Who Screwed Up the County Health Care Contract?

Milwaukee County Courthouse. Photo by Graham Kilmer.

Who is responsible for the health care contract debacle rocking Milwaukee County government? It’s the question reverberating through the halls of the courthouse.

On Jan. 29, members of the Milwaukee County Board’s Committee on Finance learned to their surprise that the county’s contract for administering the employee health plan had expired. As Comptroller Liz Sumner revealed that day, there were unanswered questions about what the pending contract included, how it was developed and how the previous agreement was allowed to lapse without a new one in place. It’s one of the biggest contracts in county government, valued at approximately $450 million over the next five years, an ensuring thousands of employees can access health care.

On Monday, County Executive David Crowley‘s administration fired Tony Maze, the director of benefits in the Human Resources Department. Maze was the county employee overseeing the county’s health care contract. “I strongly believe in transparency and accountability,” Crowley said. “When mistakes are made, it’s important to seek out the facts and identify solutions to the problem at hand.” The clear message was Maze was to blame. But the screwup seems far more complicated than that.

The Missing RFP

The deal Maze brought to the county board is a five-year contract extension with UnitedHealthcare, which has provided the service for the county since 2009. Maze worked with Willis Towers Watson, a private business consultancy, to solicit a new contract, releasing a request for proposals (RFP). The contract was awarded to UnitedHealthcare last May, according to HR Director Margo Franklin, who was Maze’s supervisor. By June 13, UnitedHealthcare sent the county the terms of the contract renewal.

The reported RFP results show UnitedHealthcare, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna Healthcare and Aetna all bid on the contract.

But no one seems to know what they were bidding on. That RFP, created by Willis Towers Watson, has not been publicly released. Officials in Crowley’s office said they haven’t seen it. The comptroller’s office has not received a copy. Franklin has not responded to a request from Urban Milwaukee seeking a copy of the document. And the county’s attorneys said they have not had a chance to review the procurement process.

During the committee meeting on Jan. 29, Maze admitted he did not follow the county’s ordinances for procurement when conducting the RFP. But he’s now been fired and is unavailable to answer the county board’s questions.

“I don’t like it,” Sup. Justin Bielinski said after Maze was fired. “It’s frustrating as a board member to not be able to cross-examine the person responsible.”

How Did the Contract Expire?

So what happened between June, when UnitedHealthcare sent the county the terms for a contract renewal, and this January, when it became clear the contract hadn’t been settled?

Franklin told supervisors on Feb. 2 that she learned about issues with the contract after it expired. “I found out about the contract lapse on Jan. 15,” she said.

Sumner and attorneys from the Office of Corporation Counsel (OCC) have also said they did not learn of the expired contract until January. Jeremy Lucas, Crowley’s county policy director, told Urban Milwaukee their office learned of the lapsed contract on Jan. 22.

Franklin seemed to put the blame on Maze. “My job is not to do the job of my employees,” Franklin told supervisors at the special meeting on Feb. 2. “We bring them in, we hire them. We trust their expertise. We trust them to do the jobs that we hire them to do.”

Maze joined the county in 2018 after a career in the private sector, most recently as benefits director for Versiti Blood Center of Wisconsin. But Maze had trouble making the transition to public sector work and understanding the legal requirements surrounding government contracts and taxpayer dollars, according to a well-placed county insider. The health care contract was not the first time he made a major mistake on the job, the insider said.

“I wish that he would have escalated this to me,” Franklin told supervisors.

Franklin’s HR department has released a timeline showing meetings throughout 2025 with the comptroller and the budget office discussing UnitedHealthcare financial data. In September, HR asked the comptroller’s Director of Audit, Jennifer Folliard to look at audit language.

“And then based on emails that I can see the conversation stopped, and that is the part that I don’t know… what happened with the discussion with audit, around audit clause language after September,” Franklin told supervisors.

