Milwaukee County taxpayers pay nearly $3B to the state in share revenues per year and the return shared revenue from the state for the County to operate is at least $260M per year, which results in nearly $30M in County deficit per year affecting countywide services.
By H. Nelson Goodson
Hispanic News Network U.S.A.
August 28, 2025
Milwaukee, Wisconsin - Milwaukee County continues to experience a County deficit that has extended to the Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) bus service. Milwaukee County supervisors are attempting to off-set a projected $10.9M deficit for 2026, and say that currently about 33% of riders in the transit system skip paying (fare evasion) a bus fare.
In 2024, skip pay ridership totaled $4M in loss fare for the County, according to MCTS.
In 2022, MCTS stop enforcing riders to pay their fair fare after assaults on bus drivers increased. To lower the percentage of skip ridership, MCTC plans to hire non-uniformed fare ambassadors to enforce fare fees for bus riders, in an attempt to decrease the skip pay ridership by at least 30%.
What really needs to occur is for Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors to take legal action against the state for the unfair practice of cheating the County from its fairshare of shared revenue. Milwaukee County pays nearly $3B of share revenue to the state per year, but in return, the state only provides the County more than $260M of shared revenue to operate per year resulting in nearly $30M in deficit annually.
If the County Board of Supervisors succeed in challenging the state for more shared revenue (could get back an additional $200M), it would definitely help the County to operate efficiently and would have more than enough funding to fund MCTS system and then MCTS could provide free rides to all Milwaukee County residents, which would definitely reduced the vehicle congestion in the City and County including the reduction of specific pollutants emissions from vehicles.
Previously, the GO Pass program in MCTS offered free bus rides to senior citizens and people with disabilities, but it was discontinued in 2017.
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