Police department funding across Wisconsin has risen in recent decades
As some activists call for cuts to funding for police departments, researchers found that spending in Wisconsin on law enforcement is largely higher than it was in the 1980s, even when controlled for inflation.
Law enforcement is the most expensive line item in municipal budgets, receiving one out of every five dollars spent by local governments, the Wisconsin Policy Forum found in a report issued Monday.
And the proportion of municipal budgets spent on law enforcement has risen since 1986, when the data first became available. Then, 17.8% of local governments’ budgets were devoted to funding law enforcement. The latest data, from 2018, found it had risen to 20%.
In 1986, Wisconsin municipalities spent $353 million on law enforcement. In 2018, they spent $1.28 billion.
When adjusted for inflation, and considered on a per-capita basis, police departments have seen about a 30% jump in funding from local governments since the 1980s.
Still, school districts — separate entities with budgets distinct from local governments — far outpaced police in funding, spending more than $10 billion on K-12 education in 2017. Comparing all types of local budgets in Wisconsin, local spending on police actually ranks third, behind education and public welfare.
In the last five years the police department budgets of Milwaukee and Madison have grown, the Wisconsin Policy Forum found, but it’s not a simple picture.
The vast majority of a police department budget goes toward salaries, wages and benefits. In Milwaukee, rising costs in those categories have been coupled with recent staff reductions — 60 officers through retirement, in the 2020 budget.
And, the Wisconsin Policy Forum found, police staffing levels in the state’s biggest cities have not kept pace with population growth.
Yet police budgets continue to grow each year — “presumably due to yearly increases in salaries and benefits,” the report states.
Last week the Milwaukee Common Council approved a measure directing the city budget office to explore the implications of a 10% cut to the police department budget.
Council members and other advocates of reducing police spending argue the money would be better used if it went to other efforts, such as social services.