County Strings Together Funds to Close $19 Million 2024 Budget Deficit

Milwaukee County Courthouse. Photo by Graham Kilmer.

The 2025 budget process is less than a month away for county officials, and at least one major problem has already been solved.

Officials managed to pull together approximately $19 million in funds from across the government to backfill a 2024 budget gap.

In July, the Office of the Comptroller alerted the county board that lower than expected sales tax revenue was being received. The county was already running a budget deficit for 2024, with overtime in the Milwaukee County Sheriff‘s Office (MCSO) and at the Community Reintegration Center (CRC) dragging the county over its budget, and the sales tax collections were on track to make the gap larger. The comptroller’s office projected the county would overspend the 2024 budget by $17 to $19 million.

The 2024 deficit comes as the county was already expected to face a difficult 2025 budget. In March, the comptroller’s office projected that the government would need to assemble a budget for 2025 that closed an $11.5 million budget gap. To avoid cost overruns in 2024, making the 2025 budget more painful than it already is, officials across the government began working to find funding wherever they could to close the gap.

Funding from more than 30 different projects, line items and budget allocations was pulled out and knit together to close the budget gap before the year ended, according to a report from the Office of Strategy, Budget and Performance (OSPB).

“It’s no major cuts to programs and services,” Joe Lamers, OSBP Director, told the county’s ARPA Task Force Thursday.

Among the funding shuffle was $3.26 million from the county’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) grant, including $1 million in ARPA funds previously set aside for affordable housing projects. Taking these funds out of a pool for affordable housing will not affect any projects currently in the pipeline, Lamers said.

Local governments have until the end of 2024 to obligate ARPA funds to various projects, and until 2026 to actually spend the funding.

The county is also recognizing a $5.22 million surplus in its 2023 budget, transferring the money out of a reserve account.

The rest of the funding was pulled from other projects around the county. In some cases the projects were coming in under budgeted amounts, freeing up the funds. The county also increased the rate at which the transit system spends down its remaining federal funds, replacing $2.2 million worth of property tax funding with federal relief dollars. Lamers said departments across the government worked together to close the gap.

“It’s great to see a plan here in black and white that will relatively painlessly get us back into the black,” said Sup. Shawn Rolland, chair of the ARPA Task Force.

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Related Legislation: HRA24-160