Abele Really, Really Hates The Poor

As I discussed this morning, state senators hammered out a deal on how they would rake over the taxpayers to provide corporate welfare for the billionaire Bucks owners.  One of the most significant changes from the old plan is how Milwaukee County taxpayers are going to have to foot their share of the bill.

Under the old plan, Milwaukee County Emperor would hand over the county's debt collection to the state, sending debt collectors to shake down the poorest of the poor in the county.  When this plan failed, the state would cut state aids to the county by $4 million per year.

Under the new plan, Abele would no longer be persecuting people for being poor and the state would go directly to cutting state aids to the county.

Emperor Abele was just besides himself at not having an excuse to attack the poorest of the poor for his amusement:

Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele blasted the change that would drop a plan to pay for the county's portion of the arena through improved collection of debts to the county.

"I think this is disastrous," Abele said, but he added later that the package is still a "net positive."

Abele criticized Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) for working to insert the change, which Larson said was necessary to secure his vote for the arena. But Abele said it opens a hole in the county budget that could result in cuts to social services and bus routes.

Abele said Larson's change effectively protects people who aren't paying their property taxes at the expense of people who are.

Larson and some other Democrats have responded that an arena for billionaire owners shouldn't be funded by people who haven't been able to pay their debts. He said Abele and other county officials will have to find a different way to contribute to the arena but said it's still possible that the state might take over Milwaukee County debts if county officials agree.

Abele said he would likely turn the debt he controls over to the state, but he added that most county debt is the responsibility of County Treasurer David Cullen and Clerk of Courts John Barrett.

So Abele admits that the deal is a "net positive" but he's still having a tantrum because now he has no cover for attacking poor people.

And to think that Abele and his apologists still think of themselves as progressives and Democrats.

The great irony of it all is that while Abele wants to attack people who don't pay their taxes or their tickets, he is one of the greatest offenders:

Chris Abele, the millionaire philanthropist running for county exec, doesn't pay any state or federal income taxes.

That's been well-documented.

But the guy apparently doesn't mind dipping into his wallet to help the city's meter readers meet their monthly quotas.

Records show Abele has racked up 92 parking tickets since Jan. 1, 2007. Of those tickets - which run $22 each - he paid a $5 late fee on 26 and a $15 late fee once.

Total cost: $2,169.

To most people, that's real money, but it's just a drop in the bucket for the scion of wealthy Boston businessman John Abele.

"Chris is on the go a lot," explained Brandon Lorenz, Abele's campaign spokesman.

Like nobody else is.

Ah! So social responsibility is only for the poor. Blue-blooded emperors can't be bothered with behaving like commoners.

And if you're waiting for Abele to kick in some of his own millions to pay for the arena, don't hold your breath.  Why should he use his money when he can pay for his playground with our money?

Bruce Murphy On Abele's Arena Scheme

Bruce Murphy, writing at Urban Milwaukee, gives his take on how Chris Abele bailed out Scott Walker on the bad arena deal.  After complaining about how the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Dan Bice covered the story, Murphy also points out that Abele's scheme won't work.  Then comes the good part (emphasis mine):

Speaking as a city and county taxpayer, I appreciate Barrett’s unwillingness to raise property taxes to pay for the arena. I appreciate the fact that city officials have been “defensive” negotiators — or what might better be termed “tough” negotiators — in demanding that the Bucks pay property taxes on all development beyond the arena, including the practice facility, adjoining restaurants and other development, all of which was going to be tax-exempt in Walker’s original proposal. (I’m told the plan has been amended to remove these exemptions, but I’ll believe that — gladly — when I see it.)

As for Abele’s promise to improve the arena deal to “bring more value” to it, I see no evidence that happened. All the data suggests an NBA arena has little or no economic impact on a city. Adding a provision empowering tougher debt collection won’t help the economy. And Abele’s latest idea, offering county land for $1 to the Bucks for ancillary development, adds insult to injury for taxpayers. If the land is really so hard to develop (and the city’s success developing its portion of Park East land suggests that’s untrue), then why not offer the land to all developers for that price and pick the best proposal? As far as I can tell, Abele’s “can do” approach consists of not negotiating with the Bucks or state officials over anything and simply complying with any idea they suggest.

Considering that Murphy is usually a big fan of Abele, that he would rip into him now says a lot.

Chris Abele's Sports And Snake Oil Super Center

Milwaukee County Emperor Chris Abele is teaming up with his good friend, Scott Walker, to try to shove the horrible arena deal down are throat.  There is so much wrong with this deal that it could not be covered adequately in just one post.

