Courtesy of David Crowley
Last May, David Crowley became Milwaukee County’s first African American County Executive. He took office less than two months after COVID hit Milwaukee and a month before protests over the murder of George Floyd. 2020 was a difficult year, but Crowley brought competence and experience to his new job. As 2021 begins, he looks forward to a new administration in Washington and the roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccine but is prepared for many challenges in the months ahead.
You came into the office during a pandemic, a recession, a serious structural deficit in the budget and an active movement for social and racial justice on the streets. So, how do you like your job?
You know, I absolutely love my job. I would say we have been able to do a lot. When you think about this pandemic, when you think about the social unrest—Milwaukee County has to be at its best when everybody feels like we’re in the worst of everything in our lifetime. So, we have been building relationships along with the County Board, along with business leaders, community leaders, as well as building relationships with other units of government and businesses outside of Milwaukee County, because we know that we have to lean on one another, not only to get through this pandemic, but to build back better once we near the end of this pandemic and start thinking about the economic recovery. So, I feel good about everything. Yes, there are a lot of challenges out there, but I think there is also an equal amount of opportunities that we have to pursue.
You are totally a self-made guy, and I have great respect for that. Tell us about your background growing up. Where did you grow up and what was your life like?
I was born and raised right here in the City of Milwaukee. Grew up in the 53206 ZIP code. I am the middle child; I have an older brother and a younger brother. Went to public schools my whole life, and we struggled a lot. My parents struggled with drug addictions, but they also struggled to put food on the table. My mother struggled a lot and got to the point where she needed food stamps. She struggled to the point where we needed a lot of Milwaukee County services because we were evicted at least three times.
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Honestly, what changed everything for me was when I was about 17 years old and got involved in a youth organization called Urban Underground, and it really taught me how to love. When you grow up on 23rd and Burleigh, 22nd and Brown, you see a lot of different things in your environment. And if it weren’t for Urban Underground intervening, I wouldn't have been introduced to community organizing or wouldn’t have been introduced to actually leaving my own neighborhood. Urban Underground introduced me to other programs such as Public Allies, who helped me understand what it means to give back and be a servant-leader in this community. From Public Allies, I continued to do community organizing throughout the city.
My first job out of high school, I was working for Project Return, helping ex-offenders find employment and housing when they were being released. And I would say that was one of the hardest jobs that I had, but also one of the most fulfilling, which let me know that I wanted to continue doing community work. I worked for Children’s Outing Association on 23rd and Burleigh. I was a community organizer for the Northside YMCA, as well as a community partner for Safe and Sound before getting my first political organizing start in 2010, working for U.S. Senator Russ Feingold. I was his African American statewide organizer and had the opportunity to travel with him and other organizers across the state to get support in the Black community.
In doing that, I quickly realized not only did I love what I was doing, but folks were telling me that I was good at it. After that Feingold campaign, which was a tough loss for all of us, I wanted to continue to stay involved in politics. In 2011, I worked for the Democratic Party in Wisconsin working the Senate recalls across the state. And from there, I had the opportunity to actually work for then County Board Supervisor Nikiya Harris for about a year and a half before she actually went to Madison to be a state senator for the 6th Senate District, and she brought me along. For four years, I worked under her leadership as a community outreach director and policy director, before deciding that it was time for me to run on my own in the summer of 2015. I ran for city government and the 7th Aldermanic District and I lost in the primary to Khalif Rainey and School Board Chair Dr. Michael Bonds. When I lost that race Nikiya decided that she wasn’t running for reelection, so that opened up a spot at the state level for me to run. I ran for State Assembly in the 17th District and won that seat in a three-way primary with about 57% of the vote.
After that, I was elected to be the chair of not only the Wisconsin Black Caucus, but also the Black and Latino Caucus, as well as chair of the Milwaukee Delegation, and I continued to work with all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle trying to create meaningful change. After serving four years, this seat opened up, I decided to take a crack at it and ended up winning the seat.
In less than a year, you have you transformed the County Government into a smoothly running and effective democratic institution. How did you do it?
