It looks like a done deal. Two parties that can’t seem to agree on the time of day can come together on one thing: handing over a half billion dollars of the taxpayers’ hard-earned money to billionaires.
That’s the upshot of the bill that passed the Assembly on Oct. 18 on a bipartisan vote of 69-27. Of the 27 “no” votes, 16 were Republicans and 11 were Democrats. Local Democratic Reps. Jimmy Anderson (Fitchburg), Mike Bare (Verona) and Francesca Hong (Madison) voted against the handout to the Brewers. Local representatives, also all Democrats, who voted for it were Reps. Samba Baldeh (Madison), Melissa Ratcliff (Cottage Grove), Shelia Stubbs (Madison), and Lisa Subeck (Madison).
In addition to Gov. Tony Evers, Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley are also on board. The bill is strongly supported by the Milwaukee business community and by unions. With all that behind it, I expected the bill to pass, but not by that margin.
Giving taxpayer money to professional sports teams is very unpopular. Even 56% of Milwaukee residents oppose a handout to the Brewers while only 25% support it. Back in the late 1990s when the original Brewers stadium was constructed with tax money, Sen. George Petak (R-Racine) lost his seat over his vote in support. So, I thought both parties would let more of their members off the hook. Instead, the bill passed with 19 more votes than it needed.
The bill (AB-438) now moves on to the Senate, where it is also likely to pass. Evers, who proposed a $290 million subsidy for the Brewers in his own budget, will no doubt sign it.
The bill would give the Milwaukee Brewers $546 million in state and local tax dollars to maintain and fix up AmFam Field over the next 26 years. At this point the details aren’t all that important. State taxpayers get ripped off for about $411 million while Milwaukee taxpayers get slammed for another $135 million. The team will kick in only $100 million. And this will happen without:
- Anyone demanding to know why the billionaires who own the team can’t pay for all of the improvements they want for their own physical plant.
- Anyone demanding that the team be more specific about what exactly will be paid for to make sure that (as I suspect) normal business expenses aren’t being rolled into what is being billed as maintenance and improvements.
- Anyone demanding that, if the taxpayers are going to spend a half billion dollars in investments that will increase the value of what is already a $1.5 billion asset, the taxpayers get a share of the team.
Professional sports teams don’t want to own their own venues because buildings are a depreciating asset while the teams themselves are very rapidly appreciating assets. That’s why taxpayers get stuck with the costs of stadiums and arenas — in this case AmFam Field is owned by a quasi-public stadium authority — while the owners get all the upsides of the taxpayer investments in the facilities they play in and profit from.
What’s more, they don’t have to own the venues outright to pretty much control them entirely. The Brewers owners’ even profit from other events that have nothing to do with their team, like concerts. For the billionaires it’s all gravy. For the taxpayers we get stuck with the bill whether or not we go to the games or even like baseball. I love baseball and I still think a taxpayer subsidy for the Brewers is absurd.
I’m not surprised by the Republicans. Corporate welfare is in their DNA. This, after all, is the party that wanted to shovel billions of taxpayer dollars into Foxconn. But the two dozen Democrats who voted for this should be ashamed of their vote. This is what you want to spend a half-billion dollars on? Not early childhood education, not daycare, not helping communities clean up PFAS, not the UW, but this?
Democrats will be quick to point out that they have supported funding for all those things and some have even been approved, albeit at lower levels. But my point is that Speaker Robin Vos had only 44 votes for this in his caucus. He needed Democratic votes. And they just offered them up without demanding anything in exchange — and for a project that is deeply unpopular with voters all over the state, even in Milwaukee.
Democrats should have either forced Vos to make a half dozen more of his members walk the plank or forced him into a deal where actual worthwhile projects were funded in addition to the payoff to the billionaires. Because the Milwaukee business community is still so important to the Republican Party and because they wanted this so badly, Vos had to deliver. If Democrats had forced his hand he would have had to make some concessions.
Once again Vos has outmaneuvered the Democrats.
Dave Cieslewicz is a Madison- and Upper Peninsula-based writer who served as mayor of Madison from 2003 to 2011. You can read more of his work at Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos, where an earlier version of this piece appeared.
