Microsoft and Wisconsin ratepayer advocates are asking federal regulators to hit the brakes on a proposal to allocate the costs of transmission infrastructure built to serve data centers.
Both argue that We Energies and the American Transmission Company’s (ATC) recent proposal to federal regulators fails to adequately protect Wisconsinites from picking up the construction bill, among other concerns.
The utilities’ plan — setting a minimum transmission charge for Microsoft based on its Mount Pleasant data center’s anticipated electricity needs — mirrors elements of a strategy approved by Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission (PSC) earlier this year.
We Energies and ATC argue the minimum charge will help prevent their other customers from paying for overbuilt infrastructure if the facility uses less electricity than anticipated.
Microsoft and ratepayer advocates, however, argue that the proposal falls short on protecting Wisconsinites from cost shifts and that the two closely related utilities left little room for input from those most affected.
Who pays for data center transmission upgrades?
ATC anticipates spending more than $500 million to upgrade the Mount Pleasant facility’s connection to the electrical grid. The utility passes infrastructure costs to customers of all kinds through their electrical bills; We Energies, for instance, estimates that transmission-related costs account for about 10% of customers’ bills.
The PSC can’t require ATC to bill data center developers for the full cost of infrastructure built to serve them. Only the five-member Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which oversees interstate transmission, could overhaul billing rules to fully shield other customers from the costs of new lines and substations for data centers.
The PSC signed off on a work-around this spring, requiring We Energies to set a minimum transmission charge for its large data center customers based on their projected electricity use — the same projections used to plan transmission upgrades.
ATC and We Energies asked FERC earlier this month to approve a one-off transmission billing plan for Microsoft’s Mount Pleasant data center. The arrangement would require We Energies to pay ATC for the data center’s projected transmission capacity and pass that cost to Microsoft. The 15-year arrangement would take effect once ATC completes the infrastructure needed to serve the facility.
“This is a customer protection mechanism that follows the ‘cost causer, cost payer’ methodology,” an ATC spokesperson wrote in an email to Wisconsin Watch.
Microsoft says proposal leaves gaps
The utilities didn’t consult with Microsoft before filing their plan with federal regulators.
“The entire purpose of these agreements, by ATC’s own description,” is to serve the Mount Pleasant data center, Microsoft’s attorneys wrote in a protest to FERC on Friday. Moving ahead without Microsoft’s input, they added, would risk “the timely interconnection and operation of this infrastructure.”
In their view, the utilities’ current proposal contains “systemic” flaws.
Some, they argue, pose risks to Microsoft’s finances, including an early termination fee that could force the company to pay “excessively more” than the remaining value of the transmission infrastructure if it backs out of the agreement before the 15-year mark.
Both Microsoft and the Citizens Utility Board (CUB) argue other elements of the proposal pose risks to ATC’s other ratepayers, including those outside of We Energies’ territory.
In a separate protest filed Friday, CUB regulatory affairs director Corey Singletary noted that the proposal would base minimum transmission charges on ATC’s standard interconnection rates.
“The electric demands and associated supporting infrastructure investments are so large relative to traditional loads and investments” that ATC will almost certainly undershoot the actual cost of data centers’ transmission needs, Singletary wrote.
“While ATC’s proposal would likely be an improvement over the status quo,” he added, it still falls short of shielding the utility’s other customers from data-center-driven transmission costs.
Microsoft’s attorneys echoed those concerns, emphasizing that Microsoft signed the White House’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge this spring: a commitment to “pay for all new power delivery infrastructure upgrades required to service (its) data centers” and “ensure that these expenses are not passed on to the ordinary household.”
Microsoft urges more scrutiny
We Energies’ parent company, WEC Energy Group, is ATC’s largest shareholder.
“A negotiated bilateral contract between them — especially one involving such large sums — should be further scrutinized,” Microsoft’s attorneys wrote.
Microsoft also pointed out that the proposal wouldn’t require the utilities to seek their company’s input before amending some terms of the contract, nor would it “create a clear path for Microsoft (or anyone else) to inquire and scrutinize the scope or prudence of expenditures made on its behalf.”
Microsoft’s attorneys called that opacity “a recipe for future misunderstanding and litigation.”
Microsoft is asking FERC to send the entire proposal to a settlement judge, creating a venue for all parties to work through their concerns. As an alternative, the company’s attorneys suggested that the commission reject the utilities’ proposal outright. CUB, meanwhile, urged the commission to create a uniform transmission cost allocation process for all large data centers in ATC’s territory — including those in Port Washington and Beaver Dam.
ATC has yet to file a response to the complaints.
“ATC is reviewing Microsoft’s filing and will respond through the established FERC process to demonstrate that existing customers are fully protected by the agreements,” a spokesperson wrote in an email on Tuesday. “We remain committed to cost transparency and protection of existing customers while ensuring reliable transmission service.”
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We Energies signed a new 20-year agreement to purchase electricity from the Point Beach nuclear plant in Manitowoc County, resolving uncertainty about the relationship between the utility and the state’s largest power plant.
The agreement, disclosed in a Tuesday U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing, still requires sign-off from Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission (PSC).
