(The Center Square) – The city of Milwaukee had 17 employees receive more than $200,000 in compensation in 2014, and the city’s mayor, police and fire chiefs were not among them.
The top two officials on the list were Chief Investment Officer David Silber and Employee Retirement System Director Bernard Allen, who received $289,321 and $275,251 in gross pay, respectively, according to data from Open The Books from a database on the city of Milwaukee’s website.
Open the Books collects data from municipalities and state government across the United States for comparison and transparency.
The pair of Milwaukee retirement fund officials made $137.7 and $131.8 per hour while a third member of the state retirement system staff, Deputy Chief Investment Officer Erich Sauer, made $222,493 in compensation on $105.9 per hour, according to the data.
The median household income in Milwaukee was $51,188 in 2023, according to a survey conducted by the U.S. Census. That median income only includes salary while the Milwaukee gross pay data includes an employee’s salary along with other items such as overtime, comp time, vacation and sick time payouts.
Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, for example, is listed as making nearly $161,000 in total compensation. He made approximately $147,000 in base salary in a role that paid the same amount between 2008 and when the mayor’s salary was raised 15% to more than $169,000 in base pay after last year’s April 2 election along with other city officials.
The 15% increase applied to the mayor, city council members and top city workers like Milwaukee’s police and fire chiefs.
Twelve of the 17 individuals receiving gross pay of $200,000 or more from Milwaukee worked for the city’s police or fire departments with many of those earning overtime and premium overtime pay of anywhere from $75,000 up to $125,000 for the year.
Milwaukee had 261 employees make $150,000 or more in gross pay during 2024, the data showed.

(The Center Square) – The Federal Bureau of Investigation has arrested Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan, according to a social media post from FBI Director Kash Patel.
“We believe Judge Dugan intentionally misdirected federal agents away from the subject to be arrested in her courthouse, Eduardo Flores Ruiz, allowing the subject — an illegal alien — to evade arrest,” Patel wrote in a now-deleted post.
Patel added that more would be shared soon on the arrest.
“Thankfully our agents chased down the perp on foot and he’s been in custody since, but the Judge’s obstruction created increased danger to the public,” Patel wrote.

(The Center Square) – Home prices in Wisconsin continue to go up, and there continue to be fewer homes for sale.
The March report from the Wisconsin Realtors Association shows a double-digit drop in home sales and a nearly 4% increase in the median price in the state.
“Wisconsin home sales fell 10.2% compared to solid sales in March 2024,” the report noted. “[And] the median price rose 3.7% over the past 12 months to $310,000.”
The median price is statewide, and homes in the Madison and WOW counties areas are much higher.
Wisconsin’s price increases and number of homes for sale are not just a March problem, the report points out. March was also the end of the first quarter of 2025, and the numbers show a trend.
“During the first three months of 2025, sales were down slightly, falling 0.8% relative to that same period in 2024,” the Realtors wrote. “The median price rose 7.3% to $300,500 in the first quarter of 2025 compared to the first quarter of 2024.”
The biggest problem continues to be a lack of homes that are for sale.
Real estate agents say Wisconsin’s inventory simply isn’t there.
“Total listings were relatively flat over the last 12 months, rising just 0.6% in March, whereas new listings fell 1.3% compared to March 2024,” the report added.
Wisconsin Realtors President & CEO Tom Larson tried to find some good news in the numbers.
“When mortgage rates first tapped 5% almost three years ago some buyers stepped back from the market, hoping rates would improve. Now that 30-year rates have been in the 6% to 7% range for most of the last two years, there are signs that buyers are treating this as the new normal,” he said in a statement.” That bodes well for solid buyer demand going into the peak sales period.”

