The Wisconsin Senate government operations and joint finance committees added a bunch of amendments yesterday to the Milwaukee Brewers stadium renovation subsidy bill in an attempt to trim public costs slightly. Let’s attempt to understand what they all mean, together!
- Two of the state’s last three payments to the team, in the years 2044-46, would be eliminated. The payments were previously reported as $20 million a year, but now the Wisconsin Examiner says eliminating two of them would only save $20 million total; it can’t be that the Examiner is using present value numbers, because the present value of $40 million 22 years from now is about $13 million, so that doesn’t match up either. It’s possible that the last few state payments are set to be lower — the Examiner talks about the final payment being $10 million — but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
- A $2 ticket surcharge would be added to all non-Brewers events, raising an estimated $14.1 million through 2050. (Some quick math indicates that this assumes about 175 sold-out events over the next 27 years, or 6-7 a year, which is actually within the realm of possibility, at least.) That’d be about $8 million in present value.
- The Brewers would pay about another $10 million in rent through 2050.
- There would be an $8 surcharge on luxury boxes and suites — per suite per game? per ticket? No one is saying, nor do press reports indicate if this would go to the state or to underwrite the team’s increased rent payments.
So that all adds up to … gonna go with “not much,” though it could reduce the previously estimated $471 million price tag to maybe $440 million, depending. That’s better than when it was $507 million two months ago, but also nothing to get too excited about, which is pretty much exactly where many state senators seem to be landing:
“I’m not going to tell you anybody loves it, but they’re kind of where I’m at … [it makes more sense to] keep the Brewers and come out hundreds of million dollars ahead at the end of the 2050 lease than to allow the Brewers to leave.” —Sen. Mary Felzkowski (R-Irma), who voted for the bill in committee
“It still falls short of where I think we need to be, but the amendment is a step in the right direction.” —Sen. Julian Bradley (R-Franklin), who voted against the bill
“This is a deal that has ballooned, almost doubled in size since the governor’s initial proposal. … We’re looking at it ongoing 27 years, millions of millions of dollars, not only from state taxpayers, but from Milwaukee and Milwaukee County taxpayers. Meanwhile, the Brewers are putting up about 21% of the total cost.” —Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison), voted against
With this much ambivalence, passage in the full senate is, unsurprisingly, still up in the air. A full senate vote is expected sometime next week.
Also this just in!
I’m skeptical they can find 6 to 7 non-baseball events a year to sell out the place. The Chicago-Milwaukee corridor is pretty glutted with concert venues. Alpine Valley only books 1 or 2 show a year now because of competition from Wrigley Field and Northerly Island. And now they have to compete with a larger Bucks arena as well. And since it’s a natural grass baseball facility, tractor pulls and motor events are probably out of the question for 8 months of the year.
Let’s attempt to understand what they all mean :)