Tag Archives: Bucks arena

Milwaukee, News

Milwaukee Common Council endorses $47M to help finance new Bucks arena

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A committee of the Milwaukee Common Council has endorsed a $47 million city proposal to help finance a new Milwaukee Bucks downtown arena.

The Zoning, Neighborhoods and Development Committee voted 4-1 Tuesday to recommend approval to the full council, which will review the proposal at its Sept. 22 meeting.

The Journal Sentinel (http://bit.ly/1Keyxl5 ) reports the panel made a major change: One block of North Fourth Street would not be closed permanently for a planned public plaza. Instead, the street would be closed only during Bucks games and other events, with the block used as a plaza at those times.

The $500 million arena would use $250 million in financing from city, state and county taxpayers. The Legislature and Gov. Scott Walker have already approved the county and state funding plans.

News, Wisconsin

Milwaukee Bucks spent more money lobbying Legislature than any other group this year

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The Milwaukee Bucks spent more money lobbying the Wisconsin Legislature than any other organization during the first half of the year, as the NBA team was pushing for approval of a new basketball arena, a report released Friday showed.

The state elections board, which oversees lobbying, reported that the Bucks spent just over $482,000 on lobbying through June. The next highest was the Wisconsin Hospital Association at nearly $379,000 followed by the state chamber of commerce at nearly $349,000.

The Bucks’ lobbying paid off. The Legislature, on bipartisan votes, ultimately approved spending $250 million in taxpayer money on a new stadium for the team. Gov. Scott Walker signed the measure into law earlier this month.

The amount spent by the Bucks doesn’t include lobbying done on the arena bill in July, which is when it passed both the Senate and Assembly. Those figures will be reported in January.

The budget, which dominated legislative debate in the first half of the year and into mid-July before it was passed, elicited more than 48,500 hours of lobbying. That comes to 367 hours for each of the 132 lawmakers, or two hours each and every day from January through June for every member of the Legislature.

Hours of lobbying accounts for far more than just in-person arm-twisting and includes such things as research and outreach to the public.

The two most heavily lobbied topics within the budget were Gov. Scott Walker’s proposals to change how medical assistance and long-term care services are delivered.

The first and third most-lobbied bills, outside of the budget, were Republican-backed Assembly and Senate measures to eliminate the prevailing wage law, which sets a minimum salary for construction workers on government projects.

Changes to that law were ultimately approved as part of the budget.

The second-most heavily lobbied bill outside the budget was one making Wisconsin a right-to-work state, where private-sector employees can’t be forced to join a union or pay dues as a condition of employment. The Legislature passed that in March, and Walker signed it into law.

Those three bills received 5,575 hours of lobbying time — or about 42 hours for each of the 132 lawmakers.

Overall, lobbying organizations spent $18.5 million through June. That is an increase of 9 percent over what was spent in the same time period in 2013, the last time a state budget was debated. Spending was still lower than the $23.9 million spent in 2011.

The total number of hours spent lobbying on all issues was 123,522, or 935 hours for each member of the Legislature. There were 598 lobbyists working for 718 registered lobbying firms.

News, Wisconsin

Senate leader on budget deal: ‘I don’t know where we’re at’

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Republicans who control the Legislature aren’t any closer to reaching a deal on a new state budget, with no agreements yet on how to pay for transportation projects or whether to back a financing plan for a new Milwaukee Bucks arena, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said yesterday.

“I don’t know where we’re at,” Fitzgerald said before the Senate met to consider a bill that would ban abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy. Democrats, who condemned the bill for the suffering it will cause women, called it an attempt to distract voters from the GOP’s floundering budget process.

Fitzgerald said there’s no agreement yet on whether to repeal or scale back the state’s prevailing wage law, which requires workers on certain public projects to be paid a wage based on a complex formula that critics say inflates their pay because of an over-reliance on union salaries. Backers of the law warn that overturning it will cause a free-fall in construction wages and quality.

Republican leaders have been trying to reach a deal with GOP Gov. Scott Walker on several unresolved issues in the two-year state budget. The budget-writing Joint Finance Committee has not met since May 29 to finish its work, and no meetings are scheduled.

The current budget runs through the end of June, but state government will continue operating into July under terms of the old budget if Walker has not signed a new one by then. Walker, who had urged lawmakers to get the budget done far ahead of July, has said he will not announce whether he’ll run for president until after he signs the budget.

“The governor gave us a very complicated budget,” said Republican Sen. Rob Cowles, of Allouez. “And complicated budgets don’t get done quickly.”

One of the biggest unresolved issues is how to pay for ongoing transportation projects, including the Zoo Interchange in Milwaukee and the expansion of Interstate 39/90 and I-94. Walker proposed borrowing $1.3 billion over two years and has refused to consider tax or fee increases.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is among some Republicans who support increasing vehicle registration fee hikes in order to lessen the amount of borrowing. But he said yeterday that it is no longer an option, given Walker’s opposition. Instead, Vos said he supports cutting borrowing for roads by at least $800 million, but no exact figure has been settled on.

