UW-Milwaukee’s Uncertain Budget

UW-Milwaukee Chancellor Mark Mone blames lobbying practices of the State Building Commission for UW-Milwaukee’s $181 million-dollar project’s short comings in the Governor’s Budget while the Building Commission says otherwise.

In a meeting on March 14 with the UW-Milwaukee University Commitee, Chancellor Mone discussed the importance of the Health Sciences Project. According to Mone it will push crucial health care workers into areas of dire need. It will also combine five different programs at UW-Milwaukee into one building. The Health Sciences project however, did not make it into the Governor’s budget. Receiving no funding for the 2023-2025 biennial Capital Budget. Mone made claims that projects ranked lower than the health sciences building jumped up in the rankings after extensive lobbying of the State Building Commission.

Was this actually the case?

According to Representative Jeff Wittke, state building commission member, the project was not funded because it wasn’t ready. Wittke said, “So if you take a look at the timeline that we see for this project. The bid date for this is out somewhere in the year 2027.”

According to Rep. Wittke they want to get projects through that are closer to being put out for bid. That doesn’t mean that the project is denied or that they don’t want it. But the process relies on how the timeline is being reviewed. Rep. Wittke said they want projects as close as possible to getting shovels in the ground.

Specifically, Rep. Wittke said, “The architectural and engineering selection is done in January of 2024 and then we look at when I’m seeing the bid date of 2027. That means that the design work won’t be completed until that period or sooner. Right now, the target that we see here is that construction wouldn’t start until March of 2028. So, when you look at that timeline, that’s why the design fees were fronted, and the system didn’t put it on the list of, this is a project we recommend going forward.”

In the meeting with the University Committee, Chancellor Mone expressed his concerns, “If health care isn’t important now and if this state with its flush cash reserves doesn’t have the money to do this now. I don’t know when we will ever get it in.”

So what happened?

According to Mone the Board of Regents and the system ranked the UW-Milwaukee project third out of 18 major projects. While it had a positive ranking within the system it did not make it into the Governor’s budget, while some others did.

While Mone brought up these concerns of lobbying there are no specific policies in the UW system that prevents schools from speaking for their project.

Karen Walsh, President of the UW Board of Regents, confirmed and said, “There are no policies governing how universities may engage the legislature, including the building commission. However, the state does require the UW System, and all state agencies, to identify which employees engage with the legislature and state government. This includes the building commission and legislative committees.”

UW System Relations said the same thing. That lobbying is allowed as long as it’s not coming from an outside third party. As the system would not want to spend money on expensive lobbyists.

What did Mone do?

According to Mone, to counteract this he began to work very closely with Jay Rothman, UW system president. Mone wanted to possibly go down a lobbying path of his own.

Mone said, “What I wanted to do was go down a lobbying path. There was a project lower than ours that had extensive lobbying. And I actually engaged with that same firm and had several other individuals. And I, pitched this to President Rothman and he and Regent leadership asked me not to do that. They said we do not have a specific policy but what we’d ask you to do you did.”

According to Mone the Regent leadership said, “You can advocate for your project, but you’re not supposed to get out of line. You’re not supposed to have yours jump.”

The concern for the UW higher-ups may have come from the outside help that Chancellor Mone was being offered to get this back into the budget. Mone said, “Every health care CEO has offered their chief lobbyist in terms of helping us with this.”  

While Regent leadership told Mone not to lobby to bolster the Health Science project Mone said, “So, another campus did that. In fact several did that and we are hearing a number of things from the Governors office on how it happened. That really doesn’t matter, we’ve got counters and rebuttals.” 

Was there actually lobbying?

Mone did not disclose which UW campuses he was talking about. However, from the Wisconsin Ethics Commission’s Lobbying website, three lobbying groups were recorded lobbying the State Building Commission in January 2021.

• The University Wisconsin-Eau Claire Foundation seeking funding for the construction of the Health Sciences Building on the Eau Clair Campus.
• Greater Whitewater Committee Inc. lobbying for the additions and renovations to Winther Hall and Heide Hall.
• Badger Advocates Inc. lobbying for biennial budget bill treatment of matters relating to the Building Commission.

According to UW relations these groups like Badger Advocates are allowed to do their own individual advocating.

In all three of these cases the projects from each school made significant jumps in the State Building Commission capital budget from the 2021 biennial budget to the 2023 biennial budget. In these cases, Whitewater’s Winther and Heide Hall project jumped from 12^th place to 8^th. Eau Claires project ended up in 18^th out of 22 where it was not included in the 2021-23 Capital Budget. Madison’s projects that were ranked 19^th and 14^th in 2021. They combined and jumped to 5^th only behind Systemwide programs for 2023-25.

According to Wittke this ranking system does not originally come from the State Building Commission but from the UW system. But they have come to recognize it as an order of importance.

When asked about lobbying of the Building Commission Rep. Wittke said, “There aren’t outside parties for these universitas that come in and talk to us. I talk directly to chancellors[…]If chancellor Mone has some information about differing universities having outside parties, that I don’t know where that came from, and I don’t know if others have done that, but my interaction is directly.”

While these projects did make jumps it’s unclear whether it was because of lobbying or if they were just further along or as Rep. Wittke said, “ready to put shovels in the ground”.

What happens now?

Rep. Wittke believes in the project and said, ”I value the university very highly and I’m very impressed with the things going on there and I fully realize that we need to make investment in facilities sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, some of the ways things are designed probably don’t seem like that from the outside.”

According to the UW-Milwaukee Media services team responding for Chancellor Mone, “The Chancellor will continue to advocate for this project because it will benefit all Wisconsinites, from people who rely on our health care systems to our employers who need skilled workers. Our economy flourishes when we have enough workers to meet the demands of the state.”

As for where that leaves them with the budget there is still a long process to go. As according to the Chancellor, “There is never any guarantee of state funding, and UWM must demonstrate its value to the state and taxpayers.”

When asked where it would leave UW-Milwaukee and the Health Sciences project if they did not receive any money or state funding, the UWM media services team and Chancellor Mone said that it’s unclear at this time and they still have a long process ahead of them.

This process is complex and complicated with many moving pieces and it’s unclear how much influence comes from each side of the process. Whether lobbying did have the effect that Mone described or whether the project really just wasn’t ready to be funded fully, clearly Mone and the Building Commission both have their own concerns with the process.