MAC membership, rollerblades, hotels: How County Board Chair Marcelia Nicholson spends the taxpayers' dime

With Milwaukee County on the cusp of a financial crisis, Milwaukee County Board Chairwoman Marcelia Nicholson was racking up expenses on a wide variety of items in the past year and then billing taxpayers for them.

Between April 2022 and December 2023, Nicholson spent more than $26,000 on a social club membership, rollerblades, hotel stays, trips across the United States, clothing, furniture and décor, according to county records.

The median for all other supervisors' expenses processed or approved was roughly $10,000 during that same 21-month period. And none are squeezing a social athletic club membership off the backs of the county's residents.

Supervisor Ryan Clancy said some of Nicholson's expenditures seemed out of line, especially when he said legitimate travel requests were being rejected.

“The idea that she would expense rollerblades," Clancy said, "I don’t even know how to categorize that."

In a statement, a spokesman for Nicholson, Eddie Cullen, defended some of her more questionable individual expenditures and noted that she has kept the County Board's spending under budget during her watch.

"Because the chair serves as head of the department the long-standing practice is that they take the lead with staff on requests that benefit the entire board," said the statement. "During the chairwoman’s leadership last year and the year before, the board’s budget ended in a surplus."

An ethics complaint against Nicholson — along with Supervisors Steve F. Taylor and Kathleen Vincent — was filed with the Milwaukee County Ethics Board earlier this year alleging that Nicholson, Taylor and Vincent had failed to disclose gifts on their statements of economic interests.

Cullen said Nicholson's ethics filing is "complete and on file with the Milwaukee County Ethics Board." Taylor and Vincent told the Journal Sentinel they had no knowledge of the complaint filed against them.

The allegations in the nine-page complaint have not been verified by investigators or the ethics board.

In December, Taylor updated his ethics filings, not once but twice, after the Journal Sentinel reported he had failed to list two of his jobs — one of which was financial ties to the popular yet controversial, Franklin-based golf and entertainment facility, The Rock.

Assistant District Attorney Matthew Westphal, who oversees public corruption cases, declined to comment on whether his office has received the complaint. Ethics Board chairman Adam Gilmore declined to comment.

Nicholson caps spending by supervisors

Even as Nicholson's expenditures were on the rise, she was clamping down on taxpayer-funded spending by her colleagues on the County Board. Their expenses were capped at $7,500 a year in 2023 and $8,500 this year.

"We continue to persevere and evolve as a body in the face of many challenges... Together, we will keep evolving," Nicholson wrote in an email to supervisors in early 2022. "With your partnership, I remain committed to creating a foundational environment that supports Supervisors and staff in their public service."

In April of last year, Nicholson also introduced a lame-duck policy preventing supervisors not seeking re-election from having access to their expense accounts once they declared non-candidacy. This could include travel, mileage and mailers to constituents.

“'Lame duck' travel and mailer requests will be returned to district offices and not processed because, if a supervisor decides not to run for the Board again or is not re-elected to a seat on this body, spending public funds for their travel and mailers could be interpreted as running contrary to constituent interest," Nicholson wrote in the email from April 8, 2023.

Nicholson defends club membership

Nicholson joined the County Board in 2016 and was elected as chairwoman four years later. She represents District 10, which includes parts of some of Milwaukee’s poorest ZIP codes, including 53205 and 53206.

Her annual income as chairwoman is now $46,574 and she also works for a tax-exempt nonprofit called Local Progress as the co-chair of the board of directors. Her salary is not publicly available.

In 2023, Nicholson expensed more than $2,600 to pay for her membership at downtown's social and sports club, the Milwaukee Athletic Club.

Monthly dues for the club range between $239 and $399. Initiation fees start at $1,000 and can reach up to $3,000.

Members have access to a range of amenities, including the club's lounge, gym, exercise classes, as well as whiskey, wine and cigar theme nights.

Records show that the purpose for the expenditure was “civic engagement with Milwaukee County government.”

The Milwaukee Athletic Club, however, is not in Nicholson’s supervisory district.

In her statement, Nicholson said she held a civic engagement session and a roundtable discussion at the club. Nicholson’s official work calendar for 2023 confirmed this.

“These dues were paid for a few months on an interim basis, discontinued almost six months ago, and will not be expensed to the County moving forward,” Nicholson said.

For one of the events, 25 people were expected to attend, according to a county email.

"My intent in expensing a portion of membership dues was to foster relationships and connections that bridge and fill gaps," Nicholson said in a statement to the Journal Sentinel.

Nicholson expensed a seven-month membership on Nov. 13, 2023.

Nicholson, however, declined to comment on what specific months her membership paid for. She also declined to comment on why membership at the MAC was needed in order to participate in civic engagement and roundtable discussions and, if the events were membership-only, who exactly she was engaging with.

Supervisor Peter Burgelis is also a member of the Milwaukee Athletic Club. There is no record of him expensing his club membership.

After Burgelis learned of Nicholson’s expense, he was astonished.

“I would never consider expensing that membership to the County Board,” said Burgelis, who is leaving the board and running for a seat on the Milwaukee Common Council in the April 2 election.

Burgelis also noted he has seen Nicholson at the club, sometimes alone and other times in the company of county staff. Nicholson has a permanent office in the Milwaukee County Courthouse, where all supervisory members have individual offices.

