Board Approves Unprecedented Pay Raise For Elected Officials

Milwaukee County Courthouse. Photo by Graham Kilmer.

Without discussion, the Milwaukee County Board approved an unprecedented 36% pay raise for three elected county officials Thursday.

The board voted 16 to one in favor of the pay raises. Sup. Sheldon Wasserman voted against raises and Sup. Ryan Clancy was absent from the board chamber during the vote.

The Milwaukee County Clerk, Treasurer and Register of Deeds will all receive a raise of more than $25,849 next year, with additional two percent raises each of the next three years.

These three elected, partisan offices currently pay $91,483 annually. By 2028, the salary for these offices will be $124,513. With its vote, the board has provided what amounts to approximately a $33,000 raise for these three elected officers.

The new salaries will not kick in until the start of the next term, in 2025. All three officeholders — Treasurer David Cullen, Register of Deeds Israel Ramón and County Clerk George L. Christenson — are Democrats and are up for re-election this year. Milwaukee County is a Democratic stronghold, and it’s unlikely they will be unseated by a candidate running as a Republican, and only Cullen has a public challenger in the Democratic primary.

Ted Chisholm, a former senior staffer in the Clerk of Court’s Office and former chief of staff to then sheriff Earnell Lucas, is running for treasurer. Chisholm told Urban Milwaukee he would not accept the raise if elected.

“I can’t support, or, if elected accept, a salary increase for an elected position that encompasses what amounts to a $33,000 raise over the next four-year term,” Chisholm said, noting that the median household income in Milwaukee County is less than $60,000 annually.

Cullen previously told Urban Milwaukee he had nothing to say about the proposed raises and that the decision was up to the board. When Cullen served on the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors he pushed to lower the salaries for top county department heads.

The massive pay increase, already unprecedented for elected officials in recent county history, is more than the County Executive David Crowley‘s administration originally suggested.

The Department of Human Resources initially proposed to raise the salaries to approximately $102,000. Supervisors didn’t think this was high enough. The board’s Personnel Committee unanimously passed an additional salary increase proposed by Sup. Tony Staskunas.

The rationale offered for the pay raises for the three elected positions is market competitiveness and keeping pace with inflation. Human Resources reported that other counties in the Midwest offer higher salaries for the jobs.

But these positions are not appointees or hired by the county executive. They are partisan, elected offices, and the county has never struggled to attract candidates for them.

What’s more, historically, the county board and other county officials have been skeptical as to whether these jobs entail much work at all. The job of treasurer, for example, famously has provided ample time for other pursuits, as Bruce Murphy reported in Urban Milwaukee.  Christenson previously managed to serve as both County Clerk and Clerk of Circuit Courts — both considered full-time jobs.

In the past, the county board unsuccessfully tried to eliminate the positions through a change in state law.

Update: This story has been updated to reflect that the vote was not unanimous. Sup. Sheldon Wasserman voted against the raises.