The governor summoned elected leaders to a press conference Wednesday afternoon in Madison, to jointly announce a plan under which taxpayers would put $250 million toward a new $500 million venue for the NBA team. The former and current owners of the Milwaukee Bucks have put $250 million on the table.
Walker says doing nothing regarding a public share would mean the Bucks would leave town and Wisconsin would lose $419 million, much of it in income tax revenue players pay the state. The NBA has said it will take over the team and move it, if it doesn't have a new basketball arena by 2017, to replace the 27-year-old BMO Harris Bradley Center.
“Doing nothing was not a good option. Doing nothing left a big hole in the state budget, left a big hole potentially economically in the city, in the county, in the region. This is a way where we have a win for tax payers,” Walker said.
The proposed plan for public financing calls for the state to borrow $55 million.
According to the deal, the City of Milwaukee would provide $47 million, in the form of building a parking garage and extending tax incremental financing. TIF funding is money the city leverages, under the assumption that higher property taxes the neighborhood eventually generates would pay back the money. Mayor Tom Barrett says he’ll now make sure the Common Council understands the merits of the proposal. Council President Michael Murphy has scheduled a committee meeting for Friday afternoon, to brief members.
The Wisconsin Center District, which oversees several downtown entertainment and convention venues would issue $93 million in bonds, to contribute to a new arena.
As for Milwaukee County's share, the state would assume responsibility for recovering tens of millions of dollars people owe the county. County Executive Chris Abele says the potential upside is enormous economic development for downtown, while failure would reflect poorly on Wisconsin.
“If we can’t make $250 million in private money an extraordinary opportunity put forward by people who have enormous amounts of successful experience in development, if we can’t get this right, what’s the message we’re sending to developers outside the state when we want to keep this state a hotbed for business,” Abele said.
Some members of the public might need more convincing. Several groups rallied Thursday at the Milwaukee County Courthouse, demanding that any new arena development must provide family-supporting jobs.
“It’s our greatest crisis in Milwaukee and there are no job standards whatsoever that it’ll go to Milwaukee folks, that they’ll be paid a living wage. We have a situation in Wisconsin right now where poverty rates are actually going up at the same time employment is going up. So we do not need more poverty wage jobs which actually harm the whole economy and drive it further down into the dumps,” Robert Kraig said, of the group Citizen Action Wisconsin.
Several other organizations weighed in on the plan late Thursday, including the political group Americans for Prosperity. State Director David Fladeboe criticized the plan in a statement reading in part: "Government shouldn’t be in the business of financing private sports stadiums. The current deal is based on fuzzy math, complicated accounting and millions of taxpayer dollars. Whether it comes from the state, the county, the city or other authority, these are taxpayer dollars. This proposal needs to be rejected and the people of Wisconsin need to be protected."
The Commercial Association of Realtors issued a supportive statement: "A catalytic project like the arena will fuel demand for retail, office, hotel and multi-family development which will increase the tax base for the City and create thousands of good paying jobs for the State. This is a generational opportunity to continue the transformation of the Milwaukee Region," according to Jeff Hoffman of the Boerke Company.
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Regarding a state share for an arena, it remains unclear how the proposal will fare in the Legislature. The Joint Finance Committee has not yet announced its agenda for next week, as the panel nears the end of its work on the two-year state budget. Leaders will decide whether to include an arena plan in the budget, add it as an amendment or let supporters propose a separate piece of legislation.