So for now, let's just look at the false bill of goods Abele is trying to sell us.

First, keep in mind that Abele has unilaterally agreed to put Milwaukee County on the hook for $55 million to help pay for the arena.  To pay for that, hell hand over $80 million in uncollected taxes and fines to mercenary collection agencies, who get to take another 15% from these people who couldn't afford to pay in the first place.  On top of that, he wants to sell county-owned land, worth $9 million, for one dollar.

In exchange for sacrificing the poor, Abele is making the claim that if we build the new arena, it will create a boatload of jobs.  Most of these jobs will be temporary construction jobs. The remaining few jobs will be mostly part-time jobs that pay sub-poverty wages.

If the arena isn't built, Abele warns that we'll lose a gajillion dollars in tax revenue and Milwaukee wii fall into Lake Michigan to become a fresh water Atlantis.  Or something like that.

Unfortunately for Abele, real life doesn't match his cherry-picked numbers.

Bruce Thompson, writing at Urban Milwaukee, points out that economic benefits from arenas are way overrated:

The appealing vision of economic prosperity conveyed in this statement runs counter to the consensus among sports economists who have studied the issue. Summarizing a number of studies, John Siegfried and Andrew Zimbalist reported in The Economics of Sports Facilities and Their Communities that “independent work on the economic impact of stadiums and arenas uniformly found that there is no statistically positive correlation between sports facility construction and economic development.”

In their review of the debate on the economic effects of professional sports and their role as an engine of urban economic redevelopment, Dennis Coates and Brad R. Humphreys summarize the divide between economists and advocates of public support for sports facilities and franchises:

Local political and community leaders and the owners of professional sports teams frequently claim that professional sports facilities and franchises are important engines of economic development in urban areas. These structures and teams allegedly contribute millions of dollars of net new spending annually and create hundreds of new jobs, and provide justification for hundreds of millions of dollars of public subsidies for the construction of many new professional sports facilities in the United States over the past decade. Despite these claims, economists have found no evidence of positive economic impact of professional sports teams and facilities on urban economies.

Thompson points out another interesting tidbit - that when Seattle lost their basketball team, it proved to be a good thing for them:

By contrast, a recent paper found that the Supersonics move from Seattle to Oklahoma City actually had a positive effect on property values near the Seattle arena:

After controlling for these different price dynamics, we find that the departure of the Seattle SuperSonics resulted in positive excess price appreciation for condominiums located within one mile of Key Arena. This result is robust to various measures of distance from Key Arena and impact periods over which the departure of the team might affect property values. The evidence supports the idea that the traffic, crowds, noise, trash, and other activities associated with NBA games in Key Arena represented a disamenity in the immediate neighborhood.

The results have important policy implications. Sports facilities and teams have generally been thought to generate positive amenity effects in nearby neighborhoods. Recently, TIF districts have become a popular financial mechanism for publicly funded stadium and arena construction projects. If these facilities generate important local disamenities, then TIF districts may not generate sufficient new tax revenues to pay for the facility construction, especially if the TIF district is relatively small. Also, existing local residents who live near new sports facilities may experience declines in the value of their dwellings… suggesting transfers to local residents from the owners of sports franchises are more appropriate.

Then again, this shouldn't be news to long time readers.  For two years, I've been sounding the siren that Abele wanted his own "stick it to Milwaukee" moment.  Likewise, I've been warning that Abele and friends were going to use artificially inflated numbers:

The plutocrats have tried to point to Oklahoma City as a guide on why we need to build the new arena.  But as Brewtown Gumshoe points out, Oklahoma City has a lot of things we don't, like warmer weather and Big Oil to help fund things.  He also points out that they also have a much lower quality of life.  (It is a right to work state, so it's expected that they have lower salaries and higher levels of poverty.)

On top of it all, the plutocrats will need to show what benefit there is to building an arena.  In short, arenas are money losers for the community:

Dennis Coates and Brad Humphreys found, "The multiplier for spending on sports in a city may be substantially smaller than the multiplier on other forms of entertainment spending, perhaps the most plausible explanation. The majority of the revenues from professional sports go into salaries for players, managers, coaches, trainers, scouts and to income for the ownership. Most of these individuals, especially the more highly paid ones, do not live full time in the city where the games take place. Unlike the wages and salaries paid to employees of local restaurants, movie theaters, car dealerships, department stores, etc., the large salaries earned by players and coaches leak out of the local economy."

This whole discussion is a fine example of what it wrong with the county, the state and even the nation.