The roughly 60-year-old facility is Wisconsin’s only active nuclear power plant. We Energies owned the plant until 2007, when it sold Point Beach to a Florida-based utility. It currently purchases most of the plant’s output from independent energy infrastructure giant NextEra Energy.
But the electricity Point Beach generates is particularly expensive. We Energies spends about twice as much on fuel as its sibling utility, Wisconsin Public Service Company; the cost of fuel for Point Beach accounts for a large share of the difference. Milwaukee-based WEC Energy Group owns both utilities. The price of each megawatt hour of electricity produced by the plant rises by more than 7% each year under We Energies’ current arrangement with NextEra.
Ratepayer advocates have pushed We Energies to rethink its Point Beach contract for years. The PSC directed the utility to work with ratepayer groups to “review alternatives” to the power purchase agreement in 2019 as part of a broader rate case, and WEC Energy Group CEO Scott Lauber signaled that his company was considering alternatives as recently as last month.
We Energies’ latest SEC filing did not divulge most details of the new agreement, but spokesman Brendan Conway told Wisconsin Watch that it “will provide customers with fuel savings compared with the current (agreement) when it goes into effect.”
If the PSC approves the proposed agreement, We Energies would buy 86% of the plant’s energy for another two decades. Its current contract is set to expire by 2033, according to the new filing.
Wisconsin’s Citizens Utility Board (CUB), a nonprofit representing residential and some small commercial electricity customers statewide before the PSC, is among the most vocal critics of the current Point Beach contract.
CUB plans to review the new proposal with an “eye toward learning how much savings are in store for customers” compared to the current steep annual price increases, said CUB Executive Director Tom Content. “Given the climate and carbon commitments of the tech companies, I’ll be interested to learn whether Big Tech companies opening data centers in eastern Wisconsin want the carbon-free benefits of nuclear. That could relieve some of the price pressure being felt — every year — by 1.1 million We Energies customers.” We Energies is also eyeing an opportunity to add more nuclear energy to Wisconsin’s grid: the decommissioned Kewaunee Power Station. WEC Energy Group and the plant’s owner, Energy Solutions, are awaiting the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s approval to restart production at the site more than a decade after a glut of cheap natural gas from the fracking boom drove it out of business.
There’s no shortage of demand for electricity. A draft PSC report published in June projects Wisconsin’s peak electricity demand will rise 40% in the next five years, driven largely by new data centers in Port Washington, Mount Pleasant and Beaver Dam — possibly with more to come.
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Wisconsin collects statewide data on serious police uses of force, but inconsistent reporting standards make it difficult to reliably compare departments.
Police departments differ in what they define use of force, with some tracking actions — such as dog bites, pointing firearms or vehicle maneuvers — that others do not.
One expert says inconsistent statewide standards can make agencies that report more comprehensively appear more force-prone, potentially discouraging transparency.
A Madison police officer’s fatal shooting of 38-year-old Corey Ruiz last month was the department’s first in more than five years.
Madison police officers are less likely to open fire during an arrest than officers in most similarly sized departments nationwide. But police shootings account for only a tiny fraction of all uses of force in Madison and elsewhere.
How does Madison’s broader use-of-force record compare with other departments? Inconsistent state-level data makes that question difficult to answer.
State lawmakers laid the groundwork for such comparisons in 2021 — one of many police oversight reforms enacted nationwide after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd a year earlier. Wisconsin lawmakers voted to require the state Department of Justice to catalog serious uses of force by police departments and sheriffs’ offices. The DOJ now maintains a public Use-of-Force and Arrest-Related Death database, but the underlying law leaves room for law enforcement agencies to differ in the types of force they report to the state.
The result: The data offers apples-to-oranges comparisons that make it difficult to meaningfully weigh one agency’s record against another’s.
Departments vary in rules for use-of-force tracking
Law enforcement agencies generally require officers to report uses of force to their chain of command.
Most agencies compile those records into internal datasets or annual reports, but they vary widely in the types of incidents they track.
The Green Bay Police Department, for instance, requires officers to file an after-action report if they use their police car to block, pin or strike another moving vehicle. The Milwaukee Police Department requires officers to file a similar report after conducting a “forcible blood draw.” Madison Police Department guidelines mention neither type of incident.
Types of force that require reporting, as shown in the Madison Police Department’s standard operating procedure.
Both the Madison and Milwaukee police departments, however, require officers to file after-action reports if they point their firearms at a person, regardless of whether they fire a shot. Green Bay’s department does not.
“There’s really no uniformity,” said Matt Graham, a senior data analyst with the nonprofit Center for Policing Equity.
While some states — New Jersey, for instance — have standardized use-of-force reporting rules for law enforcement, Graham said, Wisconsin’s patchwork of policies more closely resembles the national norm.
Though internal use-of-force data can’t be used to compare agencies, a single police department can still use its own data to “analyze whether any racial or other demographic disparities exist in their use of force patterns” and evaluate whether policies and training effectively limit unnecessary use of force, said Meghan Stroshine, associate director of Marquette University’s Criminal Justice Data Analytics program.
Internal Madison Police Department records show more than 2,300 uses of force between 2020 and the first quarter of 2026, sometimes listing more than one use of force for a single police encounter. Most incidents involved bodily force alone, though officers reported using Tasers 197 times and pepper spray 127 times. The department averaged roughly 185,000 annual calls per service in recent years.
