Wisconsin taxpayers keep paying more for cops, with less money to pay them with

In light of the calls to defund police across America and in Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Policy Forum released figures looking at how much we spend on cops in the state. And it's gone up by a lot over the last 30+ years.

In 1986, municipalities spent about $353 million on law enforcement (both operating and capital); this rose to $1.28 billion in 2018, an increase of 262% in raw dollars and nearly 60% after accounting for inflation.

On a per capita basis, municipal spending on law enforcement rose from $74 in 1986 to $219 in 2018, a 197% increase in raw dollars and a 30% increase after adjusting for inflation.

Law enforcement spending comprised 17.8% of total municipal operating and capital spending in 1986 and was somewhat higher at 20.0% in 2018, although the percentage has trended downward since peaking at 22.1% in 2013 (see Figure 1).

And Wisconsin is hardly alone in spending a significant amount of tax dollars on policing. In fact, the Policy Forum says that the state is in the middle of the road for overall local spending on police, which substitutes for a lack of direct funding for police from the State.

Once all local governments are accounted for, including entities like counties, school districts, and special districts, the gap narrows: 6.6% of all local government operating spending in Wisconsin goes to police protection versus 6.3% nationwide. If state spending is considered, then the trend reverses: 3.7% of all state and local operating spending in Wisconsin goes to police protection, compared to 4.0% nationwide.

The takeaway is that Wisconsin’s municipal governments appear to devote a higher proportion of their budgets to police than the national average, but this is balanced by Wisconsin’s lower proportional spending at the county and state levels. Across all states, Wisconsin ranks 18th in terms of the percentage of municipal operating spending devoted to police protection, as well as 26th as a share of county operating spending. At the same time, Wisconsin ranks dead last in the same metric at the state level.

However, it must be noted that the state of Wisconsin sends general shared revenue to local governments, which indirectly pays for police, even if those funds aren't earmarked toward cops. And this analysis does not seem to include Corrections spending, which we the state was slated to spend more than $1.2 billion on in Fiscal Year 2020.

This is the part of the post where I remind you that Scott Walker and the Wisconsin GOP exempted police and fire services from the union-busting Act 10 of 2011 as a "thank you" for those unions supporting Republicans in elections. That should have removed any facade that Act 10 was anything but a power play against workers and unions who were more likely to support Dems, but in case you had any doubt that Act 10 was nothing but politics, Scotty himself put that to rest.

.@ScottWalker says Act 10 should be applied to police unions, in @marcthiessen's latest column: "Just about everybody knows who the bad actors are, but because of union rules, they were constantly protected and reassigned." https://t.co/9Zd53Wj1zV #wipolitics #wigop #wiunion

— Scott Milfred (@ScottMilfred) June 14, 2020

Funny how he changes his tune when he doesn't need the votes of cops' unions anymore, and when public opinion has shifted against the race-baiting "law and order" garbage Scotty used to constantly spew. But he still peddles the "teachers can't get fired" lie, because he'll always have a paycheck waiting for him to say that garbage.

There's no question that Wisconsin's largest city continues to have to pay an increasing amount to its police force under the Act 10 exemption, even as the number of cops in Milwaukee has leveled off. Even more remarkable is that the Policy Forum notes that wages and salaries for Milwaukee Police went up by more than $50 million in the last 5 years, while all other expenses (like equipment and supplies) actually went down.

I got a better idea than Gov Dropout. Let's have cops deal with Act 10-style restrictions on collective bargaining, and give those bargaining rights back to workers whose agencies don't kill citizens and cause millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded settlements. And give those agencies some of the duties that cops have had to take on, like dealing with OD's and people suffering from mental health situations. Win-win all around.

With the lack of local revenues that have resulted from the COVID-19 recession and the associated shutdowns, it seems likely that Wisconsin's local governments are going to be tight for 2021. Add in the limitations that WisGOPs have imposed on raising property taxes in the state, and this means that cutbacks in services are likely to happen without a significant bailout from the Feds. And the Policy Forum notes that this, even more than calls to defund the police, are likely to be reasons that police forces might face funding cuts next year.

In the end, however, decisions on whether to reduce police spending may be driven at least as much by fiscal reality than by debating the merits of police “defunding.” Given law enforcement’s large share of overall local government spending in Wisconsin, many of the state’s municipalities may have little choice but to consider cuts or freezes to police spending as their financial challenges intensify from the COVID-19 pandemic.