A big Milwaukee weekend reminds me that Milwaukee County should get more from its visitors

It got more stressful at the end than I'd like, but all's well that ends well. So it's BURGERTIME in Milwaukee!

Like a lot of people from various parts of the state (and the country!), I’m heading to Milwaukee this weekend to take part in the Brew Crew’s October festivities. And that makes this week’s Urban Milwaukee article by Bruce Murphy all the more timely, as it gives new evidence that the City and County with the state’s largest population continues to get a raw deal from our state government.

A recent document released by the administration of County Executive Chris Abele dramatizes the county’s plight. Oh the one hand the county is a big contributor to the state: annual taxes paid by county residents to the state rose from just over $2.1 billion in 2009 to just over $2.5 billion in 2015, an increase of $400 million, figures from the state Department of Revenue show.

This has helped the state increase spending faster than inflation under Gov. Scott Walker. State General Purpose Revenue rose by an annual average of 3.2 percent from 2011 to 2018. Yet even as the county contributed an additional $400 million per year, the state actually cut its funding to the county. State General Transportation Aid was flat while shared revenue, Basic Community Aids and Mass Transit Operating Assistance all saw declines in funding to the county.

And as a commentator notes in the article, this doesn't even account for the suburbanites that have their jobs and/or spend money in Milwaukee County, which would raise that $2.5 billion number higher.

While Abele has been able to reduce the County $51.2 million structural deficit (that he inherited from a guy named SCOTT WALKER) down below $37 million, it’s come at a very high price, with massive cuts to services and staff.

The parks department alone has been cut from 800 to 200 employees, he notes. The case load in the county child welfare program is a mind-boggling 900 clients per worker. “We’re number 1 or number 2 in the United States,” Abele notes, in the case load per worker, hardly a record to brag about.

Abele was able to convince the board to pass a wheel tax, about the only tax the state allows the county to levy (other than the property tax and a small slice of the sales tax), but the board balked at another increase in the wheel tax last year and also fought a proposal to add a fee for parking in county parks.

“If you feel like your taxes are going up, you’re right,” Abele says. “And if you feel like you’re getting less services, you’re right.”

And that’s largely because of the shortfall in state funding. If the county got just $100 million of the $400 million additional taxes paid by county residents to the state, the county’s problem would be solved, Abele notes.

Oddly, the only "extra sales taxes" beyond the 0.5% county sales tax that Milwaukee County has is the 0.1% for Miller Park (it's supposed to be retired in the next 18 months...we'll see), and the 0.5% sales tax for food and beverages that goes toward the new Bucks arena and nearby Wisconsin Center District.

This is where I want to point out that the Number 1 destination of tourist dollars in Wisconsin is Milwaukee County, and not by a little.

Direct visitor spending, Wisconsin counties 2017
Milwaukee Co. $1,990.7 million (15.7% of state total)
Dane County $1,246.8 million
Sauk County $1,086.5 million
Waukesha Co. $776.4 million
Brown County $671.0 million

People want to check this place out.

And by the way, I bet a lot of Waukesha County figure comes from people staying in Brookfield and the Falls for events like Brewers playoff baseball. You’re welcome, 262.

Now maybe some of that is sports tourism, but I bet most of it isn't. Which leads to a modest proposal. Why don’t we allow the City of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County to keep more of the money that they generate? And no WisGOP, it doesn’t even have to be in the form of added shared revenue (although they deserve that, too).

Milwaukee County generated $74.35 million in sales tax in 2017 with its current 0.5% sales tax, so allowing that to rise to 1% would likely give it another $70 million+, which fills in the structural deficit that the County has to deal with, and possibly makes it better positioned to handle the huge infrastructure needs it’ll have in the very near future.

Those challenges were made clear in a recent release from the Wisconsin Policy Forum, which described in stark detail about the challenges that are looming.

Two major facilities – the public museum and the Domes – must be replaced or fully renovated within the next few years. The museum is seeking more than $100 million from private donors, the State of Wisconsin, and possibly the county to construct a new building downtown. Meanwhile, a task force studying the conservatory’s future is considering a dramatic overhaul that could require $40 million to $95 million in private and county funds. As a result, the facilities’ supporters could be competing with each other and with other cultural institutions for major donations. If either or both fail to meet their fundraising goals, or if the public museum does not obtain unprecedented capital support from the state, county policymakers would be 44 under pressure to fund survival plans for these local icons at the same time they are trying to finance a new criminal courthouse.

• Almost every form of parks infrastructure has pressing needs. The list of parks assets that the county must replace within the next 10 years includes 85% of parking lots and service yards, 75% of walkways, 73% of parkways, 54% of rated Oak Leaf Trails and of basketball courts, 48% of tennis courts, and (measured by replacement value) 47% of large buildings other than the Domes. Current condition ratings are lacking for other infrastructure types, but the county has identified additional needs for park bridges, water parks, swimming pools, golf courses, and playgrounds, among others….

• The county lacks the capacity to finance the capital needs of its parks, recreational, and cultural assets if it wishes to stay within its self-imposed bonding limits and address its other capital needs. To meet existing capital requests, the county would need to more than double budgeted spending on cultural institutions (from $6.2 million to $13.9 million) and increase spending nearly tenfold on parks (from $2.4 million to $23 million) in 2019 alone. Fulfilling all of the parks, recreational, and cultural capital requests for the next four years would require a 135% increase, from $82.6 million to $194.1 million, over budgeted spending of the past four years. Moreover, doing so would consume from 68% of the county’s financing capacity in 2019 to 97% in 2022 under current policy.

And given the state’s antiquated method of financing local government, the burdens of paying this overwhelming fall on County residents, while outsiders get to take advantages of the great quality-of-life amenities that the Milwaukee area has, while paying very little (if anything) toward it.

Given that the nation’s attention is being turned to Wisconsin’s largest city with the Brewers’ great run, maybe we also should pay more attention to the ways that we can restore the rest of Milwaukee to elite status as well. Perhaps trading the Miller Park tax and even the Wisconsin Center tax for a sales tax that the County and/or City can use for any needs (like roads, parks, facilities, and social services), instead of just having it go towards sports and entertainment complexes.

Know what else would help? Getting a Governor and Legislature in places that’ll allow the Cream City the fiscal freedom to have a 21st Century infrastructure, and stop the political game-playing that has resulted in the "divide and conquer" racism and economic apartheid that holds what back what should be a first-class city.