Thankfully, people are catching on quickly and there is a bipartisan groundswell opposing to this awful bit of corporate welfare.

It might not be enough or in time to kill this waste of money but the politicians that support it could very well be ending their political careers with it.

Necessities Before Niceties, People Before Plutocrats

Chris Abele and the rest of the plutocracy are amping up their big push to get public funding to build a new arena for the Milwaukee Bucks.  The latest of this comes in the form of a "study" done by the Public Policy Forum, which is an elitist version of the MacIver Institute.    The study comes up with a number or "hypothetical scenarios:" in which the plutocrats can tap into public funding for the arena.

The plutocrats are so desperate to have more taxpayer money being funneled into their pockets that they are trying to hold Milwaukee's cultural assets as ransom to get at the money for the arena.

Of course, Abele is all in favor of using taxpayer money for the arena. Then if there is any money left over, he might let some go to our cultural assets.  Although he's made it pretty clear that he thinks that buildings like the Veterans War Memorial Center should be razed so that the lakefront can be enjoyed by the ultra rich and only the ultra rich.

The fact that Abele is putting plutocrats over people is not new.  I reported fifteen months ago that Abele was following Tommy Thompson's "stick it to them" routine by supporting a sales tax to build a new arena.  To show what a freaking hypocrite Abele is, even as he was pushing for a sales tax for the arena, he said that a sales tax that served a necessity such as the transit system was too regressive and would let the state off the hook for their responsibility.

Apparently, sales taxes are only regressive when the majority of the community benefits as opposed to the elite few.  And speaking of them, I'm sure that Abele would testify that each and every member of his millionaire's club known as the Greater Milwaukee Committee is suffering inconsolably, and needs the help to build their new playground.

But the plutocrats have some issues to overcome if they want to get this tax rammed through.

Their first problem is that there is very little support for this.  At their first "listening session," only six people showed up.  At their next one, there was only about 50 people.  Out of all the people in the region, that's a negligible amount.

Furthermore, Racine County, Waukesha County and Ozaukee County have all come out against being part of any type of regional funding source for this playground.

If Milwaukee County Supervisor John Weishan gets his resolution approved, Milwaukee County could have a referendum this fall on whether they want their tax dollars go to this plutocratic welfare.

Any approval for further supporting the plutocrats seems unlikely, especially since they have just announced that the Miller Park sales tax will be extended again and will likely last until at least 2020.

The plutocrats will also have a hard time persuading people to jump on their bandwagon since their arguments are nothing more than empty rhetoric.

They say we need the new arena to be a big league city. But when they built the current arena in the late 1980s, that didn't affect our standing at all.  Whey they built Miller Park in 2001, we got no gain from it.  They need to explain how this new arena would suddenly make us more prominent on the map.

The plutocrats have tried to point to Oklahoma City as a guide on why we need to build the new arena.  But as Brewtown Gumshoe points out, Oklahoma City has a lot of things we don't, like warmer weather and Big Oil to help fund things.  He also points out that they also have a much lower quality of life.  (It is a right to work state, so it's expected that they have lower salaries and higher levels of poverty.)

On top of it all, the plutocrats will need to show what benefit there is to building an arena.  In short, arenas are money losers for the community:

Dennis Coates and Brad Humphreys found, "The multiplier for spending on sports in a city may be substantially smaller than the multiplier on other forms of entertainment spending, perhaps the most plausible explanation. The majority of the revenues from professional sports go into salaries for players, managers, coaches, trainers, scouts and to income for the ownership. Most of these individuals, especially the more highly paid ones, do not live full time in the city where the games take place. Unlike the wages and salaries paid to employees of local restaurants, movie theaters, car dealerships, department stores, etc., the large salaries earned by players and coaches leak out of the local economy."

This whole discussion is a fine example of what it wrong with the county, the state and even the nation.

Milwaukee County has many needs that are not being addressed:

• The transit system needs dedicated funding before it collapses
• The mental health system is about to collapse while Abele abandons the chronically mentally ill without leaving them a safety net
• There are hundreds of thousands of dollars of deferred maintenance left from Walker and further neglected by Abele

Yet despite all of these immediate needs, the elite plutocrats are trying to take more money out of the system so that they can have a new play thing, regardless of how many people might be further hurt by the continued neglect of society.

It's obvious that Abele doesn't even have a clue of what is happening in his own county.  The view from his ivory tower apparently has some significant blind spots.  Which is all the more reason we nee to get rid of him as soon as possible.  Despite all of his money, most people who don't have an umbilical cord attached to his checkbook are ready for a change and see his vulnerability.