Nicholson-Bovell Elected to 4th Term as Board Chair

The 2026-2028 county board poses for a photo after their swearing-in ceremony. Photo taken March 21, 2026, by Graham Kilmer.

The new Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors was sworn in Monday and unanimously reelected Sup. Marcelia Nicholson-Bovell to a fourth term as chairwoman.

The new board is much like the old board. Of the 18 supervisors who took their oath, only one new face was in the crowd: newly seated Sup. Leevan Roundtree Jr., who ran unopposed for the seat previously held by state Rep. Sequanna Taylor. Supervisors are elected to serve two-year terms.

Nicholson-Bovell was unopposed in her bid for the board’s top job. She was first elected chair in 2020, outmaneuvering the board’s longest-serving member, Sup. Willie Johnson Jr., for the role. This time around, when the clerk asked for the body’s nominations, Johnson Jr. popped up from his desk on the board floor and nominated Nicholson-Bovell for chair.

As chair of the board, Nicholson-Bovell presides over the monthly meeting and approves meeting agendas for committee meetings. The chair’s power comes from the public profile of the office and, even more, from the authority over committee assignments. The job also comes with a pay bump, a salary of $49,449 compared to the salary for supervisors of $32,819.

The chair’s authority over committee assignments typically plays a role in building support ahead of nominations for the board’s top spot. The board also voted to return Sup. Steven Shea to the position of first vice chair and Sup. Priscilla E. Coggs-Jones to second vice chair.

Nicholson-Bovell, who was first elected in 2016, delivered a speech Monday reflecting on her 10 years on the county board, a “journey” that she said has challenged and changed her. She used the opportunity to explain her motivation for the work and to ask for the support of her colleagues for the leadership role heading into the new term.

“When I was first elected to the Milwaukee County Board, I don’t think I understood what this work will require of me, or what it will shape me into,” she said.

She ticked off a list of world events, political upheavals and natural disasters that have made their way into the meetings of the Milwaukee County Board in one way or another, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the nationwide reckoning over race in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, challenges to democracy and natural disasters.

Nicholson-Bovell told her colleagues that the position has, at times, weighed heavily on her; difficult choices that sometimes left her “wondering if you got it right for the people who never sit in this room, but whose lives are shaped by what we do here.” She said she has drawn inspiration from the late Rev. Jesse Jackson and his call to “Keep hope alive,” delivered during his famous speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.‘s exhortations to take action in the name of justice in “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”

“These are reminders of what it means to lead when it’s hard,” she said.

She also used the opportunity to reintroduce herself to her colleagues despite many years of work with some of them. “I’m not the same person I was when I started this journey, and that is because of you,” she said. The board chair also acknowledged that she has made mistakes, but said she has learned from them.

“I am more committed than ever, to leading this body in a way that reflects both our responsibility and our shared humanity,” she said.

After the ceremony, Nicholson-Bovell told Urban Milwaukee she wrote her speech to “share a bit of my reflection and hopefully empower them to continue working hard on behalf of Milwaukee County, because we face a lot of challenges.” She said she feels like a “completely different person” from when she was just 26 and running for the first time for county board.

“I’ve made mistakes, and some of my mistakes have been public, and some of them have been validated, and some of them have not… I’ve had lessons to learn, and I want to use those lessons to be a better leader,” she said. “So that was the picture I wanted to paint today, that I am reflective of my growth, that I am not that young woman that was elected 10 years ago, and I’m just looking forward to the years ahead.”

In all likelihood, the board has just begun a difficult term, Nicholson-Bovell acknowledged. In her speech, she told her colleagues that the road ahead “will test us” and force the body to “make painful decisions about what gets funded and what doesn’t.”

Since 2020, stimulus funds released during the COVID-19 pandemic and the implementation of a new 0.4% sales tax have cushioned the county’s budget. But the fiscal cliff officials have long warned of has finally arrived, created in part by a disastrous pension deal more than two decades ago and 20 years of flat revenue from the state that hasn’t kept pace with inflation.

County policymakers had to close a $47 million budget gap in 2026. A year ago the comptroller projected annual deficits could reach $171 million by 2030.

The transit system faces its own fiscal crisis, with a budget gap in 2027 projected as high as $20 million. The parks system, long underfunded, continues to struggle with a maintenance backlog estimated at approximately $500 million. Parks will demolish a number of old buildings, assets and pools in 2026.

The focus now, Nicholson-Bovell said, is lobbying the state for more funding and trying to protect critical public services wherever possible.

“We’re just going to have to bring all our priorities to the table and make sure that we can fund those that our residents really rely on,” she said.