Miller Park board has $4.3M after tax ended
Approving the regional sales tax to pay for Miller Park took multiple votes by the state Senate and ended up costing one lawmaker his political career after he switched his vote in the middle of the night back in 1995.
Putting an end to the sales tax in five Milwaukee-area counties has proven almost as tough.
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.
Nor does it know what to do with the unexpected windfall.
“The district doesn’t want the money,” said Mike Duckett, executive director of the Miller Park district.
In fact, Duckett said he offered to return the extra $4.3 million to the Revenue Department. He was told not to do that.
So the money is now sitting in an easily liquidated contingency fund until the state — or somebody — tells Duckett and his team what to do with it.
Clearly, someone made a mistake. But it is not clear who.
Officials with the state Revenue Department say they were simply doing their job and following the law when they collected the revenue from the
sales tax and passed it on to the Miller Park board.
“All sellers were informed to stop collecting baseball stadium tax from customers after March 31, 2020, as provided by law,” said Patty Mayers, spokeswoman for the Revenue Department. “Sellers pay the tax to the department when they file their sales tax returns after March 31, 2020.”
Mayers said she doesn’t know how much money sellers may have collected in error from their customers after March 31, the date the tax ended.
More than $600 million in taxes have been collected to pay for the construction of Miller Park and the district’s ongoing financial obligations to operate it. Since 2001, the Brewers have paid $19.8 million in rent to the district and another $106.8 million to maintain and enhance the ballpark.
So was the problem with the state law that set out the rules for ending the sales tax?
Scott Kelly, chief of staff for state Sen. Van Wanggaard, said state lawmakers took directions from the state Revenue Department when drafting the language for that law. He provided emails with detailed discussions between his office and state revenue officials on this issue.
Wanggaard, a Racine Republican, and state Sen. Tim Carpenter, a Milwaukee Democrat, were the lead sponsors on the Miller Park legislation.
In other words, the legislators were just doing as they were told to do by the state.
OK, but that still doesn’t really clarify much.
One possibility mentioned by several people was that the $4.3 million in surplus funds could be taxes due from retailers earlier this year but not collected until after the tax had ended on March 31. But that’s not certain either.
“You’re getting into the same muddy waters we’re in,” Duckett said.
Whatever the reason for the unwanted surplus, the question now is what should be done with it.
Should it be gobbled up by the money-strapped state or stay with the stadium district? The state law that created the regional sales tax said the proceeds could be used only for costs related to the ballpark.
Kelly said the funds should stay in the area where it was collected.
He said Wanggaard would support legislation to return half of the $4.3 million to Milwaukee County, a third to Waukesha County and the rest being divvied up among the final three counties that paid the regional sales tax.
“Our intent from the beginning was to get the (surplus) money back to the taxpayers,” Kelly said.
Duckett said that would be fine with him. Until a bill like that passes, however, he said the Miller Park district will hold onto the cash.
“We’re simply waiting for instructions,” Duckett said.