Who's Really To Blame For Milwaukee County Transit Deficit

The Milwaukee Country Transit System is a hot mess right now.  It is nearly $11 million in the hole right now.  MCTS officials blame their deficit on unexpected overtime, lower ridership, people getting on board without paying their fare and private contractors not meeting their obligations.

To make matters worse, transit officials have known about this for months, but have only just now come clean on it. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the finger pointing game is already ridiculous:

 "It's like they're way too reactionary. They're way too slow moving, and the fact it takes weeks to notify us that you're starting to see a problem, that is an issue," Supervisor Steve Taylor, the finance committee's vice-chair, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel after reviewing the timeline.

The report also shows on June 23, following the agency's release of its May financial report, the County Executive's Office shared concerns with MCTS that it had not communicated the "severity of the budget situation" with supervisors prior to notifying the public, and "acting independently regarding major implications of service changes."

Days later, county Comptroller Liz Sumner said she was "stunned to learn through the media" of MCTS' projected deficit for 2025, given the reports she had been receiving projected a "balanced budget" for the end of the year. Sumner called for an audit of the agency as well as an analysis of the agency's finances to be carried out by her own office.

On July 1, Donna Brown-Martin, executive director of the county transportation department since 2018, resigned. A week later, Interim President and CEO Julie Esch resigned from MCTS

OK, so the two top MCTS officials resigned. That's just a start though.  

I need more answere from Summer on how she didn't know and only learned it through the media.  Where was she for the past six months?  Maybe we should do an audit on her office as well as MCTS.

The fact of the matter is that this has been a long time coming.  There once was a time when this sort of thing would never have gotten this big or gone on for so long before the Milwaukee County Board would have caught it and taken action.  

Their ability to do that ended about ten years ago, when then Milwaukee County Executive and Plutocrat Chris Abele colluded with Republican state legislators to pass Act 14, which gutted the county board and made them less than half-time employees. Act 14 also decimated the system of checks and balances that exists in functional governments.   

While most of the damage was done, the voters approved of this by large numbers, thanks to a strong advertising blitz by Abele, the Republicans, and people like Bruce Murphy, editor of Urban Milwaukee.

It should be noted that current leaders like the current county executive, David Crowley, hasn't lifted a finger to fix the problem, or even pretend to care.

Remember this when we go to vote next year.  All levels of government needs a good cleaning and purging of thos that serve the wealthy and not the people.