Urban Milwaukee asked the Comptroller about HR’s timeline. Sumner said it seemed designed “to make my office look bad.” Her office has now released its own timeline. It also shows the September request for audit language and that the office asked for more information on three occasions; Maze reportedly stonewalled or demurred. “We moved on with our lives, because this is a side thing that we do, we’re doing our own work,” Folliard said.

Asked why the office didn’t flag the county executive, or the county’s attorneys, Sumner told Urban Milwaukee that Maze had provided no documentation or indication showing the contract would expire in the coming months. “It wasn’t clear what was even going on,” she said.

The next anyone heard about the contract was reportedly Jan. 15. The health care contract had expired and Maze was asking “if [audit services] can just accept the language so that the contract can be submitted to finance,” according to the Comptroller’s timeline.

It was the second time last year that communication between the administration and the comptroller’s office broke down. In May 2025, Crowley Chief of Staff Mary Jo Meyers learned the Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) was running a budget deficit. Yet, on June 8, the comptroller reported to the board a break-even budget for MCTS, suggesting Sumner’s office hadn’t been told by Myers about the deficit. A week after the comptroller’s report to the board, MCTS announced a $10.9 million budget deficit.

Rush to the County Board

The county executive and the county’s attorneys are pushing the board to approve the new contract, concerned that the county is out of contract with its health care administrator and in a bad position to negotiate a new deal. However, despite the lapse, UnitedHealthcare continues to process claims and the county continues to pay them.

The comptroller has questioned the veracity of health care budget projections provided by Willis Towers Watson. Crowley’s budget office has also not been able to verify the Willis Towers Watson financial data. And Maze admitted that county ordinance did not guide the procurement process, which could add more complications.

“We as the administration understand that there are some concerns, but, broadly, this is a good contract,” Lucas, Crowley’s policy director, told Urban Milwaukee.

Corporation Counsel Scott Brown told Urban Milwaukee he was “surprised as anyone else” when Maze said he didn’t follow county ordinance for procurement. “I don’t know that the procurement rules weren’t followed,” he said.

“I haven’t yet had a chance to look into what got us to where we are today, quite honestly,” said Deputy Corporation Counsel Bill Davidson on Jan. 29. “I’ve been involved in discussions about whether and how and should there be a recommendation to move this contract forward.”

Franklin learned the county was out of contract on Jan. 15 and she “immediately started working outreach — deputy comptroller, [county attorneys] — working with [Maze] to try to figure out how we move this contract forward very quickly,” she told supervisors.

When Franklin notified the county executive’s office of the lapse, the message was, “we needed to get this item to the board and approved to ensure continuity of the contract,” Lucas said.

The contract was added to the agenda of the Committee on Finance late in the board’s meeting cycle for January. “Up until that point, we, we didn’t even have a path to ensure it got approved,” Lucas said. “So it was really urgent. We need to get this taken care of, so [Franklin] took the steps to get the chairwoman to approve it out of cycle.”

The comptroller and the county’s Office of Strategy, Budget and Performance immediately started working on the financial projections included in the contract. “Pretty much everyone was on the same page last week, of we need this information, and everyone was going to Maze to get the information,” said Isaac Rowlett, Crowley’s top budget official. “There were two challenges. One was getting all the information that we needed, and two was ensuring that we found that information to be credible, because our office didn’t necessarily find some of that information to be credible.”

When Maze brought the contract to the Committee on Finance on Jan. 29, he was alone. Franklin was not there. A written report to the board mentioned the contract had expired in December, but Maze did not flag this as a concern for supervisors. Comptroller Sumner was the first official to raise concerns that day. All of which left board members on the committee confused and concerned, and Maze looking like the culprit.

Urban Milwaukee asked Brown, attorney to both the county board and the county executive, why Maze was allowed to present the contract alone and without raising concerns to the board. He said, “Our role… is always leaving to the departments to inform the board of any issues with the contract. It’s not our role.”

The county board will vote on the deal Thursday, Feb. 5.