State Sen. LaTonya Johnson, a Milwaukee Democrat who filed for bankruptcy twice while serving in the state Assembly, will co-chair the Legislature’s budget-writing Joint Finance Committee when Democrats take control in January.
Incoming Senate Majority Leader Dianne Hesselbein, D-Middleton, announced the appointment Thursday. The same morning, incoming Assembly Speaker Greta Neubauer, D-Racine, named Rep. Tip McGuire, D-Kenosha, as the Assembly co-chair.
The 16-member committee writes the state’s two-year budget and signs off on releasing money for projects the Legislature has approved. Democrats will control both houses of the Legislature in January for the first time in 16 years, after Republicans built the last several budgets.
Johnson’s finances drew scrutiny during her 2016 Senate run. According to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report by Daniel Bice, she first filed for bankruptcy in 2013, the year she took office in the Assembly. She filed under Chapter 13, which lets a debtor repay debts over time and keep a home. She later switched the case to Chapter 7, which can wipe out unsecured debts such as credit cards.
In that case, Johnson listed assets of slightly more than $153,000 and liabilities of nearly $188,000, the Journal Sentinel reported. The debts included over $40,000 in unpaid taxes, about $62,000 in student loans, and medical bills she said came from lacking health insurance.
Johnson, who ran an in-home day care, Anointed Child Care Services, and led the union for Milwaukee child care providers, blamed Republicans and Act 10 for her troubles. She told the paper the law disbanded the union and changed how providers were paid. The Journal Sentinel disputed that account.
In July 2015, about two months after a judge discharged many of those debts, Johnson filed again under Chapter 13. She reported about $131,000 in assets and $126,000 in liabilities, including nearly $37,000 in delinquent federal taxes, which cannot be erased in bankruptcy. She blamed an accountant for the unpaid taxes and said they had since been cleared. The second case was still open when the story ran.
“I filed for bankruptcy (a second time) to keep my house,” Johnson told the Journal Sentinel. “I didn’t want to lose my house.”
“For people who live in the inner city of Milwaukee, they all know this struggle,” she said. “It’s very seldom that you find an elected official who has been a part of the struggle.”
Hesselbein’s announcement did not mention the bankruptcies. It cited Johnson’s work on child care costs and public safety and her years as co-founder and president of AFSCME Local 502, which represents family child care providers.
Johnson said in the same release that she would “write a responsible budget investing in the people because I know what having opportunity means to a family, and how much can change when people have a fair shot to build a better life.”
Johnson served two Assembly terms before winning the 6th Senate District seat in 2016. She has been the ranking Democrat on Joint Finance this session.
She drew national attention in June 2023 when she closed a Senate floor speech on Milwaukee crime by saying, “F— the suburbs because they don’t know a goddamn thing about how life is in the city,” as reported by The Associated Press. She later apologized for the language, AP reported. Heartland Post wrote about that history earlier Thursday.