The Department of Justice database is more complete than Madison’s internal records in at least one instance.
Madison use-of-force records include an entry matching the December 2024 arrest of 32-year-old Richard Johnson in a hotel parking lot. Officers tackled Johnson while investigating a reported car theft; the department’s entry describes his resulting injury as an “abrasion.” It does not note that Johnson went into cardiac arrest and died at a hospital the following day.
The Dane County medical examiner ruled the death an accident, citing Johnson’s cocaine use as the primary cause of his heart attack. Madison’s Office of the Independent Police Monitor disputed that finding in June, arguing that Johnson’s death should be treated as a homicide.
Unlike the internal Madison records, the DOJ’s database includes Johnson’s “arrest related death.”
The 2021 state law behind the DOJ’s use-of-force tracking efforts requires the agency to collect records only on incidents resulting in “great bodily harm or death” and those involving gunfire — either an officer shooting at a civilian or vice versa. A separate law requires the agency to log any cases in which a person “dies while detained, arrested, or in the course of being arrested,” even if the death isn’t a direct result of a use of force. The DOJ combines both sets of records in its database.
That dataset lists 70 arrest-related deaths between 2022 and 2025. The Rock County Sheriff’s Office reported five of those deaths, all but one of which took place in the county’s jail. Though the database doesn’t specify causes of arrest-related deaths, the sheriff’s office characterized one death as a suicide and another as an accidental drug overdose.
The DOJ’s records are far from a perfect measuring stick. The DOJ relies on law enforcement agencies to provide up-to-date reports of serious uses of force, but agencies differ in the types of force they consider serious enough to report to the state.
While the agency “works continuously with agencies to train on proper data entry and usage of the form, as well as performs incident audits,” DOJ spokesperson Riley Vetterkind wrote, “the responsibility to report accurate, up-to-date data falls on each law enforcement agency.”
“Ultimately, even when relying upon a rigid definition, human judgement is still a factor,” he added.
What is ‘great bodily harm’?
Wisconsin Statutes define “great bodily harm” as “bodily injury which creates a substantial risk of death, or which causes serious permanent disfigurement, or which causes a permanent or protracted loss or impairment of the function of any bodily member or organ or other serious bodily injury.”
Those variations can skew the number of incidents a given department reports to the state.
Green Bay police, for instance, reported 31 serious use-of-force incidents to the DOJ between 2022 and 2025 — second only to Milwaukee’s police department, which reported 35 incidents in the same period.
Milwaukee employs roughly 1,500 sworn police officers and received over 1 million calls for service over that four-year span, compared to Green Bay’s 176 sworn officers and roughly 270,000 calls for service.
The Kenosha Police Department, with more sworn officers serving a city only slightly less populous than Green Bay, reported only five incidents.
Those figures do not include arrest-related deaths, including the February 2024 suicide of 40-year-old Steve Evaristo Ventura after a shootout with Green Bay police officers.
But Green Bay may not be as much of an outlier as it appears. All but three of the department’s use-of-force incidents in the state database involve police dog bites.
Madison’s police department has not reported any dog bites to the DOJ since 2022, though its internal records list 27 incidents involving dog bites in the past four years — most of which sent the bitten person to the emergency room. A Madison Police Department spokesperson did not respond to questions about the department’s threshold for reporting uses of force to the state.
The Milwaukee Police Department likewise reported no dog bites to the DOJ between 2022 and 2025, though the department’s own use-of-force records list nearly a dozen dog bite incidents — many of them accidental.
Green Bay Police Chief Chris Davis told Wisconsin Watch he can’t neatly explain his department’s relatively high use-of-force tally without first reviewing peer agencies’ standards for reporting to the DOJ.
“Our intention is to report everything to the state that we’re required to under the law,” he said, “because I think it’s good for the public to know.”
Most Wisconsin law enforcement agencies reported no uses of force to the DOJ. Among those that reported at least one incident, a third exclusively reported incidents in which a police officer discharged a firearm.
The mismatch in use-of-force reporting standards across departments limits the usefulness of the DOJ’s data.
“If you’re able to actually compare across departments, you could have a good idea of what reforms (or) what interventions are actually reducing use of force,” Graham said. “So far, that’s generally not possible in most places in the U.S.”
In the meantime, agencies that report a broader range of use-of-force incidents to the DOJ risk appearing more force-prone than agencies with narrower reporting standards, Stroshine said.
“Without an insider’s understanding of the data and what it represents, one could make any number of erroneous conclusions about a department, its culture, or the nature and frequency of its officers’ use of force,” Stroshine said. “As a consequence, one could argue that nonstandardization creates a disincentive for data transparency.”
The 2021 state law left some discretion for law enforcement agencies to decide which incidents to report to the state.
Some of that flexibility was intentional, said Scott Kelly, chief of staff for state Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, the bill’s prime sponsor.
“One of the things that was discussed was that different departments do record uses of force differently,” he said, “and we didn’t want to change how they dealt with it themselves.”
With law enforcement agencies already under heightened scrutiny at the time, pushing departments to standardize their use-of-force reporting could have been too much to ask, he said. “That’s for a future legislature to decide.”
