Massive Coalition Supporting County’s New Courthouse Project

Milwaukee County Safety Building. Photo by Graham Kilmer.

A massive coalition from across Wisconsin is backing Milwaukee County’s bid to build a new criminal courthouse.

The county is planning to demolish the Safety Building, 821 W. State St., and replace it with a new criminal courthouse building. The Safety Building was constructed in 1929 and, beyond the mounting maintenance needs, presents a challenge to the safe and efficient operation of a circuit court system.

The project is expected to take eight years to develop and cost as much as $500 million. Along with the new courthouse, it would also include improvements to the historic courthouse,  901 N. 9th St., and the county jail.

More than 150 business leaders, trade associations, major Wisconsin corporations, local municipalities, law enforcement leaders, unions, non-profits and health care systems have signed on to a letter addressed to the Wisconsin State Legislature supporting the county’s planned development of a new courthouse.

Some members of the coalition include more than two dozen chiefs of police and state and federal law enforcement officials; the Wisconsin Fraternal Order of Police and Wisconsin Sheriffs & Deputy Sheriffs Association; health systems like Ascension, Aurora Health Care, Froedtert and Children’s Wisconsin; law firms including Gimbel, Reily, Guerin, Brown and Husch Blackwell; major corporations like WE Energy Group, HUSCO, Harley Davidson, the Marcus Corporation and Molson Coors; Forest County Potowatomi; the Milwaukee Bucks; UW-Milwaukee; the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce; the Wisconsin Counties Association; and 15 local municipalities and the Forest County Potowatomi.

The 322,000-square-foot Safety Building is outdated. It has 60,000 square feet of unused former jail space. It is designed without seperate hallways for the various parties and participants in criminal court cases: defendants, victims, witnesses, law enforcement, attorneys, judges, friends and family of those involved. Instead all are forced together in the same hallways, against rules for courthouses set by the Supreme Court. It creates opportunities for violence and has led to mistrials, court officials have said.

The courthouse project has found bipartisan support and Gov. Tony Evers included $25 million for the project in his proposed capital budget. However, the budget is currently in the hands of the Republican-controlled state Legislature and County Executive David Crowley continues making trips to the state Capitol to push the project, framing it as an area for greater partnership between the state and the county on public safety.

Crowley’s administration is connecting the courthouse project to another priority for the county: greater funding for county services required by state law. As he revealed during a public forum in April, the state could contribute to the new courthouse project, in part, by providing greater funding for these mandated services that the county already pays for. In total, approximately 80% of the annual county budget goes to state-mandated services.

The issues have a natural overlap, as the circuit court system, the county jail and the Milwaukee County Sheriff‘s Office (MCSO) are all state mandated functions of county government.

In the letter to legislators, co-signed by the new coalition, the two issues are presented as intertwined. The existing building “undermines” the county’s ability to provide the services the state mandates. Building a new courthouse is the “single most important investment we can deliver to improve public safety in Milwaukee County,” it states and is needed to “preserve important state-mandated public safety services.” Some of these public safety mandates are unique to Milwaukee, as the letter notes. That includes the requirement that the MCSO patrol the local freeways. Putting this, and other functions, on the county budget “saves state taxpayers millions per year.”

As Crowley frames it, the project is presented as a partnership between the county and the state. One that “is essential to preserve these critical public safety services, address significant safety and constitutional concerns, maintain court operations, and protect taxpayers.”

Read the letter and a complete list of signatories

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