The Milwaukee Brewers stadium subsidy story so far:
- Feb. 2022: Team owner Mark Attanasio commissions a study of upgrades he’d like to his then-21-year-old stadium through 2040, when he has an option to extend his lease through, though he’s only required to stay until 2030.
- June 2022: Milwaukee County supervisor Peter Burgelis suggests developing the area around the stadium and kicking back the resulting property taxes to Attanasio for stadium upgrades.
- Feb. 2023: Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, sitting on a $6.6 billion state budget surplus, proposes giving $290 million of it to Attanasio, on top of $70 million left over in a stadium reserve fund, for a total of $360 million. In exchange, the Brewers would extend their lease until 2043.
- March-April 2023: Wisconsin assembly speaker Robin Vos, who is a Republican while Evers is a Democrat, says nuh-uh, no using the state budget surplus — but kicking back around $360 million in sales and income taxes would be just fine.
- May 2023: MLB commissioner Rob Manfred pretty much threatened that the Brewers would be moved if they didn’t get stadium renovation money, albeit in Rob Manfredese.
- May 2023: The Milwaukee County Board passed a resolution unanimously opposing using any county funds for the Brewers.
- June 2023: A “bipartisan group of Wisconsin legislative leaders” was said to be considering Vos’s spend now, pay for it later through tax kickbacks plan.
- August 2023: Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said he was exploring the idea of diverting money from a 0.4% sales tax hike from transit and public parks to paying down pension debts, which would free up pension funding to be used for Brewers stadium spending. This would increase the total subsidy to a present value of around $430 million.
- August 2023: Newspapers start reporting unsourced rumors that the Brewers could move to Nashville or Charlotte.
- August 2023: Southeast Wisconsin Professional Baseball Park District chair Tim Sheehy endorses the sales-tax diversion scheme.
That’s where things stand now: Everybody in the state of Wisconsin, it seems, wants to funnel around $400 million in public money to the Brewers’ near-billionaire owner in exchange for a mere 13-year lease renewal, they just can’t agree on which $400 million. And as Urban Milwaukee’s Bruce Murphy reports, the ultimate decision may come down to which elected officials can strongarm the others into getting their way:
Milwaukee Alderman Bob Bauman says he is hearing that “it’s going to be crammed down our throats” by the Legislature regardless of how the Common Council or county board votes. “The funding would just be taken out of our state shared revenue.”
That may not be as easy to do as it sounds. Such a dictate would destroy the relationship that Republican legislators have recently cemented with Crowley and Johnson. It would also be opposed by Democratic legislators, and the Republicans may need some of their votes, because the gerrymandered Assembly has many radical conservatives who may oppose any subsidy. (The Koch-financed Americans for Prosperity group opposes any “bailout” for the Brewers.)
That’s a lot of horse trading and vote counting, and Murphy still isn’t done: Evers, he notes, can always veto any plan Vos and the legislature comes up with and propose another dip into the next state budget surplus next year.
All this sounds like a recipe for gridlock, and that’s indeed where things stand now. But counting on political infighting to ward off a massive giveaway of public money is seldom a good strategy — Attanasio still has that expiring lease as a hammer (even if moving from a 20-something-year-old stadium in Milwaukee to a similar-sized market like Nashville with no stadium at all isn’t really much of a threat) and lobbyists who can knock politician heads together until they agree on which pool of public funds to tap. And, of course, it’s only 2023, so there’s plenty of time before the Brewers’ lease expires, even if maybe not an infinite number of massive budget surpluses in the state’s future.
And if nothing else, the throwdown among legislators has successfully shifted the Brewers debate from “Should we give $400 million to the local wealthy sports owner?” to “Which $400 million should we give to the local wealthy sports owner?” Check out, for example, this radio conversation among the owner of the La Crosse Loggers amateur team, an economist from the pro-business Tax Foundation, and the local radio guy on the subject of how to “solve the Brewers stadium” situation, which discusses every possible source of revenue except the Brewers themselves. (Loggers owner Dan Kapanke says that’s off the table because Attanasio doesn’t own the stadium, which is yet another reason why sports team owners try to make sure they don’t own their buildings, just all the revenues that come from them.)
Host Rick Solem does suggest that it might be cheaper for a state to just buy its teams and avoid these constant subsidy demands every couple of decades, at which point Tax Foundation economist Adam Hoffer points out that leagues would never allow that because it would preclude them getting constant subsidies. “That makes sense,” replies Solem, before going on to suggest selling the stadium to the Brewers for a dollar, which is similarly shot down on the grounds that Attanasio wouldn’t like that, since it wouldn’t end up with him pocketing $400 million. Strangely, when you go into a discussion with the premise “How can we make a rich guy richer without it costing him anything?,” the solutions on tap seldom end up being good for the general public.
The Republicans literally just allowed us to raise the sales tax by 2%, but put a whole lot of awful restrictions on it, in order to keep the city from going bankrupt. Now they want us to dip into that money (again designed to keep the city from going bankrupt) so that we can bail out an owner whose baseball stadium lives in a parking lot, and is designed so suburbanites can come in and out without ever having to set foot in “scary Milwaukee.” I think I’d prefer they move, and I love the Brewers.
Let them move! Rich owner relying on the tax payers. What a joke. In Seattle we got Climate Pledge Arena built for over a billion dollars. Did the tax payers pay for it? ABSOLUTELY NOT! The owners of the Seattle Kraken paid for it all. Just saying, LOL!
Actually Oak View paid for it, not the Kraken owners, but close enough.
And the reason that happened is because Seattle voters passed a ballot initiative that made it hard for the city to provide a big public giveaway:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170906223834/https://deadspin.com/want-to-avoid-getting-screwed-on-arena-deals-look-to-s-1800657108
As a Seattle native, I continue to follow the deals in the Seattle area closely. Yes, their was finally a stop to this madness, but only after outrageous deals. My friend Tom Matoff was in charge of the Sound Transit proposal in 1995. It won in King County where most of the investment was, but slightly lost in one other county, so they built nothing. Meanwhile, the people forced a stadium onto the ballot and voted it down. A different pocket paid for it instead. He left in disgust before there was another vote where the line to Bellevue was eliminated. Which then had to be restored in yet another vote. And when stadiums/arenas are funded it is urgent like the new one in Northgate, but it took 25 years to get light rail from downtown Seattle to Northgate.
I take issue with this whole site. I mean the premisses is just so flawed.
Do you realize that almost 50% of the stadiums in this league are below the median in terms of amenities and owner happiness? I bet you don’t. FIFTY PERCENT! Imagine!
And apparently some of the fans don’t like some of the facilities either. I’m told. We have several focus groups working on that. Some have suggested a blue ribbon panel but I don’t know if we need to go that far just yet.
We moved this franchise once. Don’t make us do it again. Obviously it’s the last thing we want to do, so don’t make us do it. Plus we’ve got others that we don’t want to move before we get to this one. Man, I’m underpaid. But that is a hole other discussion for another day.