Davis, the Green Bay chief, says consistent statewide reporting is an achievable goal.
“We already use the same standards for use-of-force training and policy throughout the state,” he said, “so I think it’s not too far to jump to get to the same standards for use-of-force reporting.”
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Oracle moved to voluntarily drop its lawsuit against Wisconsin’s utility regulator on Monday, nearly two months after the tech giant turned to the Ozaukee County Circuit Court to challenge new credit rating requirements for data center developers in eastern Wisconsin.
With the case put to rest, the credit rating rules — intended to shield other Wisconsin ratepayers from fallout in the event a data center developer goes bust — now stand unchallenged. Oracle previously argued the requirements were overly stringent and could dissuade other companies from setting up operations in Wisconsin.
Oracle’s share price has begun to rebound after a collapse that began in early June and continued for weeks after the company sued Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission (PSC). Its credit rating, however, remains well below the threshold at which it could avoid posting hundreds of millions of dollars in collateral as a condition of buying electricity for the Port Washington data center.
Vast power needs for data center
The Nashville-based cloud computing firm is a co-developer of the data center campus in Port Washington. The trio behind the project — Oracle, OpenAI and data center developer Vantage — expect the facility to require 1.3 gigawatts of electrical generation capacity in its first phase, or enough to power roughly a million Wisconsin homes.
We Energies, Wisconsin’s largest investor-owned utility, must meet the campus’ energy needs by a tentative late-2027 deadline.
The Port Washington facility’s energy needs are so vast — an order of magnitude greater than the Saukville steel mill that was, until recently, Wisconsin’s largest electricity user — that state rules require it to buy its electricity under a specialized rate structure.
The PSC approved that rate structure for We Energies’ largest data center customers in May. Among other rules, the commission’s order requires the facilities’ operators to pay for the construction of new power plants needed to meet their energy needs.
But constructing a new plant can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and any unpaid debts tied to the plants could fall on We Energies’ other customers if a data center operator becomes insolvent.
To shield ratepayers from a potential cost shift, the PSC set an A- credit rating threshold for data center operators seeking electric service from We Energies. Companies below the threshold must post steep collateral, either in cash or lines of credit.
That requirement could cost Oracle over $100 million per year in financial security payments. The company held a BBB credit rating when the PSC approved the credit rating standards, largely because of its aggressive borrowing to finance artificial intelligence ventures and its business relationship with OpenAI.
S&P Global Ratings, one of the “Big Three” credit rating agencies responsible for assessing creditworthiness of government and corporate debt, lowered Oracle’s rating to a BBB- on July 9 — the bottom edge of the agency’s “investment-grade” tier.
Oracle, however, sued the commission in Ozaukee County Circuit Court as a backup to the reopener request. The company’s June lawsuit asked Judge Sandy Williams to “set aside, reverse, and remand” the credit rating requirements, arguing that they aren’t “needed to prevent harm” to We Energies’ other customers or shareholders.
The commission responded last month, accusing Oracle of trying to dodge regulatory scrutiny by seeking “to overturn over one-hundred years of established caselaw” and “dictate one-off preferential terms of service” with We Energies.
Questions remain for data center developers
Oracle’s attorneys filed a motion to voluntarily dismiss the lawsuit early on Monday morning.
Ratepayer advocates who supported the credit rating requirements celebrated the end of the lawsuit.
“We were confident the PSC would win and that the consumer protection safeguards the CUB team sought would remain in place,” said Tom Content, executive director of Wisconsin’s Citizens Utility Board.
“CUB believes the safeguards the PSC established are critical to protect We Energies customers from the risks of tech companies overextending their borrowing, calling into question the long-run solvency of those companies.”
“This is an important win for Wisconsin since these safeguards — which We Energies claims would ‘narrow the pool of investors’ for AI data center projects — could be used as a blueprint in other parts of the state,” said Clean Wisconsin spokesperson Amy Barrilleaux.
The end of one legal fight doesn’t guarantee smooth sailing for the Port Washington project. The PSC voted last week to require the American Transmission Company (ATC) — the transmission utility responsible for connecting the data center to the grid — to restart the six-month application process to build the requisite transmission lines and substations, citing a series of design changes the utility made after the commission began reviewing its proposal.
Though the redo will leave ATC little time to meet its December 2027 deadline to plug in the Port Washington data center, the company has yet to announce changes to its timeline.
Meanwhile, data center developer Cloverleaf Infrastructure signaled that it is considering developing facilities in Madison Gas and Electric’s territory. The utility, which serves the core of the Madison metropolitan area, is awaiting the PSC’s input on its own data center rate structure.
MGE’s proposal would also require developers with credit ratings below A- to post collateral, with lower collateral requirements for companies rated BBB+ than for those with BBB ratings or below.
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Wisconsin regulators voted Thursday to send the American Transmission Company (ATC) back to the drawing board as the utility attempts to build the grid infrastructure needed to plug in the Port Washington data center.
Public Service Commission (PSC) Chair Summer Strand called the move a “reasonable reset” after ATC repeatedly adjusted the project’s design, which commission staff and ratepayer advocates argued left both regulators and the public with a muddy picture of a grid expansion expected to cost well over $1 billion.
