THAT'S THE WAY THE INFRASTRUCTURE CRUMBLES.

Saturday evening, southern Wisconsin got some rain, which might have put a damper on the Gemütlichkeit at Oktoberfest.  It made for a strange sort of rain delay at the local baseball stadium.

Roof is closed here at AmFam Field, but the rain appears to be falling on the field???? @Brewers @WISN12News pic.twitter.com/zu85JqBRs8

— Hannah Hilyard WISN (@Hannah_WISN) September 17, 2023

That leak came at an interesting time for the local infrastructure cult.

The Brewers have called American Family Field home since 2001 and have a lease that expires in 2030. State Democrats and Republicans have been debating on stadium renovation funding plans for several months.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, proposed a plan in which the state would spend $290 million in repairs and the Brewers would extend their lease by 13 years, through 2043. Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said that plan wouldn’t work and indicated he wanted to come up with a deal that included a longer commitment from the Brewers to remain in Milwaukee.

Why should stadium infrastructure be any different from any other infrastructure?

Raise the issue of state residents who might live in Twins country having to pay taxes for a Milwaukee stadium: prepare for back-and-forth about the tourism dollars that show up in Milwaukee, or not, if those tourists bring tailgating supplies with them, eat before the game, and spend nothing on concessions inside or eateries or hotels in the Milwaukee area. Call the whole notion of stadium subsidies a regressive transfer to owners and player: prepare for argumentam ad anecdotam about those parking lot attendants and beer vendors, perhaps from some protected status communities, whose very livelihoods are at stake if the stadium is empty. Sometimes, the politicians defending the stadium subsidies on those grounds are the very same people who use "trickle down" as a pejorative. Apparently, it's not, as far as the pouring of the beer is concerned.

Yes, I'm repeating myself, but the political wrangling over the stadium subsidies is amusing, apart from the White Sox and the Bears engaging in similar high-jinks in Illinois.  Apparently, when a government cuts taxes and bets on emergence, that's "trickle down," but when a government allocates money for a stadium, those beer vendors are "jobs created or preserved," and when a government appropriates money for a pet project, the people temporarily employed (can you say Solyndra, dear reader?) qualify as "jobs created."

So it goes with the latest round of rent-seeking in Milwaukee.

Republican leaders unveiled a roughly $700 million funding package that would keep the Milwaukee Brewers in Milwaukee through 2050 and finance maintenance and upgrade obligations as part of the team's lease with the state and to continue meeting league requirements.

The funding would come from numerous entities: Roughly $411 million from the state, which would come from taxes generated from player salaries, roughly $202.5 million from Milwaukee and Milwaukee County and $100 million from the Milwaukee Brewers.

"In the context of what we're trying to do, we want to be good partners," said Rick Schlesinger, Brewers president of business operations. "We understand that frankly it's not an easy sell whenever you're talking about taxpayer dollars, even to fund an existing commitment like this is. It requires everybody to chip in."

A quarter-century ago, Milwaukee-area politicians set up a special regional tax district to raise money to replace County Stadium with what became Miller Park, until Miller lost interest in owning the naming rights.  Those special regional taxes went away.  So it always is with infrastructure.  "What follows, though, is a scary manifestation of the extent to which local governments go to maintain the grand fiction that somebody else is paying for the services."  Yes, that goes to a post about street repairs, but the phenomenon of getting somebody else to pay for it follows government spending everywhere.

More generally, though, whenever there is talk of spending money on internal improvements, the advocates of Best Practice and the fraternity of Wise Experts are sure to follow. That might be the worst possible thing, compounding, as it is likely to do, the decisions that brought us to where we are. "The values of post-war American development are embedded in our current approach -- efficiency over resiliency, large up front expense over ongoing maintenance expense, comprehensive over incremental, one-size-fits-all over tactical -- and they keep us from seeing the opportunities that sit right in front of us." Perhaps I will have to continue to object to misuses of "efficiency." Too often, it's misinterpreted as attempting to do more with less, as in the quote.

I'm not carping without offering a different approach.

Perhaps in the Speech from the Throne State of the Union message, Our President will clarify what he'd like to do about fixing the "crumbling" (read publicly-financed) roads, sewers, and airports.  Yes, I'm going to be specific about that distinction.  Railroads are also part of "infrastructure" and one reason they don't get mentioned is the propensity of investors, where the return on investment justifies, to build faster bridges and add tracks through rough places.

Our President might be toying with changing the way in which the federal government pays for internal improvements.  The Interstate Highway system, for instance, required the states to put up ten percent of the money for construction, while the other ninety percent went through Washington.  The states remained on the hook for policing and snow removal, as well as maintenance, and, not surprisingly, we ended up with potentially more mileage than the states could maintain, and, from time to time, new federal appropriations to make good on the repairs.  That's not the only way in which states get inefficiently much road capacity.

Today's appropriation to build a rotary? Future liability.

Today's appropriation to install a water main? Future liability. 

Today's appropriation for new battery-electric trackless trolleys? Future liability.

Today's appropriation to build a new stadium? Future liability.

Let's try market tests instead.