NEXT BATTER, THE DESIGNATED HITTER, FREDERIC BASTIAT.

The stadium subsidy drama continues in the neighborhood, this time in Wisconsin.

Gov. Tony Evers will propose spending $290 million in state money on improvements at the Milwaukee Brewers' stadium as part of the budget he introduces to the Legislature Wednesday.

The investment in taxpayer funding at American Family Field would come in the form of a one-time payment, paid for by a portion of the state's projected $7.1 billion dollar budget surplus. As part of the deal, the Brewers would sign a new lease that would keep the team in Milwaukee until 2043.

In a statement announcing the change, Evers framed his proposal as keeping a Wisconsin tradition alive, floating the possibility that without public support, the Brewers might leave Milwaukee.

The framing is interesting, as the governor is extending an inducement to the Brewers prospectively, rather than being placed in the position Illinois has been in with respect to the White Sox (build us a new stadium or we're off to St. Petersburg) or the Bears (make improvements to Soldier Field or we'll build a new place to suck in Arlington Heights).  Once Big Time Sports, Incorporated gets used to living at the expense of others, though, it wants to go on living at the expense of others.

The debate over public funding for the Milwaukee Brewers goes back decades. In 1995, then-Gov. Tommy Thompson convinced fellow Republicans in the Legislature to support a stadium deal that paid for the construction of Miller Park to replace the team's old home at Milwaukee County Stadium. The Brewers played their first game at the stadium in 2001. Miller Park was renamed American Family Field in 2021.

The 1995 Brewers deal authorized government bonding, or borrowing, to pay for construction of the stadium. Borrowing for the project totaled more than $259 million, according to a 2019 memo from the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau. Taxpayers in Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Washington, Waukesha and Racine counties paid an extra 0.1 percent sales tax to retire that debt and the associated interest. Evers signed a law in 2019 requiring the local sales tax to expire in 2020.

Today, the Southeast Wisconsin Professional Baseball Park District is charged with overseeing and maintaining American Family Field. Evers' offices said that without funding from the state, the district does not have the resources to meet its obligations to maintain the stadium.

Evers' proposal would make a one-time payment of the district of $290 million, which the governor's office said would save the state interest costs.

As I'm typing, the Milwaukee radio station that carries Brewer games is taking calls on whether the state should pay the money.  It gets complicated, because the team does not own the stadium, that park district does, and it is the custom in Wisconsin for special taxes to finance sports stadium improvements to expire.  Brewer executive Rick Schlesinger is on record as not favoring that special sales tax being brought back.  The one-time payment hides the reality that the maintenance of a stadium goes on.

That Wisconsin's divided government might involve even more unpleasantness between an aged executive and a populist legislature than we see in Washington will only lead to more nastiness.