Wisconsin assembly Democrats will only vote for Bucks deal if it doesn’t get more awful than it is already

The leader of Wisconsin’s state assembly Democrats says they won’t provide the votes necessary to pass a Milwaukee Bucks arena deal without “six or seven amendments” to the plan the state senate approved last week. And what does Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca want to see?

“By and large, one thing that’s important is making sure that 30 years from now when the Bucks come around and want a new arena again that we’re in much better shape for the taxpayers,” he said. “That we’re not in the same boat (as) now where we have to put millions of dollars just to keep the Bradley Center operating because it needs significant maintenance.

“Additionally, we want to make sure that we have the best arrangement for the greater Milwaukee area for workers and for having jobs that are meaningful that I think the Bucks share in.”

Item #2 is clearly some kind of local hiring agreement, which the Bucks’ billionaire owners should be happy enough to agree to, since it’s no skin off their nose who actually builds the thing, so long as it’s mostly the public that’s paying the bills. The first one is a bit more unclear — some kind of clause ensuring that the team is on the hook for maintenance and upgrades on a new arena, maybe? — but is certainly worth trying to address, given that the Bucks’ actual lease on this new arena is still yet to be determined, which could hide an awful lot of subsidies down the road.
And speaking of hidden subsidies, Bruce Murphy of Urban Milwaukee has taken another shot at totaling up all the public subsidies involved in the Bucks deal, and come up with this list:

• $195 million in Wisconsin Center District costs (including interest), less $45 million in accrued ticket taxes, for a total of $150 million. Murphy doesn’t convert that into present value, but it would come to about $70 million.
• $55 million from the state (against translating Murphy’s numbers into present value) in arena bonds, plus $20 million to pay off existing Bradley Center debt.
• $55 million from the county for arena bonds.
• $48.5 million from the city.
• $180 million in present value in property tax breaks on the arena.
• $50 million in savings from federal tax exemption on arena bonds.
• $17 million in sales tax exemption on construction materials.
• A bunch of “miscellaneous,” including continuing to exempt the Bucks from the state’s 7.9% corporate income tax, just because.

That’s at least $505.5 million in public subsidies, or just about exactly the total cost of building the arena. (Actually slightly less if you want to be technical, since the federal tax-exempt bonds really reduce the arena cost, so without those it would be a $550 million arena.) You can quibble over the details of the math, but the public — including taxpayers in Milwaukee, in the state of Wisconsin, and even in the rest of the U.S. — would be paying for the vast majority of a new Bucks arena, to replace one that is less than 30 years old. With a deal like that, here’s hoping the state assembly Democrats do actually put a little effort into making sure that it doesn’t get even worse once the lease is decided on.