Would You Like to Donate to County Government?

Milwaukee County Courthouse. Photo by Graham Kilmer.

Milwaukee County is researching a potential donation system that would allow county residents to donate to the government.

When the Milwaukee County Board adopted a new budget for 2026 it included an amendment by Sup. Sheldon Wasserman directing county officials to work on ideas for an “online donation portal.” Wasserman has heard from constituents over the years that they want to donate to the county, or a specific county function or project, the supervisor explained to his colleagues during a budget meeting in October.

“I’ve had many people — not only one constituent — but had people over years, say to me, I would like to give money,” Wasserman said.

The county recently finished its annual budget process. In order to close a $46.7 million budget gap for 2026, the county had to make cuts to spending across the government and cut services, like the Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS), which will be cut by $9.3 million next year. Budget forecasts suggest the county will see worsening annual deficits over the coming years.

Federal stimulus funding and a new 0.4% sales tax authority provided a five-year reprieve from annual budget deficits. But county policymakers have been struggling with revenue shortages for decades, due to the disastrous pension deals passed in 2000 and 2001, which have cost the county well in excess of $1 billion and to reductions in state funding that have totaled about $1 billion over the past two decades.

Milwaukee County Parks has shrunk as county budget deficits have left less funding for the department’s operations. The department has a fraction of the staff it once had and a long list of maintenance and infrastructure needs, regularly estimated at approximately $500 million over the next five years.

The county already has Milwaukee Parks Foundation, which has a donation portal. The foundation provides direct financial support to the park system and grants to community organizations working in the park. The foundation will provide Parks with approximately $560,000 in direct funding in 2026.

After Wasserman’s amendment was introduced in October, Parks Deputy Director James Tarantino told Urban Milwaukee the department was ready to provide its perspective on any potential donation system. Parks has already set up donation portal to allow for direct donations.

Wasserman’s donation portal idea would, in theory, open up all of county government to donations and “provide a user-friendly and accessible platform through which members of the public can contribute financial support for county programs, initiatives, and projects,” according to his amendment. The platform could also support crowdfunding for “small-scale, quality-of-life improvements that may otherwise go unfunded due to budget limitations.”

One supervisor, though, had reservations about the donation portal when it went before the budget committee. Sup. Justin Bielinski told his colleagues he was concerned about opening a portal for private funding to flow directly into the government.

“I don’t know if you looked at the White House lately, but the entire East Wing was destroyed,” Bielinski said in October, “and there’s going to be a 90,000 or some square foot, who knows how big it’s going to be, ballroom built there with all private donations.”

State statutes allow the county to accept donations and grants. But county government doesn’t have a standing solicitation for donations.

“And what I worry about is, if we start having a mass way for people with money to start donating to the county that they then have outside sort of power over what we do here,” said Bielinski.

Bielinski joined his colleagues supporting the amendment, because it only asks for a plan. But, he said, the board needs to be “very careful about how we go about getting money from individuals and corporations into our local government, because we can see what happens when it doesn’t happen transparently.”