Wisconsin’s share, $5.7 billion — $3.2 billion for our state government and another $2.5 billion to more than 2,000 county and local governments — is not needed. And its allocation was almost entirely arbitrary, much of it a matter of simple division rather than targeted need.
The numbers alone are staggering: $405,720,000 for the City of Milwaukee, $183,420,000 for Milwaukee County; $49,190,000 for Madison, $106,030,000 for Dane County; and $25,230,000 for Green Bay, $51,310,000 for Brown County.
Counties will get more than $1.1 billion, but from the most populated to the least populated county, from the wealthiest to the poorest, the shares will be equal, at a rate of about $194 per resident.
Waukesha County was allocated $78,390,000, but through some quirk in the formula, the City of Waukesha is getting “only” $7,150,000. “We’re talking to our legislators about it,” Waukesha City Administrator Kevin Lahner tells me. “We should have been in the (Community Development Block Grant) entitlement category.”
The problem, and this is a big one, is that the federal government is borrowing the money to give to governments that are, for the most part, better off than they were before the pandemic because of the CARES Act in March 2020.