(The Center Square) – One of Wisconsin’s think tanks says it is time to stop propping up The Hop.
The Badger Institute is out with a new piece that makes the case to close down Milwaukee’s streetcar. Mike Nichols, the Badger Institute’s president, told News Talk 1130 WISN’s Jay Weber The Hop has proven unpopular, expensive and dangerous.
“Hardly anybody is on this thing, and if you don’t actually live downtown or work downtown you don’t realize that most of these cars are virtually empty all the time,” Nichols said Thursday. “I’m not sure if people remember how much it cost. Initially the national investment was $129 million, [and then there were] millions of dollars per year and operating costs.”
The Badger Institute’s piece says The Hop has a $4 million operating deficit. Part of the reason is that Milwaukee has never charged riders to ride The Hop.
Nichols also said there are downtown TIF districts that “spit out” taxpayer money to pay for The Hop.
“No one rides it, it’s expensive, it slows down traffic,” Nichols added. “I just don’t think it’s successful in any way.”
Milwaukee’s streetcar has two lines, the M and the L.
The city’s numbers show an average of about 1,000 riders per day in February, the most recent month of ridership data. But The Badger Institute’s report said almost all of those riders are on just the M Line.
“The L Line has averaged only 165 rides a day and the M Line only 1,355 a day over the last year, according to the Department of Public Works. Both lines run an average of 18 hours a day, which means the L line has less than 10 riders per hour,” Badger’s report stated.
Nichols said there is some worry among Milwaukee’s leaders that shutting down The Hop would cost the city.
“Of the $128 million, more than $69 million initially came from the federal government in the form of a Federal Highway Administration Congestion and Air Quality Improvement grant. The feds would likely make the city pay some of that back if politicians decide to finally stop running largely empty cars around downtown at all hours,” Nichols wrote in a recent column about The Hop.
“We should derail The Hop permanently,” Nichols told Weber. “Four million or $5 million a year in operating expenses, that adds up pretty quickly.”

(The Center Square) – The unemployment rates in 11 of 13 Wisconsin metropolitan areas and 19 of the state’s 35 largest cities decreased month over month in March.
Those rates were up, however, in 12 of the metropolitan areas and 23 of the largest 35 cities in the state year over year.
The local March numbers come as the seasonally adjusted overall unemployment in Wisconsin remained at 3.2% compared to a 4.2% national rate.
Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development Chief Economist Dennis Winters said recently that many companies are not yet acting on uncertainty related to President Donald Trump’s federal policy on tariffs, so the numbers do not yet show an impact.
The unemployment rates in 54 Wisconsin counties lowered month to month while seven stayed the same and 11 counties saw the rate tick up. Those rates are up in 23 of the largest 35 cities year over year.
The year over year numbers, however, showed that 57 counties have seen an increase in the unemployment rate, 11 have remained the same and four have seen decreases including Sawyer County, which is at an all-time low 5.2%.

(The Center Square) – A trio of Wisconsin Republican lawmakers are pushing a pair of nuclear power initiatives that include spending a combined $2.25 million.
That spending includes $1 million on a nuclear power siting study, more than $140,000 while adding a full-time employee focusing on nuclear power and $250,000 to organize a Nuclear Power Summit in Madison at a new University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering building.
Wisconsin Reps. David Steffen, R-Howard, and Shae Sortwell, R-Two Rivers, along with Sen. Julian Bradley, R-New Berlin, testified at a public hearing related to the proposals.
Steffen said that, overall, Assembly Bill 108 related the siting study would have a $2 million allotment for the study, the limited-term employee and any contractors needed to complete the study through the state’s Public Service Commission.
Assembly Bill 132 would create a board of six voting members and at least three non-voting members would meet at least three times annually until July 1, 2030, to organize the summit, which has a goal to “promote Wisconsin’s achievements in the field of nuclear power and fusion energy.”
The bill is expected to be funded through an appropriation through the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp.
“We want to signal that ‘Yes, Wisconsin is ready,’” Bradley said. “We are net importers for energy, we’ve got to change that. If we want to bring down our rates, if we want to be able to have the generation necessary to power the data centers and the AI and all of the things as technology continues to move forward, then we’ve got to continue to diversify and that means opening up nuclear to another level.”
Steffen said that power generation is about to become far more important in the state as more data centers come online. Wisconsin currently imports six times more energy than it produces, he testified.
“To give perspective, the Microsoft plant (in Mount Pleasant), the one that has received the most attention because it’s the furthest along, will be pulling as much power as the entire city of Madison once online,” Steffen said. “And, if we have the good fortune of landing the Cloverleaf project in Port Washington area, that is not only an $80 billion potential project for the state of Wisconsin but that project will be drawing as much power as the entire city of Los Angeles.”
Microsoft is spending $3.3 billion on a cloud and artificial intelligence data center in Mount Pleasant.
The full-time state position related to nuclear siting would include an estimated $100,700 salary, $35,100 for fringe benefits and $10,000 for supplies and services.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin Rep. Chris Kapenga, R-Delafield, called the state’s work on diversity, equity and inclusion “disgusting,” “racist” and “discriminatory.”
But Wisconsin Department of Administration Secretary Kathy Blumenfeld cautioned the Legislative Audit Committee on Wednesday the DEI audit of Wisconsin government actions related to Gov. Tony Evers’ November 2019 executive order requiring each state agency to develop a DEI plan.
Blumenfeld noted that, while her department asked for additional staff to complete the work, it was not granted in the past two budgets.
She said that many of the tasks required by the order were already required by state affirmative action law and statutes passed during prior administrations.
The audit found that 21 state agencies completed DEI action plans between January 2020 and April 2024 with 1,212 combined DEI actions taken in those agencies.
The audits showed that Wisconsin state government agencies spent $2.4 million on the salary and costs of 47 employees related to DEI in fiscal year 2023-24 while the University of Wisconsin system showed that $40.2 million was spent on offices with duties related to DEI, though the amounts spent specifically related to DEI were not specified.
“All of this taxpayer money has been spent on DEI yet we’re seeing the implementation of it has not gone very well,” Kapenga said. “I’m not seeing any benefit of DEI.”
Blumenfeld was careful to say that the state takes diversity into account in the way that it recruits job candidates but not when it makes specific hiring decisions.
“We recruit all over, but don’t take it into account in hiring,” Blumenfeld said.
State government employees worked at 12 state agencies while $705,300 was spent on salary and costs related to 23 agencies conducting DEI training while eight agencies spent $444,300 on actions related to DEI checklists.
State agency staff spent 4,990 hours attending DEI committee meetings.
Blumenfeld estimated that an estimated 660 hours were spent by Department of Administration staff complying with the audit but the department did not look into the salary costs for that time spent due to different salaries of various employees who spent time on audit compliance.

