County Supervisors Blindsided by MCTS Cuts

MCTS Bus. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

Milwaukee County Supervisors were upset Wednesday morning that they had to learn about MCTS service cuts and a budget deficit from news coverage.

The Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) announced Tuesday that it faced a $10.9 million projected budget deficit by the end of 2025, as Urban Milwaukee reported. To close the deficit, the system plans to reduce bus frequency by 20,000 hours. That includes frequency reductions along 10 unidentified high-frequency routes. The system plans to target these frequency reductions to low-ridership hours, according to an MCTS spokesperson.

The first word of the deficit came in a press release issued a day before the board’s Committee on Finance meeting. MCTS, which has a budget of $151.6 million in 2025, had not even reported the deficit to the Office of the Comptroller for its monthly report on the county’s financial standing. MCTS will not have a detailed report and breakdown of expenses until the board’s July meeting cycle, said Milwaukee County Department of Transportation (MCDOT) Director Donna Brown-Martin. Interim Managing Director Julie Esch was not present at the committee meeting Wednesday.

During the board’s Committee on Finance meeting Wednesday, Brown-Martin told supervisors the budget deficit is being driven by the increasing cost of commodities and parts, rising overtime among mechanics and higher costs driven by its paratransit contractor TransDev.

“It’s not acceptable to get a $10.9 million deficit told to us without more context and more time,” said Sup. Shawn Rolland.

Rolland noted that the county has an ordinance requiring departments to report any operating budget deficit exceeding $100,000.

“And now to hear that we’re at $10.9 [million] is a miss, a pretty big miss,” Rolland said. “So my hope is that this will be a one-time thing, and that we will get a robust report on this in July.”

Sup. Justin Bielinski said he thought it was “suspect” that the deficit was announced while MCTS is in the middle of contract negotiations with the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 998 (ATU). Supervisors were also forced to learn that former managing director Denise Wandke had left the company from news reports, Bielinski said.

“This does seem to be a pattern with [MCTS],” he said.

Sup. Juan Miguel Martinez joined his colleagues wondering what the actual details of the cuts and the deficit are, saying bus operators and the public are “terrified” and don’t know how or where the cuts will fall.

Sup. Steve Taylor questioned how MCTS managed not to find a $10 million projected budget deficit until just the past few weeks, especially when it is being driven by three different issues.

“I don’t think you found them all out the same time,” he said. 

Commodity prices are driving up the cost of automotive parts, Brown-Martin said. In response to questions she told the committee that tariffs enacted by the new administration of President Donald Trump are, in part, affecting prices. Parts are ordered as they are needed, and prices have been steadily rising.

“It’s changing at a rapid, fluid pace, and that’s not something that we have any control over,” she said.

The cost of mechanic overtime is an ongoing issue and a factor affected by collective bargaining, Brown-Martin said. As to why overtime is rising more than expected, Brown-Martin said, “I can’t give you the answer that you’re looking for specifically, because I don’t have the details myself.”

As director of MCDOT, Brown-Martin chairs the board of Milwaukee Transport Services, Inc., a quasi-governmental instrumentality set up to run the transit system.

The third problem driving the deficit is the performance of TransDev, the private company MCTS contracts with to provide paratransit, a public transit service for persons with disabilities.

“Our costs continue to increase steadily because they’re they’re not meeting our performance standards in terms of getting people picked up and delivered on time,” Brown-Martin said.

In 2023, TransDev bought the company MCTS had awarded a single-source contract to. When the firm took over service in late 2023, service deteriorated, with missed pickups and riders left stranded across the county. And TransDev’s performance has continued to be an issue, since then.

“We are addressing that through our attorneys to make sure that we’re taking control and making sure that these things are addressed,” Brown-Martin said.

Brown-Martin told supervisors that ridership is not an issue affecting the projected deficit. This seemed to contradict the statement released by MCTS just the day prior, which said, “lower passenger revenue” was driving the deficit.

A spokesperson for MCTS clarified that ridership continues to increase, but passenger revenue is declining “in part due to non-paying riders.” And said that while it’s not among the top three issues Brown-Martin listed for the board, it remains a factor.

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