Months after a lapse in Milwaukee County’s employee and retiree health care contract, elected officials are still frustrated by a lack of answers, particularly on the timeline of events that led to the blip.
Finance Committee Chairman Steve Taylor on May 21 drilled officials from County Executive David Crowley’s administration on why a thorough timeline still has not been presented, despite requests from the the County Board.
“The timelines that were presented so far are rank amateur at best,” Taylor said, referring to the initial information released shortly after the health care contract flap came to light. “We still don’t really know how the hell we got here.”
Taylor said he had been expecting a timeline to be presented during the routine monthly update on the healthcare contract at the committee’s March meeting, but was surprised when officials didn’t present anything again at the meeting May 21.
Taylor floated the idea of filing an official request under the open records law to have the timeline presented to the finance committee.
“How would it look if supervisors need to do an open records request of the administration, because we want to see what we’re basically asking? That’s not a really good look,” Taylor said. “I know you don’t want to look backwards, and right now you’re not clearly willing to. So, we just have to force you to.”
Earlier this year, supervisors were left little time to approve a new contract, choosing to renew the prior contract with UnitedHealthcare and Optum Rx for another five years, amounting to about $450 million, in February.
The contract in question is one of the county’s largest and was left to expire at the end of 2025 with little notice. The county is self-insured and United Healthcare is hired to administer its benefit plans.
After supervisors learned of the contract lapse that could’ve affected 5,100 participants, Human Resources benefits director Tony Maze’s job was swiftly on the chopping block. Chief Human Resources Officer Margo Franklin announced her departure from her role at the county shortly thereafter.
In response to the contract debacle, supervisors approved an audit that would in part target the county’s health care contract in March and would look into whether the Department of Human Resources had been compliant with county contracting requirements and timelines as well as identifying any gaps or failures in oversight.
A spokesperson for Crowley, who is running for governor in the 2026 Democratic primary, said the county executive’s office belives that the Comptroller Office’s ongoing audit will include the timeline that the committee is seeking.
At the May 21 finance meeting, Jeremy Lucas with Crowley’s office assured the committee that the administration has addressed the situation and improved systems to prevent a similar mishap.
“I would say that we are not interested in delving into the past on it,” Lucas said. “We’re focused on the future and how to improve the systems.”
The response drew criticism from other members of the committee, including Supervisor Felesia A. Martin, who said board supervisors are continuously left to correct mistakes.
“That’s crap to say we’ll focus on the future,” Martin said. “You can’t focus on the future if you have not understood what happened in the past.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: County supervisors slam lack of answers on healthcare contract lapse
Reporting by Vanessa Swales, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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