Will County Hike Wheel Tax to Fund Buses?

6400 series Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) bus. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

The Milwaukee County Board is starting to look at hiking the county’s vehicle registration fee (VRF) — commonly called the wheel tax — as the government runs out of money, particularly for public transit.

During a recent budget meeting, Sup. Shawn Rolland suggested policymakers should consider increasing the VRF and pegging future increases to inflation. The VRF is $30 and it has not been raised since it was adopted in 2016.

More recently, during a budget meeting on Oct. 24, Sup. Anne O’Connor sponsored an amendment to the 2026 budget that asks the administration and county comptroller to evaluate using the VRF to raise funding for transit.

The Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) faces a $14 million budget deficit in 2026. The system’s response is a budget proposal that cuts six bus routes, reduces service along many other routes, raises fares from $2 to $2.75 and the daily fare cap from $5 to $8.25.

To close the 2026 gap with a VRF increase, policymakers would need to raise the fee to $55, according to a budget analysis by the Office of the Comptroller.

State law constrains how the county can raise revenue through property tax and sales tax levies. The VRF remains the only lever policymakers can pull to raise revenue without first going to the state capitol for authorizing legislation. Across Wisconsin, counties and municipalities, including the City of Milwaukee, are increasingly turning to the VRF to raise revenue.

During the last decade, former Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele tried repeatedly to raise the wheel tax to fund transit. The county board blocked it every time. In 2017, when Abele tried to raise the VRF from $30 to $60, Sup. Willie Johnson, Jr., who today chairs the Committee on Finance, called the proposal “political suicide.”

O’Connor is not actually pushing to raise the VRF. She told her colleagues she wants the report next year in order to facilitate a “full and robust discussion” with no “predetermined outcomes.” 

The Committee on Finance adopted the amendment and the full board will vote on it during the annual budget adoption in November.

The VRF is expected to generate $17.2 million in 2026. County Executive David Crowley‘s proposed budget allocates all of the funding to MCTS.

Sup. Steve Taylor called VRF increases “extremely unpopular” and said the board learned that under the Abele administration: “You’re having people with cars, having to help fund people that don’t have cars.” Taylor was the lone member of the committee to vote against O’Connor’s amendment.

“This should not be a board driven thing either,” Taylor said. “Why should we be the bad guys to do it? Let the county executive introduce this in the future.”

Sup. Sequanna Taylor, who voted in favor of a VRF report, said she’s not comfortable raising the wheel tax. To her colleagues that have joined the board since 2020, Taylor noted the new reality they face: “This is life without ARPA funding, without Covid dollars, without us saying there’s a surplus because there isn’t.”

Federal stimulus funds have, in particular, kept MCTS solvent. The system received $192 million from the federal government during the COVID-19 pandemic and it has used the funding to plug the structural gap in its budget ever since. The system will spend the rest of the funds in 2026, revealing a fiscal cliff for the first time in five years.

The federal funding was supposed to get the system through 2026 and into 2027 before budget deficits started showing up again. But the system found itself over-budget in 2025 and needing the spend down additional stimulus funds just to balance the budget.

Pushing back against Sup. Steve Taylor’s characterization of the VRF, Sup. Justin Bielinski contrasted VRF increases with the fare increases being proposed in 2026. The monthly fare cap is increased by $24, which adds up to $288 a year, he noted.

“So that comes out to a $288 increase in their wheel tax,” Bielinski said. “So I have more of a concern for the people who can’t afford a car than like the people who do have a car, who are mad about paying, whatever, $5, $10 more, or whatever it ends up being at some point in the future, on a wheel tax once a year.”