Once again, the Republican-dominated Legislature singled out Milwaukee County for radical reforms without public input. In years past, the GOP legislators have curtailed the power of the Milwaukee County board to oversee contracts, employment matters and anything to do with the county’s mental health services.
But tucked into the state budget and the pending Bucks arena deal are long-range plans to diminish the county board’s power specifically and Milwaukee County government generally. The victim, as usual, is clean, honest government.
State Budget Changes
The 2015-2017 state budget, officially known as Act 55, could have dramatic effects on the county, from enabling Abele to sell off the airport or the zoo in private without a bid to launching a new school district without a public hearing or vote. These matters are policy items that should have been pulled from the budget and debated as stand-alone legislation, but instead were slipped into the budget without public input. Major items affecting the county include:
■ State aid: Milwaukee County’s portion of state shared revenue is flat in the new budget, but the Bucks arena deal requires the state to withhold $4 million annually for the next 20 years.
■ Land sales: The budget gives the Milwaukee County executive power over all land sales, leases and transfers, as long as the site in question is not zoned park land. That means Abele could sell off landmarks without any county board oversight including General Mitchell International Airport, the Milwaukee County Zoo, the House of Correction in Franklin, the Milwaukee Public Museum, the Charles Allis Art Museum and the Milwaukee County Historical Society building, confirmed County Corporation Counsel Paul Bargren at a Parks, Energy and Environment Committee last week. Also up for grabs is the county-owned Behavioral Health Division site on Watertown Plank Road. The appointed Milwaukee County Mental Health Board approved a proposal to privatize acute care services via a 20-year contract. If a contract is approved, that would seem to free up the site for sale by Abele.
Any transaction involving land zoned as a park or an asset built on that land—for example, the Mitchell Park Domes, McKinley marina, the War Memorial, the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum—would still require a vote by county supervisors. Nor does the budget impact the county-owned O’Donnell Park, which might be taken over by the Milwaukee Art Museum.
|
|
Going forward, all the county executive needs to do to sell off county assets is convince one other person—either the county comptroller or a private real estate expert—that the transaction is in the county’s “best interests.” The budget doesn’t require the county executive to solicit bids or notify the public before the sale, lease or transfer is finalized. Proceeds from the sales will go toward paying down the debt on the assets, not into the county’s coffers. The budget item applies only to Milwaukee County.
This item was slipped into a catch-all budget amendment during the Joint Finance Committee’s final meeting on the evening of July 3, just before the holiday weekend. It received no public vetting prior to the meeting of the JFC, which is chaired by close Abele ally, state Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills). The original, Darling-approved proposal passed by the JFC had expanded Abele’s power even further, but it was whittled back by the full Legislature.
Separately, Abele is backing a $1 sale of nine acres of county-owned Park East land to a development group owned by the main Bucks owners. Abele appears to have the budget-created power to do so without a board vote, but a side agreement with the federal Department of Transportation allowing him to sell the land for less than market value had been submitted to the board and now is in limbo.
■ School takeover: The budget also gives the county executive unprecedented power over schools via the Opportunity Schools and Partnership Program, which offers up Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) to a county executive-appointed commissioner who’ll have the power to privatize them and fire the staff.
Like the land-sale provision, this proposal was inserted into the budget by the JFC; its co-authors are Darling and state Rep. Dale Kooyenga (R-Brookfield). The public wasn’t allowed to testify on it, MPS has no say in it and Abele never campaigned on it. The new Abele-led school district may not be constitutional, however, since the state superintendent of public instruction has a very small role in it. Previous attempts to set up these free-floating school districts have been abandoned because the state constitution requires the state superintendent to oversee all schools in Wisconsin.
$80 Million for Bucks Arena
Separate from the budget is the Bucks arena deal, which has passed both houses of the state Legislature.
Gov. Scott Walker had initially proposed to finance the arena with $220 million in state bonds and the county was under no obligation to provide any funding. However, once Abele started negotiating with other partners in the deal, he put the county on the hook for $80 million over the course of 20 years. He also threw in the county-owned Marcus Center for the Performing Arts, valued for insurance purposes at $77 million. The center will be transferred to the state-run Wisconsin Center District, but its debt will be left behind with the county. Republican legislators jumped at this offer. Confidentially, some Republican legislators couldn’t understand why a Milwaukee County executive would throw his county property taxpayers under the bus when he didn’t have to.
How Abele will come up with $4 million the state will withhold from the county annually is the source of much debate. Abele had pushed for allowing the state to collect the county’s bad debt, primarily made up of delinquent suburban property taxes and court fines.
Although Abele got what he wanted temporarily, the state Senate—at Democrats’ urging—stripped that mandate from the deal. Now, the county will have to come up with a mechanism to make up for the $4 million in reduced state revenue. Abele could use bad debt if he chooses to do so, but he wouldn’t be able to sign off on the plan unilaterally, as he’d envisioned.
Last Thursday, Milwaukee County Treasurer David Cullen and Clerk of Courts John Barrett testified before the Finance, Personnel and Audit Committee about the county’s debt collection efforts.
A study by County Comptroller Scott Manske found that the county collects about 95% of its delinquent property taxes, which only come from the suburbs, since the City of Milwaukee collects its own delinquent taxes. County Treasurer Cullen said his budget proposal for next year includes $3.5 million of collected property taxes, penalties and interest, which go to the county’s bottom line and offset the property tax levy.
Cullen, who wasn’t consulted on the debt proposal, testified that he would need to sign off on transferring the debt to the state but doesn’t need the board’s OK. If he does, the state could impose a fee on top of the 18% interest and penalties the county charges, and can go after a delinquent property taxpayer’s wages and bank accounts. Cullen said the ultimate impact of the state collection plan would be “more foreclosures of family-owned homes.”
Clerk of Courts John Barrett testified that unlike the property tax debt, the board would need to approve transferring unpaid court fines to the state. Much of the unpaid court costs are restitution for crime victims and cannot be used by the county. The remainder of the court fines is split, with 70% of court fines going to the state and only 30% to the county. John Barrett said the county already has strong court fee-collection efforts, including issuing warrants, suspending drivers’ licenses, intercepting taxes and using a private debt collector in traffic court to collect fines immediately.
Clerk of Courts Barrett said the original state mandate “troubled me” but proposed allowing his office to explore the idea in case it does result in more revenue for the county.