I would say that my experience working for the County Board and seeing the turmoil was always in the back of my mind: This isn't what local institutions are supposed to be doing. Local institutions, at the end of the day, are supposed to be fighting for everyone who lives in that municipality.
I value relationships, and for me, it’s really about having open, honest and transparent conversations. I’m always honest about what I can and cannot do and what we can work towards, and I’ll make sure to keep the board in the loop of what we are doing here in the County Executive’s office, because it’s extremely important that we work together. We look at ourselves as two heads coming together to really focus on the issues at hand. And two heads are always better than one. You know, many of us share the same values. We want to see different types of changes. When we think about the mission and vision that we have here in Milwaukee County, you know, we all believe in it. We all believe that we can achieve being the healthiest county by achieving racial equity and having everybody at the table, knowing that everybody’s heart’s in the right place.
It has been good, but I would also say that my success isn’t just based off of what I do. My success is based off of all 4,200 employees here within Milwaukee County, including the County Board. You said I’m self-made, but honestly, my teachers, my mentors, everyone around me who has held me accountable have contributed to the success. I can’t take all the credit for this, because there are so many people throughout my life that have touched me in some capacity.
You appear to have developed a good working relationship with Marcelia Nicholson, the chairwoman of the County Board?
Absolutely. We talk—at the bare minimum—once a week. We have a standing meeting to talk about what is going on and how we can tackle it. It’s been a great working relationship with Chairwoman Nicholson, and I look forward to working with not only her, but everyone on the County Board, because that’s what the success is. Success is only going to come based off of us working together. We have our disagreements, but when you start from a place where you know you can agree and then work from there, it makes a lot of things easier. Government is about compromise. It is not about always getting your way.
Let's get down to some policy. What do you see as the greatest challenges going forward in terms of policy changes or improvements for the county, and what are some of the issues you're looking at?
We’re definitely looking at racism as a public health crisis. There have been many different racist policies at all levels of government that have unequally distributed critical services. We want to focus on all the social determinants of health, because this poor distribution of services and the lack of investments have really led us as a county to being the second unhealthiest county in Wisconsin. So we were launching our strategic plan to focus explicitly on racial and health disparities, because we know that’s what’s going to move this community forward. To do that, it takes resources. One of the biggest policy discussions that we’re having is for the option to have a local sales tax here in Milwaukee County.
When you think about our parks, about mental health, about our Domes, about transportation, about our mandated services—we are in a tough position. For the past nine years on average, we see about a $30 billion gap every year. A 1% sales tax is going to be critical for us because, in six years, if we don’t diversify our revenue streams, Milwaukee County will not be able to make the investments not mandated by state government. So, when you think about our parks and transportation, some of our most used amenities here within Milwaukee County, it’s going to be hard to keep those things afloat.
When I think about this year and what we’ve been able to do with this 2021 budget, we were able to stave off many of the different cuts because of the first-time influx of CARES dollars. Right now, because we’re in the middle of this pandemic, we know many small businesses and many individuals still need access to community support programs. We want to make sure that we are providing those dollars upfront, to help out as many individuals as possible. If we don’t, there’s a greater cost when you think about the folks who are facing evictions, or don’t have transportation to get to work, or won’t be able to get a COVID test or vaccine. Really, it’s about how we manage the expectations of not only Milwaukee County employees, but this community, because of the tough position we are in.
What do you think the chances are of you getting support from the state legislature on your 1% sales tax plan?
I’m very optimistic. We know about the insecurities that many individuals, businesses and governments were having before the pandemic, but I also think that this pandemic has really highlighted the need for this local option sales tax. We have seen the amount of lost revenue and know that many individuals come to Milwaukee County and to many different places in the state to work or to play. And so, we know that we have to capture many of those dollars of those who are living in Illinois or Minnesota or just coming to enjoy our touristic attractions. We have been developing relationships with folks to understand that this is not just a Milwaukee County problem—this is a problem across Wisconsin.
