Only two states have cut county funding more. Huge funding decline has hurt Milwaukee. [View all]

Gerrymandered Republican legislators still do not want to fix Medicaid!!




State Near Top In Slashing County Funding

Only two states have cut county funding more. Huge funding decline has hurt Milwaukee.

https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2022/03/16/murphys-law-state-near-top-in-slashing-county-funding/


By Bruce Murphy - Mar 16th, 2022 10:21 am


Over the last three decades almost no state in the nation has cut funding more to its counties than Wisconsin, a study by Forward Analytics found. State funding of county services in Wisconsin fell from 46% of total county revenues in 1987 to 26% in 2019, but “much of the decline occurred between 2009 and 2019,” the study noted.

Only Minnesota and New Jersey cut funding to the counties by a greater rate than Wisconsin during this period, the little-noticed report from 2021 found.

Those cuts were particularly devastating for Milwaukee as Urban Milwaukee has reported. Between 2010 and 2021, Milwaukee County has seen its total state revenue decline significantly. Had annual funding received in 2010 been maintained and kept up with inflation, the county would have received another $455 million over that 11-year period.

Counties are not independent governments, as many taxpayers assume, but operate as the administrative arms of state government, providing services mandated by the state. ...................

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But all 72 counties in Wisconsin are being squeezed by the decline in state funding. As a result, the counties’ share of funding of its programs — mostly local property taxes paying for state mandated programs — grew from 51% in 1987 to 71% in 2019. The underfunding of state mandated programs has grown so bad for Milwaukee County it now projects that 100% of its spending will go to those programs by 2027, leaving not one dollar of funding for local services like the county parks or buses, as Urban Milwaukee reported.

The decline in state funding to the counties, Knapp finds, was driven by a change in state priorities. In the 1990s, Wisconsin started spending more money on corrections and K-12 education. As a result of “tough on crime” laws, “Wisconsin’s prison population nearly tripled and corrections spending quadrupled,” the study notes. And Medicaid costs began rising rapidly, from 9% of state spending in the early 2000s to 17% by 2019.

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One additional constraint on the state budget that has left less money to spend is the opposition of Walker and Republicans to supplemental Medicaid funding under the Affordable Care Act, which has cost the state $1.6 billion since 2014. That could have paid for a lot of shared revenue to the counties.

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