Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d write: I agree with the Koch Brothers.
Well, not exactly Dave and Charlie directly but the state director of Americans for Prosperity, their political arm. AFP Wisconsin has come out against taxpayer support for a new Milwaukee Bucks arena.
"Government shouldn't be in the business of financing private sports stadiums," AFP Wisconsin state director David Fladeboe said. "The current deal is based on fuzzy math, complicated accounting and millions of taxpayer dollars,” he said as quoted in a story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Amen, (Koch) brothers!
It is as much a settled matter of economics that public subsidies for sports palaces don’t pay off as it is a settled matter of climate science that human-caused climate change is happening. Yet, civic boosters in virtually every community faced with yet another obnoxious big sports franchise ultimatum almost always cave to their demands.
In this case the NBA says it will buy the Bucks and move the team unless the taxpayers hand over hundreds of millions of dollars to build a new arena for the billionaires who own the team. The latest configuration of the deal calls for taxpayers to fork over $400 million including interest payments.
It’s political extortion, pure and simple. Milwaukee and Wisconsin should show these guys the door, which might give other cities and states the courage to start saying no as well. And eventually, sports teams would start paying for their own capital investments, just like manufacturers pay for their own factories and farmers pay for their own barns.
What big-time sports have figured out is that through these threats they can get the taxpayers to sink money into depreciating assets (arenas and stadiums) that substantially improve the value of the appreciating asset in the team itself. The sports complex is always a “public-private partnership,” while the team is always (except for the Green Bay Packers) 100% privately held. The upshot is that wealthy team owners laugh all the way to the bank while the public gets stuck with the bills.
Now, if public officials were to demand a stake in the team or if they were to simply build the arena, own it, and charge the Bucks a hefty long-term lease rate to pay off the bonds and then some, this would be worth discussing. Instead, what’s being proposed in the agreement that the Bucks, Gov. Scott Walker and local Milwaukee officials came to last week is nothing but a straight-out taxpayer subsidy to a well-heeled professional sports franchise.
The public gets this intuitively. That’s why 79% of Wisconsinites oppose a public subsidy for the Bucks and even two-thirds of residents in the Milwaukee metro area are against it.
So for public officials to keep pushing for such a righteously unpopular deal is annoying enough, but here’s where it gets weird. Because there don’t seem to be enough votes among Republican legislators for this proposal, the latest scheme seems to be to pull it out of the budget (where it really belongs since this is about spending taxpayer money) and put it in a stand-alone bill. The idea is that Democrats will join with some Republicans and pass it.
If that happens the Democrats will have proved how much they deserve to be in the minority. They haven’t been asked to the table for a single significant policy discussion. Reactionary policy after reactionary policy has been jammed down their throats. In fact, they often don’t even know what the Joint Finance Committee will be voting on until shortly before meetings begin. But when it comes to doing the heavy lifting on an unpopular issue they may be asked to pitch in.
Assembly Democratic leader Peter Barca (D-Kenosha) has declined comment about whether that might happen. Seriously, Peter? The comment you have should be unprintable but it should convey the idea of “no.”
For Democratic leaders to aid and abet this kind of nonsense wouldn’t just be nuts. It would be bat-shit crazy. No, wait. That’s not strong enough. It would be Rick Santorum crazy. No, we need to go another click. For Democrats to provide votes to subsidize billionaire professional sports franchise owners when eight out of 10 voters oppose it would be Ben “Obamacare is like slavery” Carson bat-shit crazy nuts.
