(The Center Square) – A $500 million plan to build a new Milwaukee County criminal courthouse that would reinforce public safety standards and potentially introduce new cost savings was recently greenlit by county officials.
However, the Wisconsin budget gridlock in Madison has made the project’s funding uncertain.
The plan approved by the county would tear down the aging Milwaukee County Safety Building, built in 1929, and build the new courthouse complex on the site.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers originally wanted $25 million to help fund the new courthouse initiative in his proposed budget.
However, recent internal divisions between GOP leadership in the legislature that halted all committee budget meetings until further notice have some county officials thinking the project could be at risk of losing those proposed funds.
“The state budget is a dynamic process and our conversations with partners in the legislature are ongoing,” a spokesperson for Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley told The Center Square. “We are hopeful that there will be legislative support to help address the significant public safety needs within Milwaukee County.”
The spokesperson addressed the necessity of state funds to support judicial and public safety needs, citing the fact that Milwaukee County provides several public safety services that no other county is required to provide, including patrolling state and federal highways within the county.
The new courthouse would be another such service that the county would be mostly responsible for providing.
“This is a multi-generational building that we’re building that will be here for a very long time,” Aaron Hertzberg, director of Milwaukee County’s Department of Administration said at a meeting with the county board’s Committee on Community, Environment and Economic Development.
Hertzberg added that the location of the current Safety Building is the “right site for the long term.”
Kyle Ashley, a spokesperson for the Office of the County Executive, noted that the century-old Safety Building has needed to be updated for several years for public safety standards and that the county could potentially unlock cost savings by eliminating security concerns.
“Because of the infrastructure of [the Safety Building], there are higher staffing needs for bailiffs, particularly in transports,” Ashley said. “This is because we have unsecure pathways in the Safety Building and in the historic courhouse. We have criminal courts in both of those buildings and so we have to have these higher staffing ratios for occupant transports.”
The current building does not meet modern standards for a courthouse, including dedicated passageways for moving defendants in custody, witnesses, or other members of the court. Instead, people attending a specific court hearing in the Safety Building uses the same hallways to get there.
Ashley said because of the Safety Building’s higher security needs, Milwaukee County spends more, requiring a 1:1 ratio of bailiffs to occupants for safe transfer to court.
The 2024 county budget allocated more than $364,000 for hourly bailiff positions, where the standard hourly cost is $33.78-$43.31.
If the county were to build a new courthouse that is up-to-date with modern courthouse standards, where only a 1:5 ratio of bailiffs to occupants would be required for safe transfer to court, they could “unlock” a possible 80% reduction in staff costs for transfers while also further securing public safety needs, according to Ashley.
Additional cost savings would be introduced since the county budgets $500,000 yearly for emergency repairs for the Safety Building and spent almost $3.9 million on utilities for the courthouse complex in 2024.
By achieving an average energy consumption, Ashley said the new courthouse could save Milwaukee County over $880,000 a year.
At the time of publication, the current draft of the biennial budget did not include any funds for the new Milwaukee courthouse.