Records show, other expenses Nicholson filed include:

• Nearly $4,000 on supplies and accessories as well as decorations to spruce up the County Board room and her office, such as rollerblades, a booster seat because her board chair was too low, $653 in Women’s History Month tumblers, polo shirts, new office chairs, flowers, petals, streamers, butterflies and tinsel. She also spent more than $500 on county tote bags and $290 for purple District 10 pens.

• Roughly $360 on stickers to label books brought in for “Marci's Reads” for the purpose of distinguishing county books in the chairwoman's community library. Marci's Reads is described as a community library intended to "educate and connect its readers to one another and their community."

• $3,600 on hotels, travel, food and tickets to conferences and events, including trips to D.C. and the White House, as well as an overnight stay in Madison for Gov. Tony Evers’ State of State address on Jan. 24, 2023. Nicholson’s calendar shows that the governor’s reception ended at 9:30 p.m. Some of the tickets were expensed for county board staff.

Nicholson said the purpose of some of these expenditures was to “promote intentional inclusion by uplifting events like Women’s History Month, Black History Month, Juneteenth and Pride Month.” She said staff may go to events with her to “meet the business needs of their respective roles” and “with the intention of promoting their engagement in public service.”

Some supervisors, however, had travel and conference expenses rejected during this time.

Clancy, who has questioned some of Nicholson's expenditures, had his trip expenses rejected for the Socialism 2022 Conference in Chicago and Cities and Counties for Fine and Fee Justice Conference in Phoenix.

“It's frustrating to me,” Clancy said of his travel being rejected. “I was turned down for that sort of travel at the same time that we had folks spend many hundreds of dollars on things which are clearly not in line with our job.”

Cullen said the flight referenced by Clancy was submitted for expensing shortly before take off. The county chief of staff, Kelly Bablitch, who processes the expenses, "attempted to process it before the flight was alternatively paid for and that trip was underway."

This isn't the first time Nicholson made headlines for questionable financial ethics.

In 2019, before she was chairwoman, she asked other board members to donate money to the Wisconsin Working Families Party or Black Leaders Organizing for Communities in lieu of presents for her then-upcoming 31st birthday. At the time, Nicholson was co-chair of the former group.

'I thought it was worth it': What did other supervisors spend?

But when it comes to checking supervisory expenses, some appeared to fall through the cracks.

In the summer of 2022, former Supervisor Dyango Zerpa flew to San Juan, Puerto Rico, to attend the 2022 League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) conference that ran from July 25 to 30. The county covered the cost of airfare, some travel, hotel, food and conference fees, totaling to $2,644.

The county, however, soon learned after the supervisor's return to Milwaukee that he had stayed and expensed an extra night in the hotel on the county's credit card, which was on file, according to documents obtained by the Journal Sentinel.

The county travel card covers the expense of the total for room and room tax only, according to county emails. Any charges incurred for a stay after the event has ended would need to be paid personally by the individual.

County staff notified Zerpa that he would have to pay the county back for the additional night's stay. Later that year, he did.

While payroll also caught some of the alcohol purchases Zerpa tried to expense during the LULAC trip, records show one flew under the radar: a bottle of Ron Barcelo Anejo Rum.

That following January, Zerpa resigned. He had also been under scrutiny following concerns about his firing from his job as a state legislative aide for state Rep. Sylvia Ortiz-Velez, questions about his campaign finance reports and his absence from a series of county committee meetings.

"Mr. Zerpa submitted receipts to the County expecting to be reimbursed only for permitted expenses," Attorney Michael Maistelman, who represents Zerpa, wrote in a statement. "If the County made improper reimbursements, that's on the County for not correctly reviewing the receipts."

He added: "The County booked Mr. Zerpa's flight and erroneously added an additional night. Mr. Zerpa reimbursed the County for this additional night."

Between April 2022 and December 2023, a relative newcomer to the board, Vincent expensed roughly $700 in clothing. While some of the apparel is noted as county- or district-embossed, some pieces of clothing also include brand names, such as Adidas polos and a cap as well as a Columbia jacket. She also expensed $40 headphones to use for meetings over Teams.

Vincent said that some of the clothing was for her legislative aides who help in her district.

She explained that she had received very little instruction from board staff about what should and should not be expensed.

"I ordered apparel because other supervisors were ordering apparel," Vincent said. "We were told that is for office expenditures."

But Vincent explained her logic for the purchases: "With purchases to get my office started up, I don't think that they are that big of a deal. I want to represent myself as a worker of a county so that people can easily see that when I go to events."

Veteran Supervisor Sheldon A. Wasserman spent $300 on a Marcus Performing Arts Center gala ticket for June 17, 2022. The supervisor, however had no recollection of the expense or attending the event, even after reviewing his calendar. He said: "Something doesn't make sense."

The Marcus Center has no record of receiving the money, according to Wasserman. He also said the former legislative aide who filed the expense was not even assigned to his office.

Following questions from the Journal Sentinel, Wasserman has asked County Board staff to look into the situation.

Wasserman also expensed $100 to buy a photo of himself taken by the Journal Sentinel. The photo is hung up in his county office.

"I like that picture a lot. It's a beautiful photo," Wasserman said. "I thought that was worth it."

Contact Vanessa Swales at 414-308-5881 or vswales@gannett.com. Follow her on X @Vanessa_Swales.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: County Board Chair Nicholson expensed MAC membership, rollerblades