replace the Wisconsin Center District bonding — with the rest going to the state’s general fund.”

    http://fox6now.com/2015/07/14/vote-wednesday-on-bucks-arena-funding-plan-all-signs-indicate-senate-will-have-votes-to-pass-it/

    The WCD bonding is $93 million, so unless the new arena sells four times as many tickets as the Bradley Center, a $2 tax isn’t going to come close to paying it off.

  12. Five times as many tickets if you also want to replace the money that the district is currently getting. That’s a lot of Disney on Ice.

  13. All this tinkering was just for optics (as Mayor B. noted at a town hall meeting). They don’t care if taxpayers get screwed. They just want some cover to make it look less awful.

    Even Chris Larson, who knows this will slam his MKE district is all in. He just tweaked the deal so that County Exec Abele will get blamed for sucking $4 million a year from a decimated budget, rather than being able to pretend it’s coming from “found” $$ from debtors.

    They’re voting now. It passed the Senate. Bucks win big. 21 ayes. 10 nos. Yuck!

  14. So what happens now? I know the bill still has to be passed by the Assembly in Wisconsin, but is that body stacked so much with arena supporters that it’s going to simply sail through?

  15. They needed some assembly Democrats on board, but if they got a 21-10 majority in the senate, there’s no way the assembly is going to pose an obstacle.

  16. I heard they were wanting a new convention center as part of the deal. Are they giving any thought to renovating the Bradley Center for this purpose i.e Cobo Arena in Detroit? That would save millions in demo right there.

  17. FYI:

    Here’s the wikipedia info on it:
    Cobo Arena
    The 12,000-seat Cobo Arena was attached to Cobo Center, and was renovated for adaptive reuse and reopened as a 40,000 square foot ballroom with pre-function, 21 additional meeting rooms and a 30,000 square-foot three-story glass atrium overlooking the Detroit River in September 2013.

    Cobo Arena was originally built in 1960. It was the home court of the NBA’s Detroit Pistons from 1961–78. It was the venue of the NCAA Men’s Division I Indoor Track and Field Championships from 1965–81. It has also hosted many concerts through the years including The Doors, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Bruce Springsteen, Parliament-Funkadelic, Duran Duran, the Cure, Phish and Madonna. Bob Seger recorded all of Live Bullet and part of Nine Tonight at Cobo Hall. Yes recorded two songs at Cobo Arena for their Yesshows album, released in 1980. Kiss recorded most of live album Alive! and video Animalize Live Uncensored at Cobo Hall and is it featured in their video for Modern Day Delilah. As the venue for “Big Time Wrestling” on every other Saturday night in the 1960s and the 1970s; it was considered to be the “Home the Sheik built!”[citation needed] It was also home to the Detroit Rockers of the National Professional Indoor Soccer League and the short-lived Michigan Stags of the World Hockey Association. It also hosted Skate America in 1995, 1997, and 1998.

    Cobo Arena also hosted Presidential speeches, boxing, wrestling, figure skating, roller derby and local Detroit-area graduation ceremonies. On June 23, 1963, following the Detroit Walk to Freedom civil rights march, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the original version of his I Have A Dream speech there to a full house.

  18. Jordan, never thought of that till your post. Certainly could/should be considered except for one thing. The state deal gives the Bucks about 19 acres from the state, including the Bradley Center. County Exec Chris Abele will personally hand over 10 acres to the Bucks from the county, and the mayor hopes to hand over a couple more acres. At least 30 all told. Not just a sports palace but an entire kingdom.

    While that site has great civic potential, perhaps with some open space in a concrete canyon, the new Billionaire Kings of Milwaukee would never allow it. As proposed, the site can only be used to make beaucoup millions for the Bucks owners. So maybe that idea could work for some other future dead arena, before it’s handed off to billionaires. Besides, the convention district does have another very-much-alive UWM Panther Arena, built in 1959 it’s now much love and much used by UWM and others.

    If the city leaders had a smidgeon of vision they would have pushed to use this site as a real gathering space, hub in Westown that lacks people due to all the massive buildings. No, they will hand it all over to the Bucks to completely control and cross their fingers. There’s a town plaza nearby amid all the municipal/courthouse buildings that’s post-apocalyptic–too awful to try to fix.

    “Where’s there is no vision the people perish.” This biblical quote could portend MKE’s fate for the foreseeable suture.

  19. Thanks Milwaukee Native for the comments, and I definitely love the quote.

    Surely the city could wrestle the BC back away from the Bucks if the decision was made to make it a ballroom and convention hall as a part of a bigger plan to expand their convention center. Most of what the Bucks new arena is focusing on appears to be catty corner from the BC. I must admit, the new arena is ugly and that proposed development already looks dated.

    Hopefully the city and Bucks come to their senses. Tearing down a 27 year old arena that was a gift to the city is just despicable. But I’m not holding my breathe on it.

  20. “Unlike John Oliver, a number of people fear deer.”
    Like Wisconsin taxpayers & all others who drive a car. Lousy pests.

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