For the third year in a row, Gov. Tony Evers has patted his administration on the back for record-breaking tourism in Wisconsin.

What Evers and the state Department of Tourism do not mention is that the recovery from a protracted government-mandated pandemic shutdown was built, at least in part, on more than $160 million in federal bailout money and a record doubling of the tourism department’s budget.

Like most of the nearly $2 trillion from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) thrown at the economic damage from the reaction to COVID 19, state officials have very little knowledge of how, exactly, the money was spent and what economic impact it has on tourism.

Tony Evers has had enough and that’s not a good thing for Democrats.

More Wisconsinites (48%) approve of the way he handles his job than disapprove (46%), according to the June Marquette Law School poll of registered voters.

Asked if they have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the current governor, the numbers are just slightly worse: 45% favorable and 47% unfavorable.

But that’s a lovefest in comparison to respondents’ view of the Democratic Party of which Evers is a part. Fully 61% of Wisconsin registered voters polled by Marquette last month have an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party — 14 percentage points higher than the unfavorables for Evers and 10 percentage points higher than the unfavorables for the Republican Party.

The bandwagon is getting bigger.

Attendance at home games for the Milwaukee Brewers, who have the best record in baseball, is averaging 29,882 thus far this season, according to Baseball Reference.

But a Badger Institute linear trend analysis of the per-game attendance this year shows an upward trend. If it continues, the average attendance figure could hit 33,391 — a record for AmFam Field.

There are more than 500 days until the next Legislature’s sworn in, and there’s plenty of unfinished business. Here’s the Badger Institute’s reckoning of good policy that most deserves a shot from the Legislature.

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