1 year after sales tax hike, Milwaukee County faces budget challenges

 

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- Even with a sales tax rate that nearly doubled in 2024, a report examining Milwaukee County's budget found tough decisions -- and possibly cuts -- could be on the horizon as soon as 2026.

The nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum released a report on Wednesday outlining the county's budget outlook. It noted County Executive David Crowley's proposed 2025 budget avoided cuts by relying on federal COVID-19 relief money, dipping into debt service reserves and putting off transit spending, including a two-year pause on the development of a north-south bus rapid transit line to match the east-west Connect 1 route.

However, the report noted local governments will exhaust the last of their pandemic aid this year. Even with Milwaukee County raising its sales tax rate from 0.5% to 0.9% as part of a law that increased state aid for local governments, the report concluded, "it is now evident that a return to difficult budgets will come sooner rather than later."

Driving that concern is the end of COVID relief, significant public safety costs related to staffing the county courthouse and sales tax revenues falling short of projections this year.

"Well, we've been saying this was never going to solve our problems from the very beginning," Crowley said of the sales tax increase Wednesday. "And we continue to push for what was actually needed."

County Board Supervisors Priscilla Coggs-Jones and Willie Johnson, Jr. hosted a budget town hall Wednesday night at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Center.

Fewer than a dozen non-county staff members showed up to listen during the event's first half hour. One of the residents attending the town hall was Nakiiya Williams, who said her biggest concerns were public safety, maternal mortality and education.

"First would be crime," she said. "Not only just crime as a whole but crime as it relates to our young people."

Crowley said in an interview Wednesday public safety will continue to drain the county's tax revenue. Specifically, he noted aging infrastructure at the courthouse complex, which includes the courthouse, county jail and public safety building, which houses the sheriff's office. 

Crowley also mentioned overtime costs for sheriff's deputies, which along with sales tax revenues falling short of projections, helped open a $19 million budget gap over the summer.

"We also have to realize that Milwaukee County is very unique," Crowley said. "We have an extremely large sheriff's office, and when you talk about just our deputies in the courthouse staffing courtrooms, we're talking about 114 deputies."

While Crowley's budget was able to move dollars around and utilize the last remaining pandemic dollars to plug a 2025 gap, the policy forum's report stated, "the county is likely to return to budget-cutting mode as soon as 2026 and almost certainly by 2027, when the transit cliff hits."

The prospect of a transit cliff has already stalled progress on the planned Connect 2 bus rapid transit line, a north-south route that would largely run along 27th Street and compliment the east-west Connect 1 route. Crowley's 2025 budget uses $10 million in COVID aid to avoid cuts to the Milwaukee County Transit System.

Williams said she doesn't ride the bus but worried about the impact future transit cuts would have on others.

"If you don't have as many bus lines going to where you need it to be, that may be the difference between you being able to take a job and not take a job," she said.

Both Crowley and Coggs-Jones said the county will continue to push for the state Legislature to give local governments another funding boost in the upcoming 2025-27 biennial state budget.

"I'm hoping between myself and my colleagues, we can take that same energy and enthusiasm up to the state," she said. "And ask for more of the safety net we really need."

Crowley and Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson spent plenty of time in Madison during the first half of 2023 as they met often with Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Republicans in charge of the Legislature.

Crowley said he'd be back at the state Capitol next year with a specific call for help funding the county's public safety needs. He noted the county's deputy staffing level for the courthouse alone is comparable to the total number of deputies in Rock County.

"We have a long road ahead of us," Crowley said. "But that's one of the reasons why we continue to strengthen these partnerships."

A public hearing on the executive budget is scheduled for the evening of Oct. 28. It will be held at the Zoofari Center at the Milwaukee County Zoo. Doors will open at 6 p.m. with the hearing starting at 6:30.