ATC and its partners, however, warned the decision — likely the first of its kind for the century-old commission — could set a dangerous precedent that drives away investment in Wisconsin’s energy sector.
Data center connection at risk
ATC, which owns and operates transmission lines in the eastern half of Wisconsin, is on the hook to connect the soon-to-open Port Washington data center to the electrical grid.
The company approached the PSC last September for permission to break ground on the project as early as this past May. Its initial application outlined a more than $1.3 billion infrastructure package, including a high-voltage transmission line and five new substations spread across Fond du Lac, Ozaukee, Sheboygan and Washington counties, needed to “reliably serve” the new data center by December 2027. After two months of back-and-forth over the “completeness” of ATC’s application, the commission took up the proposal in December 2025.
Meanwhile, the utility has repeatedly adjusted its plans since December, redesigning proposed routes and adding a set of temporary bypass lines needed to avoid outages during construction. The PSC is responsible for reviewing those changes and giving other parties, namely ratepayer advocates and affected landowners, an opportunity to weigh in.
Some commission staff sounded the alarm as the pile of revisions — and questions — grew.
“I don’t recall any other comparable cases in my experience with as many application material document revisions and ongoing design changes throughout the process,” PSC Environmental Affairs Coordinator Adam Ingwell wrote in testimony filed last month. “The sheer volume of documents and revisions, without adequate explanation, likely makes it more challenging than typical for a member of the public to find specific information about the project.”
Those concerns reached Administrative Law Judge Michael Newmark, who criticized ATC for creating an “unreasonable burden” on commission staff and the public by scattering “a plethora of changes, modifications and updates” across six months of filings.
ATC, on the other hand, cast the revisions as “routine.”
“Every application develops during review,” the company’s attorneys wrote on Wednesday. “Changes far larger and later than ATC’s have never cast doubt” on whether an application should move forward, they added, citing a Barron County solar farm the PSC approved last March despite an “eleventh-hour” overhaul that included “relocating an entire substation.”
“There is simply no principled basis on which to treat ATC’s lesser and earlier changes more harshly,” the attorneys wrote.
Ratepayer advocates weigh in
Ratepayer advocates generally avoid wading into fights over transmission line routes and substation siting, which Wisconsin Citizens Utility Board (CUB) Regulatory Affairs Director Corey Singletary described as a “zero-sum proposition” in which a victory for one group of landowners means shifting construction impacts onto another group of landowners.
But CUB raised concerns that ATC’s revisions make it difficult to forecast the project’s cost.
The route changes and new bypasses make the price tag “a moving target,” said CUB Executive Director Tom Content, as does the possibility that ATC still attempts to complete the project by December 2027. “Would they be paying double overtime or triple overtime to build it that quickly?”
The Wisconsin Utility Association itself weighed in on Wednesday to warn the PSC that any additional delays in the project will “lead to increased costs for customers.”
The PSC can’t require ATC to assign project costs to the companies developing the Port Washington data center. Only FERC, the five-person federal regulator that oversees interstate transmission, could overhaul billing rules to fully shield other customers from the costs of new lines and substations needed to serve data centers.
The commission offered an ad hoc solution this spring. The PSC’s May order creating a new billing structure for We Energies’ data center customers requires data center operators to pay a minimum transmission charge based on their projected electricity use. Wisconsin PSC Commissioner Kristi Nieto called the arrangement a “temporary stopgap measure” to protect other customers from the costs of overbuilt infrastructure if data centers use less electricity than anticipated.
ATC and We Energies have since asked the PSC and FERC to approve a minimum transmission charge agreement with Microsoft, the operator of the vast new data center in Mount Pleasant. “This is a customer protection mechanism that follows the ‘cost causer, cost payer’ methodology,” an ATC spokesperson wrote in an email to Wisconsin Watch.
The utilities have not yet asked the commission to approve similar agreements with the companies developing the Port Washington facility: cloud computing giant Oracle, artificial intelligence firm OpenAI and data center developer Vantage.
In testimony filed last month, Singletary urged the commission to enforce “cost containment” measures for ATC’s project, including requiring the utility to cap its annual revenues from the new transmission lines. He also suggested that the commission push ATC to disclose any bids it receives for “work to be performed and equipment to be procured as part of this project,” which he argued would help keep an eye on the company’s efforts to rein in costs.
‘Least-bad option’
All three commissioners aired matching frustrations during a Thursday afternoon hearing on ATC’s infrastructure plans before concurring on what Commissioner Marcus Hawkins called the “least-bad option” — requiring ATC to resubmit its application and restarting the case’s 180-day clock.
“There needs to be flexibility in the process,” said Nieto, “but there also has to be some point at which the changes become significant enough that we need to evaluate whether we are still reviewing the same project that was originally proposed.”
“This PSC is not opposed or hostile to data centers, construction, generation, (or) transmission,” Strand said, calling the decision “an unfortunate outcome.” Nevertheless, she added, “this application represents a cautionary tale of when unrealistic and unreasonable speed-to-power expectations collide with a deliberative regulatory process.”
ATC has not indicated when it will resubmit its application as of Thursday afternoon, nor whether the December 2027 deadline is still within reach. “ATC is disappointed with today’s Commission’s decision and is considering its options,” a company spokesperson wrote after the hearing.
