(The Center Square) – Milwaukee County leaders are using words like “blindsided” to describe the nearly $11 million deficit in the county’s bus systems.
Milwaukee County Transit System announced a surprise deficit last week, and on Friday the county ordered an audit to see where the money went.
County Comptroller Liz Sumner was the first to say she was blindsided by the financial gap. She said in an email that she was “stunned to learn through the media” that the bus system will be so short.
Summer said that, as recently as the beginning of the month, the county’ s Department of Transportation was expecting a balanced budget. That is why she is pushing so quickly for an audit.
“I’ve already taken steps to better understand the circumstances that led to this sudden and concerning shift in MCTS’s fiscal outlook, which may result in service reductions to mitigate.”
Last week, MCTS interim president Julie Esch announced that the county’s bus system would rollback service.
Esch said because of “unexpected expenses and lower passenger revenue,” MCTS plans to trim 20,000 hours of service from its schedule.
“Reducing the frequency of buses is the last thing we want to do, but it will have the least impact on our riders. We provide 80,000 rides a day — that’s tens of thousands of Milwaukee County residents who depend on us to get to work, school and medical care,” Esch said in a statement.
Summer told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the sudden deficit discovery, and sudden service cut announcements are not normal.
“To just all of a sudden, in the middle of the year, appear….so, what we’re hoping is to figure out where the communication breakdown was and the calculation breakdown,” she added.
County Supervisor Steve Taylor said MCTS is clearly looking at a “fiscal cliff” though he’s not sure how the county will face the challenges without help either from the state capitol or Washington D.C.
