Milwaukee Common Council members voted Tuesday morning 12-3 to pass a 2% sales tax that would raise around $200 million annually in combination with shared revenue. This money, supporters of the proposal suggested, would help to stave off what would otherwise be certain bankruptcy as Milwaukee’s finances buckle under the weight of decades of state disinvestment and suburban parasitism. Yet opponents of the legislation were quick to note that the new tax would impose costs, too, many of them imposed disproportionately on Milwaukee’s most marginalized.
The vote came several weeks after the passage of Act 12, which allocated additional shared revenue to local governments and granted additional taxing authority to Milwaukee City and County. At the same time, this legislation introduced a host of new restrictions on how local governments could use this money, including a laundry list of additional restrictions aimed specifically at the City and County of Milwaukee. The initial legislation would have put the question of an increased sales tax to a referendum, but with budget season approaching, and a shortfall looming, city and county leaders successfully pushed for the ability to make the decision themselves, by a two-thirds vote. This short timeline for the decision meant that city alders had very little time to “sell” the measure to their constituents, a fact which was made apparent in listening sessions in which voters denounced the proposed sales tax increase. As a result, it was not clear that the proposal would pass until this morning.
When the time finally came for alders to discuss the sales tax increase, the Common Council chamber was gripped by an almost eerie silence. Eventually, Ald. Russell Stamper II moved for a recess to try to enjoin some of his colleagues to speak up.
Following the recess, debate commenced in earnest. Ald. Robert Bauman, who eventually voted in favor of the measure, described the “strings attached” to Act 12 as “frankly outrageous”; he rightfully described the restrictions placed on Milwaukee as being shaped by “racism”. Ald. JoCasta Zamarripa noted she “does not take this vote lightly”. Both Bauman and Zamarripa voted in favor of the measure.
A recognition of the failures of city leadership was a consistent theme throughout the council meeting, even among those who ultimately voted in favor of the measure. Ald. Russell Stamper (District 15) described the state government as “the enemy” and chastised city leaders for celebrating Act 12 as a sign of “progress” in relations between the state and the city. “If you stick a knife in my back 9 inches and pull it out 6 inches, there’s no progress,” Stamper said. Despite his anger at the situation, Stamper begrudgingly voted in favor of the measure.
Alds. Andrea Pratt, Mark Chambers, and Milele Coggs voted against the measure, citing the overwhelming opposition of their constituents, as well as their own frustration with a deal that will impose increased costs on those who can least afford it. Ald. Pratt pointed out that when she was a paraprofessional working for MPS, an extra $300 a year cost would have been devastating to her family, and that she would not vote to balance the budget on the backs of “elders on fixed incomes”.
Ald. Coggs expressed frustration with an attitude in the press and among some council members that voting for the tax was the only reasonable option. “I wish we had a clean bill that financially helped this city without overreaching, micromanaging, and being racist. I wish we were not a city… considered to be one of the worst places in America to be a black person. I wish threats and promises weren’t made, and accusations weren’t made that… our commitment to this city and all its residents were not called into question. Unfortunately, those wishes have not come true.”
Ald. Chambers held up postcards he received from around his district, noting that he could not in good conscience go against the wishes of those who had elected him.
Far from being “irresponsible” or “unrealistic”, these councilors were giving perfectly reasonable voice to the reality that this is a bad deal for Milwaukee, just as their colleagues who ultimately voted in favor of the measure had fair points that voting against the deal would have been more harmful to Milwaukee’s citizens. It is worth noting, here, that much of the narrative around this vote in the Milwaukee and Wisconsin press that supposed that voting in favor of the bill was the “only” reasonable choice comes freighted with a certain condescension for those voters who urged their alders to vote “no”. Those who voted against the bill represent overwhelmingly Black and brown constituents, for whom an extra 2% sales tax can be a matter of keeping one’s home or not.
Whether or not in the long term this sales tax will allow Milwaukee to find more solid fiscal footing under the actively hostile conditions of a state government bent on sabotaging the largest city in Wisconsin remains to be seen. One issue here is that the city’s budget deficit may grow larger than initial forecasts projected, given that Act 12’s provisions allowing for the soft closure of the city’s pension system require lowering the rate of return from 7.5% to 6.8%, which will cost the city $50 million dollars annually.
In short, while the new tax may have held the city back from the abyss, there were lingering doubts about whether or not it would be enough to fill the gap. “The math doesn’t add up,” said Ald. Chambers, who opposed the measure.
Mayor Cavalier Johnson praised the vote as “important and extraordinary”, on par with the adoption of the city’s charter in 1846.
Yet the mood around City Hall could hardly be called celebratory. Even council members who eventually supported the bill were forced to admit that the city’s leaders had exerted little leverage and received, in return, a bad deal. The city will receive the lowest increase in shared revenue of any municipality in the state and will be forced to submit to state controls unprecedented in the history of Wisconsin’s home rule amendment. And now, in order to stave off a fiscal crisis, the city would be imposing a new tax with regressive effects.
“I can’t imagine Jim Crow laws, but I am living through Act 12,” said Ald. Stamper. “I wonder if [state legislators] understand that these are real people’s lives that we have to help, and they are just making it harder.”
