Things going well for AmFam Field and the Brew Crew

The Milwaukee Brewers aren’t just speeding toward another division title, and seeing more attendance at American Family Field on the way to doing so. Things are also going well for the Crew when it comes to funding the ballpark, as we found out last Friday.

On Sept. 5, the financial and operations committee for the Wisconsin Professional Ballpark District met jointly to discuss capital expenditures and finances for American Family Field, home of the Milwaukee Brewers.

The ballpark district budgeted to receive $4.9 million from the city and county this year, and each entity is on pace to provide more than $5.7 million. The payments are required under legislation passed to keep the Brewers in Milwaukee.

The increase was driven largely by the sales tax revenue in the city. The stadium funding package included a reduction in a sales tax administrative fee the state charges the city and county that is intended to help cover the annual payments.

The money will be used for regular maintenance at the Brewers’ stadium, along with replacement of the 100 and 200-level bleachers beyond the outfield walls, and upgrades at the Little League field outside of the stadium.

Things are looking up!

But I remembered how the Brewers’ ballpark bill was set up, and the Journal-Sentinel’s write-up seemed confusing to me, so I wanted to look back to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau’s summary of the 2023 action to see what was really going on.

What this is related to is the amount of money that the Wisconsin Department of Revenue keeps in sales taxes that all local areas in Wisconsin send on. They use some of that money to pay the workers who collect sales taxes from retailers and send the funds down to the local level for their portion of that sales tax. But instead of paying the remainder of that fee to the state, Milwaukee’s remainder will go to the ballpark.

2023 Act 41 requires that from the monies received from municipal taxes collected by DOR, 1.75% will continue to be retained by DOR for administrative fees, with the unencumbered balance at the end of each fiscal year paid to the newly-created baseball park facilities improvement segregated fund, for the purpose of making the City's required payments to the District. DOR will make the deposits but may not deposit a cumulative amount that exceeds $67,500,000. These deposits, are estimated at $100,000 in 2023-24 and $2,400,000 in 2024-25.

Then combine that estimate of $2.4 million from the City with a required contribution of $2.5 million from the County, and you get the $4.9 million figure quoted in the Journal-Sentinel article.

What’s not written correctly is that “each entity” would pay $5.7 million to the ballpark next year. From what I can tell, the number is $5.7 million TOTAL between the City of Milwaukee (who now would send $3.2 million) and the $2.5 million from Milwaukee County (which is set by law as part of the Brewers bill).

This likely also means the City of Milwaukee is getting larger-than-expected amounts of revenue from its new 2% sales tax, which would take some pressure off of the property tax and other constraints in paying for police, fire, pensions, and other needs. It also could mean that if sales taxes continue to grow faster than expected, that the City would stop paying toward the stadium before its original projected end date of 2045.

That provision also ended up being a bonus to almost every other county governments in Wisconsin, because the administrative fee for counties with sales taxes got dropped by 1%, with the locals being able to keep those extra funds.

2023 Act 41 reduces the percentage of county taxes that are deposited into DOR's administration of county sales and use taxes appropriation from 1.75% to 0.75%, beginning on July 1, 2024. It is estimated that this reduced rate would reduce fee revenues, and the corresponding transfer to the general fund, by $6.5 million in 2024-25, and will likely increase each year thereafter.

Prior to Act 41, 1.75% of county sales and uses taxes collected are deposited into the DOR's collection of taxes - administration of county sales and use taxes appropriation to cover the costs of administering county taxes. This appropriation is provided $3,183,700 PR in 2023-24 and $3,186,300 PR in 2024-25 under 2023 Act 19. At the end of the fiscal year, any revenues collected in excess of expenditures in this appropriation are transferred to the general fund. In 2022-23, $10.8 million of fee revenue was deposited into this appropriation, $2.9 million was expended, and $7.9 million was transferred to the general fund.

It is estimated that the 68 counties that currently impose the local option sales and use tax [in 2023] would, as a result of DOR's administrative fee being reduced from 1.75% to 0.75% on July 1, 2024, see total distributions increase by $3.6 million in calendar year 2024 and $7.5 million in calendar year 2025.

The biggest beneficiaries of this are projected to be Milwaukee County (getting another $1.95 million from this) and Dane County (getting $884,000), but in 2025, 70 of the state’s 72 counties are now seeing some benefit from this part of the Brewers stadium bill.

We got a 1% cut in sales tax administrative fees!

Now let's see if we finally can get more than 1 round of playoff baseball in Milwaukee for October, and in addition to more funds rolling in to pay for AmFam Field's capital projects, maybe that'll lead Mark Attanasio and the rest of ownership to invest more in players for 2026 and.....oh, let's not talk too crazy here.

Heck with it, let's just enjoy this Brewers run for the coming weeks, as it's been a lot of fun so far.