A check for American Family Field with "Paid Family Leave" crossed out.
In his state budget Gov. Tony Evers has proposed $240 million for paid family leave. It’s likely to be dead on arrival in the Republican Legislature. He also proposed $290 million to fix up the Milwaukee Brewers’ stadium. That’s likely to pass.
Anybody see a problem here?
Paid family leave is a good idea and not just because liberals like to give away money. There are lots of conservative economic and social arguments in its favor. Every state is struggling with workforce shortages. This policy helps keep people on the job and it probably would help attract new workers to the state. Only 13 other states have this policy and some of those are not being implemented yet. It is also an undeniable pro-family policy and Republicans claim to be all about strong families.
But Republican Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) said that Evers’ proposal was not likely to survive in his house, and anyway he said that Wisconsin’s existing unpaid leave protections are competitive with other states since none of our immediate neighbors has paid leave. But isn’t that just the point? Don’t we want to get a leg up on them?
And, by the way, if it’s all about competitiveness with Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois and Michigan, then an analysis of our income tax structure shows that we’re plenty competitive with those states. We don’t need LeMahieu’s proposal for a flat income tax. Michigan and Illinois already have flat taxes and they have much higher unemployment rates and higher rates of out-migration than we do. Actually, Wisconsin, with its progressive income tax, has a slight in-migration.
As long as we’re talking economic development, while paid family leave would be a boost, blowing $290 million on a professional sports team is a criminal waste of taxpayer dollars. For one thing the out-of-state billionaires who own the Brewers don’t need the money. They can pay for the maintenance of their own physical plant. They’re asking for the money simply because they know they can get it.
Of course they’ll threaten to leave if the taxpayers don’t pony up, but even if they made good on that threat it would have no impact on the economy at all. Those discretionary entertainment dollars would just go to other things. A report by the Brookings Institute took down the bogus “studies” that claim sports facilities generate hundreds of millions of dollars. “Such promotional studies overstate the economic impact of a facility because they confuse gross and net economic effects,” wrote Brookings. “Most spending inside a stadium is a substitute for other local recreational spending, such as movies and restaurants. Similarly, most tax collections inside a stadium are substitutes: as other entertainment businesses decline, tax collections from them fall.”
Plenty of successful cities, more or less Milwaukee’s size, get along just fine without Major League Baseball. Nashville, Memphis, Indianapolis, Columbus, Portland, Boise, Las Vegas, New Orleans and Charlotte are just a few of them.
In fact, losing the Brewers might mean a more vibrant music, arts and theater scene in Milwaukee, or even nicer restaurants. And Milwaukee would be likely to end up with a fun Triple-A ballclub where a ticket and a beer don’t break the family budget. My point is that the Brewers do not produce wealth. They’re just one place that money is spent and if they’re gone it’ll be spent someplace else.
One thing the Brewers do accomplish is to attract people from around the state to spend those discretionary dollars in Milwaukee. Actually, since I like Milwaukee, I’m all for that. But what if you live anywhere else? Why do you want $290 million of your statewide taxpayer money to go to a place that is sucking discretionary spending out of your own local economy? I don’t see why this proposal would play well in Potosi.
Which, I would hope, will cause some heartburn for LeMahieu and Speaker Robin Vos (R-Burlington) in their caucuses. The payoff to the Brewers will be something that their big Milwaukee area donors will demand but which their mostly rural populist base might detest.
In a sane world the Legislature would approve Evers’ paid leave proposal in a heartbeat. Actually, they’d take the $290 million away from the Brewers and double the paid leave program.
Note: We do not live in a sane world.
Dave Cieslewicz is a Madison- and Upper Peninsula-based writer who served as mayor of Madison from 2003 to 2011. Both his reporting and his opinion writing have been recognized by the Milwaukee Press Club. You can read more of his work at Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos.
