La Crosse Housing Week, legalizing sports gambling, and Vikings need $300 million for stadium with Tax Foundation’s Hoffer

La Crosse housing week, paying $20 million a year for the Vikings 9-year-old stadium and taxing sins — like sports betting — with Adam Hoffer, director of excise tax policy at the Tax Foundation.

La Crosse Talk airs weekdays at 6-8 a.m. Listen on the WIZM app, online here, or on 92.3 FM / 1410 AM / 106.7 FM (north of Onalaska). Find all the podcasts here or subscribe to La Crosse Talk wherever you get your podcasts.

Started the show talking about La Crosse housing week, where Hoffer was one of the panelists for the Economics of Redevelopment talk, and the area’s housing crisis. 

After that, we discussed news that the Vikings stadium will need $300 million in maintenance over the next decade, and how taxpayers keep getting duped into funding billionaires’ toys. This comes a year after Wisconsin lawmakers approved $500 million in taxpayer money to fix the Brewers stadium.

After that, we hit on those excise taxes, the sin taxes, like legalizing marijuana in Wisconsin or how the state has carved out a narrow lane to legalize sports gambling.