On Wednesday, Milwaukee County told the County Board that the 2027 budget proposed by County Executive David Crowley counts on $4.56 million in savings that never existed. The county sent the memo less than 24 hours after Crowley was elected Wisconsin governor.
The administration didn’t just find the problem on Wednesday. Crowley’s budget office told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that his administration knew about the error roughly two weeks before the election. Voters didn’t hear about it then. Neither did the supervisors who must vote on the budget.
The County Board is scheduled to vote on the roughly $1.5 billion budget on Thursday, November 5. That gives supervisors about a day with the corrected numbers. Crowley introduced the plan in October to close a projected $50 million gap.
The county executive’s budget office says it learned of the error about two weeks before Election Day. The County Board got the memo the day after Crowley won and one day before its budget vote.
The county blames a newly automated process for allocating equipment purchases and depreciation. The November 4 memo says the formula reversed the positive and negative signs on two airport entries: a $4.49 million depreciation contribution and $2.21 million in airport revenue. The result made the budget look better than it was. The county did this work by hand until this year.
Crowley’s office says he is aware of the error and that the Office of Strategy, Budget and Performance “acted immediately” once it was found. Asked why the news came out only after the election, a spokesperson said it took time to figure out what went wrong. The upcoming budget meeting set the timing, not the election. The office would not say when Crowley personally learned of the problem. His campaign declined to comment.
The fix doesn’t fill the hole now. It promises to fill it later. The administration plans to cover the gap during 2027 and bring a fund transfer to the board by the end of March. It lists possible sources: more prescription drug rebates, cash left in capital projects closing in 2027, and savings found in department budgets. The memo does not say how much each would bring in.
“The County Executive is confident the issue is resolved and that Milwaukee County will end 2027 with a balanced budget,” the spokesperson said.
The timeline is the problem. If the administration knew roughly two weeks before Election Day, Crowley had time to tell his County Board but chose to wait until the votes were counted. That is a strange choice for a candidate whose closing pitch was that he balanced the county budget every year. Voters were asked to trust his record on money while his own office sat on a $4.56 million mistake in his latest budget.
The county’s explanation doesn’t help him much either. Either Crowley’s team let a new formula flip plus signs to minus signs on millions of dollars and nobody caught it, or they caught it and kept quiet. Neither answer says much for the man who will be writing the state budget in a few months.
The question his office hasn’t answered is simple: if the administration knew in October, why did the public find out in November? Until it does, the timing speaks for itself.
Crowley takes office as governor in January. He has already promised to be “bold” with a Democratic Legislature, and he is leaving behind a county budget his own office admits is short.