Milwaukee County has always been the political lightning rod here in Wisconsin, so we’ve made a point to build relationships with other municipalities, trying to also work with different associations across the state to get support for something like this. And I would like to say that not only is the County Board involved, but we have the business community, the 19 different municipal government partners in Milwaukee County and other municipalities across the state who are lobbying for this local option. This will also help us provide a huge property tax relief to this community while also making the critical investments, fighting for racial equity right here in Milwaukee County and pushing our mission and vision forward.
What does the Biden presidency mean for you and your policies moving forward?
It is a dream come true for our local government, particularly in the middle of this pandemic. I will say that the first round of the CARES Act did help, but we’ve continuously pushed back to say that there is more assistance needed. Just recently hearing about the $1.9 trillion package that the Biden administration is talking about, there’s going to be a huge amount of help in making sure that Milwaukee County can deliver its services that people absolutely need. This gives us the ability to make sure that we can keep people in their homes and prevent evictions or help people not lose their homes because they’re behind on their mortgage.
This package proves that he is listening not only to his own administration, but he’s listening to local and state governments who are strapped for cash right now and who want to make sure that we’re properly responding to this pandemic. This is a dream come true when you think about what we have seen in the past four years. There has also been talk about an infrastructure package, and we definitely need to update our infrastructure here within Milwaukee County. We have a lot of assets, and not just our county buildings or our courthouse—I’m hoping this gives us the opportunity to look at what we can do when it comes down to the Milwaukee Domes, to our parks and our transit system.
Have you made any progress in creating the grants office?
Absolutely. That was one of the first things that we did with the County Board’s support, and we set aside three different positions. I believe we filled two of those as of right now and are looking to fill the third in the near future. We were really excited about this grants office because we think it’s going to give us the ability to go after other state, federal and foundational dollars that are out there. We also know that our foundational partners in the philanthropy community are looking to get involved and help out. We look forward to working not only internally, but with our external partners on identifying businesses and other nonprofits that we can partner with to bring more resources to this county.
Recently, Representative Gordon Hintz, the Democratic Minority Leader in the Wisconsin State Assembly, sent a letter to Speaker Robin Vos calling out a list of 15 Republican state legislators who signed a letter to Mike Pence calling for him to refuse the results of the presidential election. What do you think this means for elections going forward? Can the Republican Party recover from this?
I’ve seen some of the names on there, and many are individuals I’ve worked with in the past on different types of policy at the state level. My mind was just boggled at some of the individuals who had actually signed on.
When it came down to the 2020 presidential election, we cannot stand for the lies and this vitriol that we have been seeing. And I’m not going to say Republicans, because there’s a small fraction of individuals in the Republican Party who absolutely continue this type of rhetoric—I’ll say these Trump supporters, these “Re-Trump-licans”’ as some would say, they are an issue, and they can be a cancer to our democracy. We have to have a transparent and open and honest conversation about what democracy looks like, and I hope that they know that there is integrity in our elections here in the state of Wisconsin, and I hope that as we continue to have these conversations, people recognize and actually tell the truth that Biden and Harris won this election fair and square.
Is there anything else that you want to say to your constituents?
I think it’s really about making sure that we can continue to uplift this community in the middle of this pandemic. We don’t have a health department and that could be a little frustrating, but we also recognize where Milwaukee County can have influence. We set up this Unified Emergency Operation Center to work with the healthcare systems, emergency management, as well as our public health officials, so we can try to find ways to still have one Milwaukee County voice. And it’s been going well so far, but I want folks to know that as we continue to talk about this vaccine distribution, we just need patience. This is something that is unprecedented. Unfortunately, we weren’t getting the leadership that we needed from the federal level, but I’m just asking folks to stay patient and bear with all of us as we continue to roll out this vaccine, making sure our most vulnerable residents and our frontline workers get this vaccine to make sure that they are as safe as they can be.
But we also have to make sure that we are educating folks on the efficacy and safety of this vaccine to make sure that individuals are making the best decision for themselves and their families. And it is our hope that, when we roll this out for the public, many people actually get the vaccine to protect not only themselves, but their loved ones as well.
