Committee Rejects Abortion Travel Fund

Pro-choice rally at Red Arrow Park. Photo taken June 24, 2022 by Graham Kilmer.

A proposal to create an abortion travel fund for Milwaukee County employees has received its first rebuke from a Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors committee.

In March, Supervisors Ryan Clancy and Juan Miguel Martinez sponsored a resolution that would “direct the county’s Department of Human Resources to identify an appropriate vendor and implement a contract to provide reimbursement of travel expenses, up to $1,849, for transportation, accommodations services, and related costs, incurred by Milwaukee County Employees traveling to other states to receive legal abortion care.” The maximum allowance for travel expenses nods to the year that Wisconsin’s abortion ban was codified: 1849. The state’s abortion ban does not make exceptions to the ban for rape, incest or the life of the mother. The resolution is modeled on a similar fund created by the Dane County Board.

The Milwaukee County Board’s Committee on Personnel voted three to one to reject the proposal. One supervisor that voted against it, Steven Shea, expressed concern about approving a program that state Republicans would hate at the same time the county is asking them for more money.

“We’re looking for more shared revenue from the Legislature, and if we pass this, you know, they’re gonna say, ‘Well, if they can pay for abortions, they don’t need any more money,'” Shea said.

The proposal was panned from a legal perspective in an email from the county’s Corporation Counsel Margaret Daun to county officials. The state has laws on the books that set out “Prohibitions on funding for abortion-related activities” and Deputy Corporation Counsel Karen Tidwall previously told supervisors that while the statute is not “a model of clarity,” the resolution was legally risky and could be found by a court to be in violation of state law. Dane County, she said, “has interpreted it more broadly than a corporation Council has.”

In April, the Committee on Personnel tabled the proposal until a formal legal opinion could be drafted and submitted to the board. At its latest meeting, Daun told committee members that her office is still working on drafting the opinion, but that in the interim it maintains “that there is legal risk if this resolution is adopted and implemented… that it could be found illegal by a court of competent jurisdiction in the state of Wisconsin.” She added, “the reason there is risk is very simple, and it’s because the statutory language here permits of an interpretation that would prohibit the very thing the resolution proposes to do.”

Daun also responded to the existence of a similar program in Dane County, stating, “The lack of a challenge in the courts does not permit an inference that the program is legal in all instances, it simply means that no one has challenged it.”

Sup. Shea said that he’s concerned what the response from the Republican-controlled state Legislature would be if the county approves an abortion travel fund. In April, Republicans in the state Assembly released legislation that would govern how the state funds local governments, but it comes with numerous new restrictions and curtailed authority for both the city and the county that underscore just how closely state-level Republicans follow Milwaukee politics and how willing they are to use their power to influence local affairs.

“I think what we should do is wait and see what direction the Wisconsin Supreme Court takes on the larger issue,” Shea said. A challenge to the state’s abortion ban is already underway and is currently being heard by a court in Dane County. Newly elected liberal judge Janet Protasiewicz will be sworn is as the new justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, tipping the balance of the court in favor of liberals.

Clancy disagreed, and said, “I think it is extremely unlikely that this one specific thing would be elevated to the top of the list of hundreds of ways which are clear in recent legislation that they are trying to put a boot on our neck.” Clancy has maintained that he doesn’t agree with corporation counsel’s assessment of the legal risk, given the existence of the Dane County program, and has also said he believes the program should still be created even if it would be challenged because it’s “the right thing to do.”

Sup. Patti Logsdon said the county should not be using taxpayer money to fund what she considers an elective procedure.

Supervisors Shea, Logsdon and Tony Staskunas voted against the proposal. Sup. Willie Johnson, Jr. voted in favor of it. The resolution will still go before the Committee on Finance and then the full county board.