Supervisor Proposes Work Group For County Budget Problems

Milwaukee County Courthouse. Photo by Graham Kilmer.

As Milwaukee County returns to annual, multi-million dollar budget deficits, one supervisor is trying to kickstart the county’s policy process to find long-term solutions.

Sup. Shawn Rolland has authored a resolution responding to financial projections by the county’s Office of the Comptroller showing the government is on track for budget deficits this year, and in the years to come. The legislation would create a work-group focused on developing policy solutions to the issues driving the county’s budget woes.

“The threats are growing and the opportunities seem to be falling,” Rolland said. “So in that kind of environment, we have to do something differently.”

The comptroller recently released a new five-year financial forecast projecting a $46.7 million budget deficit by 2026, which would grow to $171.6 million by 2030.

“It’s a big number,” Rolland told Urban Milwaukee. “It’s a number that makes you stop and pause, but at the same time, I have a lot of optimism that we can figure this out.”

The resolution spells out a few topics for the work group to tackle, though it doesn’t limit it to them. One issue is the overtime spending in the Milwaukee County Sheriff‘s Office and the Community Reintegration Center (CRC), which creates deficits every year. The primary driver of overtime is among correctional officers at the jail and the CRC, but the court system has also increasingly relied on overtime to maintain bailiff staffing. The resolution would also have the group work with the chief judge on potentially expanding virtual hearings to reduce demand for bailiffs.

Wisconsin Act 12, which authorized the city and the county to raise additional sales tax revenues, also sought to incentivize service sharing between governments. Rolland wants the county to take another look at research conducted by the Wisconsin Policy Forum on potential service sharing.

Finally, the resolution directs the work group to devise ways to minimize financial impacts to the county’s Debt Service Reserve. The fund is a large pool of cash available to the county for unplanned expenses and to pay down debt.

“I think we need to continue to maximize the debt service reserve for a couple reasons,” Rolland said. “One, it’s our safety net for unexpected expenses. Number two, it’s a revenue generating source. When we are able to invest more than $100 million… we’re able to generate millions of dollars from the return on that, each year.”

The comptroller’s forecast also cautioned against pulling from the debt service reserve, noting that one-time cash fixes to structural budget challenges only forestalls and worsens the county’s financial picture. County policymakers will likely have to find new revenue, make cuts, or some combination of both to balance the budget next year, the report said.

The supervisor believes county policymakers can rise to the challenge posed by coming budget deficits.

“In my mind, this report represents the worst case scenario: if nothing changes, then this is what we’ll get,” he said.

He also noted that the projections are estimates, not necessarily fated to come true. A recent report shows the county finished 2024 with an approximately $20 million budget surplus. In September, supervisors passed a resolution trimming budgets across county government to close a projected $19 million budget gap.

“So if we didn’t act on that, that would have been break even, but the initial report that we had at that time suggested that we were headed towards a $20 million deficit,” Rolland said.

However, the county budget has a structural deficit. Projections may fluctuate from year, but the long-term imbalance between money coming in and money going out remains. Rolland said county policymakers have worked to make government “more efficient and strategic,” and that will have to continue. The supervisor also said the county needs to look to its relationship with the state for additional revenue.

“I think we’ve demonstrated a want and an ability to partner better with the state government,” Rolland said. “So I guess we’ll just see what nets out of the state budget conversations.”

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