(The Center Square) – It is taking longer than first thought to deal with the lead in Milwaukee Public Schools.
The city’s school district said Fernwood Montessori School will reopen Friday, instead of toady.
“Working in partnership with the city of Milwaukee Health Department has allowed us to move forward on our lead remediation work with urgency and precision. We have a lot more work to do in other buildings across our district and will move with the same level of urgency and care for those communities,” Superintendent Brenda Cassellius said in a statement.
MPS closed Fernwood, Starms Early Childhood Center and LaFollette School last month.
The district had hoped to open Fernwood today, and open Starms by the end of the month. LaFollotte was slated to reopen sometime next month. MPS did not say anything this week about a timeline for the other schools.
The district did give parents a bit of a timeline for testing other schools for lead. But that testing will also be delayed.
Michael Turza, the man appointed to oversee lead testing across the city’s schools, told a parents group on Tuesday that MPS plans a wave of testing for the summer.
“Our goal is that by the beginning of the new school year, all of those pre-1950 buildings are done,” Turza said.
Milwaukee Public Schools have said it has more than 130 buildings that need to be lead-tested.
Turza said, even with a summer full of work, testing all of those schools is “massive work.”
“Hopefully by the end of the calendar year, this issue will be done, at least in the initial phase,” Turza added.
It is also unclear how long it will take for MPS and Milwaukee’s health department to test all of the students who go to schools with possible lead paint issues.
Milwaukee’s health department said that could be as many as 10,000 students. Public health managers have said in the past that they do not have the means to test that many students, and don’t know if that kind of testing will be available.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s budget bill will have to have both tax cuts and some increase investments, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said at a news conference.
But those will all have to come in one bill, not separate bills, Gov. Tony Evers said.
The two sides met nearly three weeks ago with one staff meeting since and both sides hope to meet again soon on priorities from each as the budget process heats up.
“It’s going to have to have a tax cut in it, just like I think we’re accepting that there’s gonna have to be some investments that are made so that bipartisan support can be earned,” Vos said at a news conference.
Evers reiterated that he is reserving his decision on whether he will again run for re-election until after the budget is complete and would offer no hints on which way he is leaning.
Evers said that a complete budget package must be done together, rather than separating the spending and cuts.
Evers said that the two sides are “somewhat apart on what we want to do with taxes.”
“We believe there is a sufficient money to increase some areas, especially education, but also to make sure that property taxes for the average property taxpayer stays the same,” Evers said.
Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, said that the next meeting between the two sides has not been set.
“We have a Republican Legislature, Democrat as our governor,” LeMahieu said. “We think it’s best for the state of Wisconsin to get a budget passed and provide tax relief. So we will continue to try to work with the Governor and see if we can find consensus.”
Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, is a co-chair of the Joint Finance Committee and said that the priority remains tax reform and investment priorities.
“It’s good that talks are happening and, as long as we can get to a goal of making sure we have meaningful tax reform as part of the budget process, I think that’s the most important part,” Born said.
Vos added that a starting point has to be a balanced budget with a clear view of the anticipated revenue from tax collections for the two-year budget period.
“Just like any family, the first thing you do when you create a budget is you have to know how much you have to spend,” Vos said. “And that’s why, to me, the most important thing is finding out and discovering where we can find agreement on a tax cut. And then, once we see what’s left, we’ll begin to invest in our priorities, be it roads, schools, whatever it’s gonna be.”