But the company’s final filing before the hearing signaled the possibility of a legal fight. “To date, the Commission has processed the application consistent with the law,” the company’s attorneys wrote. “At this stage,” restarting the process “would be the one action to depart from that.”
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Reading Time: 4minutesClick here to read highlights from the story
Microsoft’s new 15-year electric service contract with We Energies includes outdated language limiting where power plants serving its Mount Pleasant data center could be located.
The Public Service Commission rejected the geographic restriction, which would have limited Microsoft’s access to wind energy from neighboring states.
We Energies says the commission’s order — not the outdated contract language — will govern Microsoft’s power purchases.
Consumer advocates question why We Energies asked Microsoft to sign a contract that didn’t reflect regulators’ decision.
Microsoft’s new 15-year electric service contract for its Mount Pleasant data center includes a provision Wisconsin regulators previously rejected.
Signed last month, the agreement with We Energies specifies that power plants built or purchased to serve data centers must be located in eastern Wisconsin or Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. But Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission (PSC) voted in May to remove those geographic constraints, which critics argued would cut off Microsoft’s access to abundant wind power generated elsewhere in the Midwest and Great Plains.
We Energies says it will follow the commission’s order — as opposed to the contract’s language — while it works with the commission to resolve the discrepancy. In the meantime, some observers question how an outdated version of a high-stakes contract made it this far.
Where should data centers look for power?
The mismatch traces back to one of many disagreements that arose during the PSC’s deliberations on a new rate structure for large data center customers: Should those facilities rely on nearby plants alone or be free to tap energy sources elsewhere?
The PSC-approved rate structure allows large data center operators to “subscribe” to new power plants, picking up the bill for purchasing or constructing them in exchange for the right to use the electricity they generate and revenue from selling surplus electricity on the wholesale market.
We Energies argued that those plants should be located as close as possible to the data centers they would serve.
Longer distances would increase the risk of grid failures disrupting data center operations, WEC Energy Group Director of Planning Jody Arendt told the PSC in January. WEC Energy Group is We Energies’ holding company.
The local power plants would be within the territory of the American Transmission Company (ATC), a transmission utility in which We Energies owns a majority stake — a relationship that could simplify coordinating repairs and upgrades, Arendt said.
Ratepayer advocates and clean energy groups criticized the plan, arguing it would limit data centers’ access to wind energy.
Electricity generated by onshore wind farms is, by some measures, cheaper than electricity generated by new natural gas plants. The Midwest’s regional grid operator has approved billions of dollars in grid upgrades over the past five years, in part to streamline transmitting wind energy from regions with high winds to population centers and industrial hubs.
We Energies fully or partially owns a half-dozen planned and operational wind farms in Wisconsin, including the new Badger Hollow wind farm in Iowa and Grant counties. But neighboring states — especially Iowa and Minnesota — have far higher average wind speeds and generate vastly more wind power.
“Any Wisconsin customers should be able to benefit from lower cost resources like the wind profile in southern Minnesota,” Wisconsin Citizens Utility Board Executive Director Tom Content wrote in an email to Wisconsin Watch.
The PSC ultimately sided with CUB and clean energy groups, striking the location constraints from the data center rate structure it approved in May.
“Over-indexing on a smaller geographic area comes with its own risks,” said Commissioner Marcus Hawkins, adding that planned grid upgrades could resolve some of the challenges of powering data centers from afar.
Outdated contract
With the rate structure approved, We Energies sent Microsoft a contract to implement the new rate structure.
Microsoft asked the PSC in June to reopen the case, in part to address “multiple errors or inconsistencies” in We Energies’ contract — including the provision limiting new power plants to eastern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula.
We Energies offered to drop the line, among other “ministerial changes that could streamline or improve” the contract.
After the PSC declined to reopen the case, Microsoft signed the contract as-is on July 16. A Microsoft spokesperson declined to comment on the contract.
Because the commission “did not reopen their decision or take up these changes,” the utility still needs to work with the PSC to fix the contracts, We Energies spokesperson Brendan Conway wrote in an email. “We do not have a timeline for when the language will be updated.”
“From a practical perspective,” he added, Microsoft will be held to the PSC-approved rules, meaning it can subscribe to plants outside of eastern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula.
The companies are legally required to abide by the PSC’s terms, commission spokesperson Meghan Sovey-Lashua wrote in an email.
“To the degree there are conflicts” with the PSC’s order, Sovey-Lashua added, “there are procedural options” to bring the issue back to the commission for a resolution.
Ratepayer advocates, meanwhile, wonder why We Energies asked Microsoft to sign an outdated version of the contract in the first place.
“There’s a basic and common-sense expectation that a utility’s filing would be revised to reflect changes the PSC made to a proposal,” Content wrote, “particularly for an issue that generated a fair amount of discussion during the seven-hour deliberation on this issue.”
Microsoft has already signed up to purchase electricity from the planned Red Oak Ridge Energy Center in Kenosha County. We Energies is currently asking the PSC for permission to buy the natural gas plant from developer Invenergy for $1.8 billion while Invenergy awaits PSC approval to build the plant.
