No, Miller Park is not getting "extra" money. But it still could be redirected to a better place

When you want someone to make a big story out of something very little, the Journal-Sentinel's Dan Bice is your man! Like with this Bice column from last week that had the headline of "Miller Park board left holding an extra $4.3 million after ending regional sales tax."

Members of the board for the Southeast Wisconsin Professional Baseball Park District — the landlord for the Milwaukee Brewers' retractable roof dome stadium — voted unanimously in March to end the tax. The 0.1% sales tax had been in effect in Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Washington, Waukesha and Racine counties.

But then something funny happened.

After the controversial tax was officially over, the Miller Park district received two payments for $4.3 million from the state Department of Revenue, which collected funds generated by the sales tax for the district.

This was not money the Miller Park district was expecting.

We're not paying for this any more!

"Windfall?" If you look at typical FY 2020 Miller Park tax distributions, around $2.5 million to $3 million was collected in a typical month. So why wouldn't 1-2 months of lag be expected?

Especially if you read the Wisconsin Department of Revenue's bit of information on the now-defunct Miller Park tax, the $4.3 million looks like a typical lag.

The monthly distribution is the sum of all completed transactions posted in our processing system from the 16th of one month to the 15th of the next month. For example, the sales tax on a transaction in December should be reported on a sales tax return due by January 20 or 31. If the return is processed by February 15, the tax would be included in the February distribution to the stadium district.

So if retailers were collecting the 0.1% Miller Park tax until the end of March, then maybe all of the totals were figured by April 15 and sent on to DOR, then the Miller Park district would get that money at the end of April.

But what if they took a while to send that information in (especially as COVID-19 broke out in March), or if the firms and/or individuals chose to file sales taxes in each quarter, and then took until April 30 to send their stuff in? Seems like it would make sense that there would be some residuals that would make up a May distribution along with the regular April collection.

However, that's not going to stop anti-tax yokels in the 262 from complaining, with an example being Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann.

Last fall, the legislature finally ensuredthe baseball district wouldend this tax in 2020. Act 28 was intended to ensure the Department of Revenue could properly sunset the tax.

Washington County taxpayers have waited too long for this tax to sunset and now Madison bureaucrats cannot figure out how to end the tax. Mike Duckett and the park district board are trying to do the right thing by returning the money the taxpayers.

If the Department of Revenue cannot figure out how to properly return the money, first thing next session, legislators should introduce a bill which would require the overpayment returned to the taxpayers of the five counties in the most efficient way possible.

Actually Josh, it looks like that money was properly collected by DOR through March 31, and worked its way back to the Miller Park district. So don't worry about that part. That being said, maybe the state legislators and the Miller Park district were thinking they should stop getting payments in March, and weren't thinking about the 6-8 week lag.

And if they want to give that $4.3 million back to the 5 county governments, especially in a year where budgets are going to be difficult to balance, it might be a smart way to deal with any of these residuals, now that the Home of the Brewers has finally been paid off.