Huffington Post - On ABC News' This Week Sunday, Gov. Scott Walker defended his proposal to spend $250 million of taxpayers' money to build a new arena for the Milwaukee Bucks:
"All across the nation when they do projects like this," Walker said. "It's a good deal."
The Bucks franchise, valued at $600 million, is owned by a group of billionaire financiers in New York. But no matter what it's worth, Walker's statement is at wide variance with the findings of independent economists.
Economic projections for subsidized stadiums are always vastly overstated. As Dennis Coates and Brad Humphreys wrote in a 2004 Cato study criticizing the proposed D.C. stadium subsidy, "The wonder is that anyone finds such figures credible."
And indeed the Washington Examiner reported in 2008:
Attendance at Nationals Park has fallen more than a quarter short of a consultant's projections for the stadium's inaugural year, cutting into the revenue needed to pay the ballpark bonds and spurring a D.C. Council member to demand the city's money back.
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