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The Everett McKinley Dirksen United States Courthouse in Chicago houses the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit. (Ken Lund / flickr | license: Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic)
A federal appeals court in Chicago on Thursday rejected the Trump administration’s mandatory detention policy for immigrants in removal proceedings, ending its split over a year-old policy that has prevented thousands of immigrants in federal custody from requesting bond.
The 2-1 decision may allow hundreds of detainees in Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin — the three states within the court’s jurisdiction — to seek bond hearings in immigration court.
At the center of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling: Jaciel Cirrus Rojas, a Mexican national who immigration authorities picked up in Racine last summer as “collateral” while searching for a different target.
The 7th Circuit joins five other federal appeals courts in ruling against the detention policy. Two courts have sided with the administration, likely setting the stage for the nation’s highest court to take up the issue.
“Detention without sufficient purpose, or indefinitely prolonged detention, threatens due process,” Judge Joshua Kolar wrote in the court’s majority opinion, joined by Judge Candace Jackson-Akiwumi. Former President Joe Biden appointed both judges to the 7th Circuit.
“My colleagues and I could debate until we’re blue in the face,” wrote Judge Diane Sykes, a George W. Bush appointee, in her solo dissent.
“At this point, only the Supreme Court can bring uniformity and settle this question once and for all. I anticipate that it will do so soon.”
A fight over mandatory detention
The legal battle centers on opposing interpretations of a decades-old federal law.
The 1996 Immigration Reform Act requires immigration authorities to detain — without bond — anyone found crossing the U.S. border without authorization. Prior administrations applied that rule narrowly, allowing many immigrants arrested in the country’s interior to seek a bond hearing in immigration court.
The Trump administration bucked that approach in July 2025, when ICE Director Todd Lyons issued a new legal interpretation requiring detention without bond regardless of where immigrants are arrested.
The Board of Immigration Appeals, a panel of judges who set the rules for the federal immigration court system, signed off on the interpretation in September.
With bond off the table, tens of thousands of immigrants in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody turned to a backup option: filing habeas corpus petitions in federal district courts to challenge their detention. Unlike immigration courts, which are part of the U.S. Department of Justice, federal district courts belong to the judicial branch and, therefore, are technically independent of the White House. When a federal district court grants a habeas petition, it generally orders an immigration court judge to hold a bond hearing.
Wisconsin’s Western and Eastern District courts received roughly 100 habeas petitions in the past year. About 30 of those cases remained open as of Thursday, and the appeals court’s ruling does not necessarily take them off the docket.
From Racine to the 7th Circuit
Cirrus Rojas left his rural hometown in southern Mexico as a teenager, reuniting with his brother in Racine in 2018. He remained off immigration authorities’ radar until ICE agents arrived at his home in June 2025 looking for a prior tenant, said his attorney, Milwaukee-based Jennifer Bizzotto.
“He answered their questions,” she added, “and they used his responses to detain him.”
Jaciel Cirrus Rojas is a Mexican national who federal immigration authorities apprehended in Racine in 2025 as “collateral” while searching for a different target. (Courtesy of Jennifer Bizzotto)
Wisconsin court records show no prior criminal convictions or civil citations under his name.
Cirrus Rojas’ first language is a dialect of Chatino, a group of indigenous languages spoken by roughly 50,000 people in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca.
“There are not a lot of forms or information available in Chatino,” Bizzotto added — a barrier that she said largely explains why Cirrus Rojas didn’t file for asylum until he entered ICE custody, citing fear of torture if he returned to Mexico.
He spent much of the following nine months in custody at the Dodge County jail as his case wound through the immigration court system, separated from his partner and child. Eastern District of Wisconsin Judge Brett Ludwig rejected his attempt to secure a bond hearing via habeas petition last October, but Cirrus Rojas and the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin appealed that denial to the 7th Circuit.
Cirrus Rojas was among the relatively few ICE detainees able to leave custody on bond in February after a federal district court judge in California vacated the mandatory detention rule. The San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals stayed that decision less than a month later.
His case before the 7th Circuit continued even after he left custody. Just days before the Thursday ruling, immigration authorities signaled they intend to take Cirrus Rojas back into custody. He remained out of custody as of Friday afternoon.
Courts split nationwide
The 7th Circuit remained split on the issue for months, leaving Wisconsin’s federal district court judges to reach their own interpretations of the 1996 immigration law. Three judges in the Milwaukee-based U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin ruled in the Trump administration’s favor, while seven Wisconsin judges — including two in the Western District — ruled against the administration.
Federal appellate courts are similarly divided. The New Orleans-based 5th Circuit and the St. Louis-based 8th Circuit have upheld the mandatory detention rule; the former has jurisdiction over many of ICE’s largest detention facilities. The 7th Circuit joins appellate courts based in New York, Cincinnati, Denver, Atlanta and San Francisco in rejecting the rule.
“If Congress had indeed demanded — but not funded — no-bond detention for all unlawful entrants, that may well have thrown the nation’s immigration system into chaos,” Kolar wrote. “Immigration authorities might have found themselves quickly overwhelmed by a colossal unfunded mandate to arrest and detain millions.”
