Ald. Peter Burgelis is trying to put an end to budget curveballs at City Hall, pushing an ordinance that would force earlier warnings when city accounts start drifting too far into the red or the black. The Finance & Personnel Committee signed off on the proposal this week, and the full Common Council is expected to weigh in soon. Supporters say the move is designed to avoid the kind of last-minute budget shocks that rattled the region last year, as reported by FOX6.
What the ordinance requires
The draft measure would require departments to alert the Common Council or its Finance & Personnel Committee any time a departmental account is projected to run a deficit or surplus of more than $100,000. That threshold language was originally added as a budget footnote during the 2026 process.
According to the city’s legislative record on Milwaukee Legistar, committee members backed the reporting requirement and also requested that a formal fund-balance policy be drafted. Officials say the $100,000 trigger is meant to standardize when aldermen get looped in, instead of relying on scattered, ad hoc disclosures.
Why the change now
City leaders are pointing to the Milwaukee County Transit System shortfall as the cautionary tale behind the new rules. Reporting by FOX6 detailed a multimillion-dollar budget gap for 2025 tied to dwindling federal relief dollars and weaker-than-expected fare collection.
Urban Milwaukee reported that internal emails about the county transit crisis later suggested attempts to downplay the size of the deficit, a lapse supporters say earlier, automatic city alerts could help uncover sooner.
Comptroller’s warning and bond impacts
Financial staff at City Hall are not opposed to more transparency, but they are throwing up a caution flag. The city’s meeting notes show the Comptroller warned that putting a fund-balance policy into writing comes with tradeoffs and is almost guaranteed to draw scrutiny from bond rating agencies…