Don Behm

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A $60 vehicle registration fee, or wheel tax, is needed beginning in 2017 to help pay for Milwaukee County's bus transit system and costs of repairing county highways and parkways, County Executive Chris Abele said Thursday.

The new fee would be a dedicated source of funding for transportation and generate around $27.1 million a year, Abele told reporters at the courthouse.

The county fee would be paid on top of the state's $75 registration fee for vehicle owners, for a total of $135. City of Milwaukee vehicle owners already pay a separate wheel tax of $20 so the total for city owners would become $155.

"No," Supervisor Michael Mayo Sr. said in response to the proposed registration fee.

"This is not the first time someone asked for a wheel tax," Mayo said. "I was opposed to it in 2010 and I'm against it now." Mayo is chairman of the County Board's transportation committee.

Mayo represents a district in the City of Milwaukee and he said his constituents are against the additional wheel tax since they already pay a city vehicle registration fee. "Residents of the City of Milwaukee would be hit the hardest" by a new county fee, he said.

Mayo recommended that Abele ask the Republican-controlled Legislature to approve an additional 0.5% sales tax for Milwaukee County that would be dedicated to transportation.

Streets, bridges, buses need costly upgrades

A county wheel tax was rejected by the County Board in 2010 and has not resurfaced until now.

Without the new revenue for 2017 provided by the already available registration fee, however, the county transit system faces fare increases, cuts in service and the elimination of some routes, according to Abele.

As state and federal funds for transportation have steadily declined in recent years, the county has faced an increasingly difficult challenge to adequately fund transit and road repairs without raising fares or cutting services, he said.

The $60 fee charged to vehicle owners throughout the county would provide enough revenue to finance all of the county's transportation infrastructure needs each year, Abele said.

He will ask the County Board to approve the new fee as part of the 2017 budget, he said. Abele will present his recommended 2017 spending plan to the County Board at 3 p.m. Monday.

Funds from the annual wheel tax would be split, with an estimated $15.1 million going to major capital investments, such as purchases of new buses, and road and bridge repairs. The proposal would take those expenditures off the property tax levy and allow the county to spend more on a growing backlog of parks maintenance projects, Abele said.

The remaining $11.5 million from a wheel tax would be spent on filling an annual revenue deficit at the Milwaukee County Transit System due to declining ridership and use of a free GO Pass for persons with disabilities or aged 65 and older.

The county anticipates spending an average of $13.3 million a year of local funds from 2017 to 2020 just to replace aging buses, according to a recent Public Policy Forum report. Another $11 million a year would be spent in the next four years to keep up with fixing county highways and bridges, not including parkways, the report said.

A vehicle registration fee would provide funds needed to continue the GO Pass, Abele said. Budget officials last month recommended eliminating the program for 2017.

County transportation officials previously estimated use of a free GO Pass in 2017 would reduce bus fare revenue by $4.4 million in 2017. Nearly 25% of all transit riders currently use a GO Pass.

If left unchecked, the free pass would cause a $12 million hole in the MCTS budget over three years, 2015 through 2017, Abele said.

For that reason, Abele will ask the County Board to approve a slight adjustment to the GO Pass program if the transit budget is propped up with registration fee revenue. The recommended 2017 budget proposes requiring a one-time fee of $5 when a GO Pass card is issued and charging a fare of only $0.25 rather than current free fare program.

The 2017 budget also includes spending nearly $44 million in federal and county funds on developing a bus rapid transit service between downtown Milwaukee and the Milwaukee Regional Medical Center in Wauwatosa.

Abele was joined at the news conference by three transit advocates: Barbara Beckert of Disability Rights Wisconsin, who spoke in favor of keeping the GO Pass, which she described as supporting independent living for people with disabilities; retiree and 40-year veteran of riding county buses, Patricia Lidicker, who said a bus rapid transit service would attract new riders; and Jorge Franco, director of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Wisconsin.

Franco said he agreed that county transit and other transportation programs need a dedicated source of funding such as the vehicle registration fee. An annual fee of $60, or $5 a month, "is less than the cost of repairing damage to a car caused by potholes" in roads, Franco said.