“We’d like to have a significant reduction,” Vos said at a news conference.

Vos, in a meeting last week with Walker and Fitzgerald, floated the possibility of doing no borrowing — a move that would delay road and bridge work all across the state. Walker said Friday he would agree to that, but it wouldn’t be his preference.

It is unknown how much of the proposed construction is necessary. A federal court recently ruled against U.S. dollars going toward a proposed highway-widening project approved by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.

The court said the project was based on false data, and land-use advocates have performed studies showing that most of the state’s road-building projects are unneeded.

But Fitzgerald said yesterday that doing no borrowing was unrealistic.

“I think a mix is where we end up, I just don’t know where that ends up,” Fitzgerald said.

Part of the discussion is how much flexibility to give WisDOT in deciding which projects would be affected by a funding reduction, he said.

Both Fitzgerald and Vos have said they don’t have enough votes to repeal the prevailing wage, and instead they’re looking at making restrictions. State Sen. Duey Stroebel, a Republican from Cedarburg, said last week that he wouldn’t vote for the budget unless it repeals the prevailing wage for local units of government.

“The caucus is really all over the place,” Fitzgerald said on prevailing wage. “I know they would like to coalesce around something, but it hasn’t happened yet.”

Fitzgerald said senators have been talking about the Milwaukee Bucks arena financing deal — which relies on $250 million from taxpayers — and no decision has been made on whether to consider it outside of the budget, a move that could delay its passage.

Vos said Walker was personally calling on lawmakers to push them to support the Bucks deal.

News, Wisconsin

Scott Walker OKs Bucks arena deal that would cost taxpayers more than $400 M

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Taxpayers would pick up half the cost of a $500 million arena for the Milwaukee Bucks under a financial deal approved by Gov. Scott Walker. Curren and former team owners would pick up the rest of the costs, under Walker’s plan.

Walker, who plans to announce his presidential candidacy within the month, has argued for months that it will cost the state more in lost income-tax revenue if the NBA team leaves Milwaukee than it will to pay for a new downtown arena.

Standing behind a podium with a sign that read, “Cheaper to Keep Them,” he announced the long-awaited deal on June 4 surrounded by Republican legislative leaders, along with the Democratic leaders of the city and Milwaukee County.

“The price of doing nothing is not zero. It’s $419 million,” Walker said, one of repeated references to the estimated lost revenue and growth over 20 years if the team moves. “It’s not just a good deal. It’s a really bad deal if we don’t do anything.”

Walker, team officials, state lawmakers, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele have been negotiating behind closed doors for weeks.

The plan Walker spelled out includes $250 million already committed by the Bucks’ current and former owners. The other half will come from taxpayers, a contribution capped at $250 million, with the team bearing any responsibility for cost overruns. The taxpayer cost would grow to an estimated $400 million over 20 years with interest.

But there are numerous hidden costs associated with the arena that could turn the project into a financial boondoggle for taxpayers, just as the Milwaukee Brewers’ Miller Park has become. Some state lawmakers might be reluctant to give $250 million to a small group of wealthy people who would become even wealthier from the deal, at a time when higher education in the state is being cut by $250 million. That could have much worse consequences on the state’s economic future than losing a basketball team.

The Legislature’s top two Republicans, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, both said they weren’t certain yet whether the plan would win enough support in their chambers to pass. “What I’d like to focus on are the benefits of having this go forward,” Vos said.

Without a new arena by 2017, the NBA has said it will buy back the team and move it. The Bucks currently play in the 27-year-old BMO Harris Bradley Center.

The Bucks issued a statement, calling the plan “a big step forward in our collective effort to build a transformative economic and cultural asset in downtown Milwaukee.” The arena has been pitched as part of a larger $1 billion entertainment district in the Park East district, in downtown Milwaukee near the Milwaukee River.

Under the proposal, the state would issue $55 million in bonds, which paid back over 20 years would cost $80 million. The city would contribute $47 million, including building a new parking structure. The county would also issue $55 million in bonds and the Wisconsin Center District would issue $93 million in bonds.

Republicans who control the Legislature criticized parts of the plan reported during negotiations, raising questions about whether there are enough votes to approve it. The conservative group Americans for Prosperity, founded by billionaires Charles and David Koch, called for rejecting the deal.

“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.”

A majority of Republican state senators don’t want the arena financing plan to come under the two-year $70 billion state budget. An alternative route could be introducing the plan as a separate bill, where Democrats could join with Republicans to get enough votes in support.

Democratic Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca withheld judgment on the plan, saying he wanted to carefully review it and discuss it with others. The Milwaukee Common Council must also approve the deal.

Current Bucks owners Marc Lasry and Wesley Edens bought the team in April 2014 from former U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl for $550 million. At the time, Lasry and Edens pledged to contribute $100 million toward arena funding, but have since increased that to $150 million. Kohl also has pledged $100 million.