Two days after Wisconsin voters went to the polls with household costs on their minds, and a thousand campaign promises from Democrats to make life more affordable, the state’s utility regulators, unanimously appointed by Democrat Governor Tony Evers, approved yet another rate hike for millions of Wisconsinites. The irony is almost too rich.
On Thursday, after a meeting that ran more than ten hours, the Public Service Commission voted to approve a portion of the requested rate hike, though it’s unclear how much of the increase the utility will actually get. The timing is hard to ignore. Democrats made affordability a centerpiece of their ultimately winning message. Yet the commission that approved this increase is made up entirely of appointees of Gov. Tony Evers.
Democrats will say the commission trimmed the request, and that’s true. But a smaller hike is still a hike, especially coming on the heels of over $2 billion in rate hikes approved by the Commission since 2019. Customers don’t get some sort of refund between what the utility asked for and what it got. They pay the bill that arrives, with the rate hikes approved by the PSC, and those bills are going up again.
We cannot ignore the compounding effect of these rate hikes. Residential electric rates in Wisconsin have climbed in round after round of rate cases. Over the last two years the commission has approved hundreds of millions of dollars in increases across the state’s largest utilities. For seniors on a fixed income or small manufacturers operating on thin margins, each increase, approved by Democrat appointees, stacks on the last.
If lower costs are truly the goal, Democrats just failed their first test.
What’s perhaps even more ironic than Democrat appointees approving a rate hike just days after winning an election where they promised affordability, is the approval just hours after PSC Chairwoman Summer Strand blamed the Republican Legislature and President Trump for rate hikes, despite being the one to vote to approve the actual rate hikes.
Voters were told affordability was a priority for Democrats. The first major test came within 48 hours of the election, and the commission chose the utilities’, even if they argue they didn’t approve the full request. If lower costs are truly the goal, Democrats just failed their first test.
