David Crowley inherited a huge mess. He’s the county executive of Milwaukee County, which has run structural deficits for more than 20 years due to a major pension scandal at the dawn of the century. Preserving services meant raising taxes — and that required getting permission from the Legislature.
It seemed like an impossible ask. Wisconsin can barely pass any kind of bills in this era, with Republicans who control the Legislature barely speaking to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. GOP legislators certainly are not in favor of tax increases. What’s more, they’ve passed numerous punitive pre-emption laws, tying the hands of Milwaukee city and county in recent years. “When I first brought this to the Speaker of the Assembly [Robin Vos], he was like, ‘Hell no,’ right?” Crowley recalls. “But we just continued to ask. It went from ‘hell no’ to ‘no’ to ‘maybe, we’ll see.’”
Crowley worked hand in glove with Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, a friend since high school. (They appear together so often they joke about carpooling.) But Johnson credits Crowley for having built the right relationships during his time in the Assembly. Together, they convinced localities across Wisconsin it was in their interests for the state to change its local revenue-sharing arrangement for the first time in more than two decades.
Indeed, localities walked away with about a 50 percent bump — and Milwaukee County and dozens of others have been able to raise their own sales taxes. Legislators added plenty of provisions they didn’t like, but it was all worth it for what Crowley describes as a “$3 billion pension reform.”
Crowley, who is 38, grew up in a notoriously poor ZIP code in Milwaukee, his family moving and getting evicted on a near-constant basis. Using federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars, he’s made investments in affordable housing that are essentially unprecedented for Milwaukee County. The county has one of the lowest per capita homeless populations in the country.
Crowley’s the first Milwaukee County executive in decades to craft a strategic plan. His “North Star,” Mayor Johnson says, is trying to make the county the healthiest in the state. There’s a long way to go on that. It has the eighth-highest death rate from opioids among jurisdictions above 500,000.
But Crowley has rolled out an innovative set of treatment-based approaches, funded by opioid settlement dollars, that have drawn attention and imitation from other counties around the country. “He is a key leader on mental health,” says Matt Chase, the CEO/executive director of the National Association of Counties. “He is relentless in bringing people together to conquer challenges.”
Crowley has been able to establish new bus rapid transit lanes — the county’s first meaningful investment in transit in at least 30 years — and has devoted more money to park maintenance. But there was one spending area where Crowley drew the line earlier this year. He vetoed a proposal to bump the pay of the three other countywide officials by 33 percent. They still got a hefty increase, but Crowley decided it would be “grossly negligent” to boost their salaries that much when some county workers waited years for a raise.
Voters are clearly satisfied with the increased level of service made possible by the influx of new dollars. Crowley won a second term in April with 85 percent of the vote.
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