HR Director Resigned Amid Employee Investigation

Margo Franklin (left) addresses county board during Feb. 2 meeting of the Personnel Committee. Screenshot from county livestream.

Milwaukee County’s chief human resources director, Margo Franklin, recently resigned amid an ongoing personnel investigation at the county that she was involved in, according to County Executive David Crowley‘s office.

Franklin sent an email Wednesday announcing her resignation, but did not explain why she made the decision. She did, however, write a resignation letter that the county executive’s office says it can’t release for legal reasons. Her resignation letter contains information pertinent to an ongoing investigation and for that reason cannot be released, said Emily Tau, a spokesperson for Crowley.

The office cited a state statute providing an exemption from open records requirements for records being used in active criminal or employee misconduct investigations. The office did not immediately explain whether the administration was under criminal investigation or whether it was a personnel matter, but later clarified the “investigation is not criminal in nature.”

The office declined to comment on why Franklin resigned.

“Director Franklin’s resignation was not a direct result of the concerns being investigated,” Tau said. “She made a personal decision to resign.”

The office also declined to say who, or what, exactly is being investigated and why it concerned Franklin’s resignation letter.

“I cannot speak to the subject of the investigation while it is active, but I will say that the concerns being investigated were raised by Director Franklin,” Tau said.

Franklin’s department was a source of scandal for the Crowley administration in February, after it allowed the county’s contract for administering the $450 million employee health care plan to expire without a replacement. The contract lapse spread concern through the county’s workforce about health care access and put county supervisors in the difficult position of having to approve a new contract with outstanding questions about the underlying budget figures and how the previous agreement was allowed to lapse without a new one in place.

During an emergency meeting of the board’s Committee on Personnel in February, Franklin told supervisors she was unaware her department had allowed the contract to lapse until weeks after it expired. She laid the blame on the staffer, Tony Maze, who oversaw the contract, telling supervisors, “My job is not to do the job of my employees. We bring them in, we hire them. We trust their expertise. We trust them to do the jobs that we hire them to do.”

Franklin joined the county in 2018 as the director of employee and labor relations. Crowley appointed Franklin as chief human resources officer shortly after he took office for his first term in 2020. Prior to her work at the county, Franklin had experience working in human resources and labor relations at several large companies and institutions, including Kohl’s, Goodwill Industries of Southeastern Wisconsin and the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Franklin is the latest high-profile resignation from county government in less than a year. In July 2025, interim Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) director Julie Esch and former Milwaukee County Department of Transportation director Donna Brown-Martin both stepped down in the wake of the transit system’s budget scandal. The same month, the county’s Behavioral Health Services treatment director, John Schneider, resigned. In March, Behavioral Health Services (BHS) administrator Mike Lappen was forced out of his role. He told Urban Milwaukee he was given a choice between resignation and termination and chose the former.