Sykes took a different view of Congress’ goals. Lawmakers must have intended to “put all aliens who have not lawfully entered the country on equal footing,” she wrote, not to provide additional rights to those detained in the interior of the U.S.
A path to bond — for some
While detainees and attorneys nationwide await the Supreme Court’s guidance, some in Wisconsin are preparing for a wave of bond hearings.
ICE held more than 1,000 people across Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin as of the beginning of July, including more than 100 at the Dodge County jail. The 7th Circuit’s ruling does not mean all of them will get a bond hearing.
Congress’ 2025 Laken Riley Act requires detention without bond for immigrants “charged with, arrested for, (or) convicted of” an array of offenses ranging from shoplifting to assaulting a law enforcement officer. That requirement — along with procedural rules predating the Trump administration — could still bar some current detainees from securing bonds.
Just over half of all ICE detainees who passed through Wisconsin detention facilities between January 2025 and March 2026 had prior criminal convictions, most commonly for driving under the influence of alcohol. Another quarter had pending criminal charges when they entered ICE custody. The share with no prior criminal history, including Cirrus Rojas, has climbed in recent months.
The 7th Circuit’s ruling also does not force the hand of immigration court judges, who retain the authority to set bond amounts or reject bond requests altogether.
“It was hard enough to get bond before this interpretation (took effect) last year,” said Milwaukee immigration attorney Ben Crouse, though the mandatory detention rule added costly and time-intensive hurdles.
The anticipated flood of bond hearing requests had yet to appear as of Thursday evening.
Bizzotto worries that the appeals court’s decision is another step in a game of “whack-a-mole.”
If some immigration judges begin denying bond requests “under any pretext,” she said, immigration attorneys may need to open a new front in federal court to push for more neutral arbitration.
Nevertheless, Bizzotto said she has already begun preparing a stack of bond hearing requests and expects fellow immigration attorneys are busy doing the same.
This story was updated with additional reporting.
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We Energies reassured shareholders on Wednesday that Oracle’s ongoing dispute with state regulators over new credit rating requirements for data center operators poses no threat to the planned hyperscale data center in Port Washington.
WEC Energy Group CEO Scott Lauber, head of We Energies’ parent company, told investors during a quarterly earnings call that the Port Washington facility remains on track to come online as soon as late 2027. In a “worst-case scenario” in which Oracle backs out of the project, “there are a lot of opportunities for that site,” Lauber said, “but at this point, I have no indication that’s the case.”
Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission (PSC) in April approved a rate structure for We Energies’ “very large customers” that requires operators like Oracle to pay for the construction of new power plants needed to meet data center energy needs. But constructing a new plant can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and any unpaid debts tied to the plants could fall on We Energies’ other customers if a data center operator becomes insolvent.
To shield ratepayers from a potential cost shift, the PSC set a AAA- credit rating threshold for data center operators seeking electric service from We Energies. Companies below the threshold must post steep collateral, either in cash or lines of credit, as a backstop.
That requirement could cost Oracle, the co-developer of the Port Washington data center campus alongside OpenAI and Vantage, over $100 million per year in financial security payments. The company held a BBB credit rating when the PSC approved the credit rating standards, largely because of its aggressive borrowing to finance artificial intelligence ventures and risky business relationship with OpenAI. S&P Global Ratings, one of the “Big Three” credit rating agencies responsible for assessing creditworthiness of government and corporate debt, lowered Oracle’s rating to a BBB- on July 9 — the bottom edge of the agency’s “investment-grade” tier. If the company’s credit rating falls further, Lauber said, “we already have all the collateral we need.”
We Energies asked the PSC to reconsider the rule last month, arguing that the added cost could dissuade other companies from operating in Wisconsin. “If the Commission does not reopen its decision on this issue, the implications for Wisconsin would be significant and limit the ability of numerous investment-grade companies to invest in Wisconsin,” the utility’s attorneys wrote in their request. The PSC declined We Energies’ request earlier this month.
Lauber sounded more optimistic about the credit rating requirements on Wednesday. “I don’t think the collateral will be an issue long term,” he said, noting that ratings agencies reacted positively to the credit rating threshold.
We Energies is currently in talks with at least two other data center operators interested in setting up Wisconsin operations, albeit at far smaller scales than Oracle or Microsoft, which operates a new data center campus in Mount Pleasant. Lauber told shareholders that the credit rating requirements pose no obstacle to those prospective customers.
Oracle, however, sued the PSC in Ozaukee County Circuit Court last month, asking a judge to “set aside, reverse and remand” the credit rating requirements. The tech giant argues the commission acted outside of its authority in approving the rule and that the AAA- bar isn’t “needed to prevent harm” to We Energies’ other customers.
We Energies is an interested party in that lawsuit, but it did not join Oracle as a plaintiff.
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The chief federal judge for Wisconsin’s Eastern District has begun clearing a path to bond hearings for immigrants in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, months after attorneys first asked her to rule on challenges to the Trump administration’s mandatory detention policy.
Over the past month, Judge Pamela Pepper has sided with at least four immigrants challenging the legality of their detention — her first rulings on a Department of Homeland Security policy that has landed thousands of immigrants nationwide in custody, sometimes for months.
Pepper’s rulings place her among a growing number of federal judges who have rejected the administration’s interpretation of immigration law. But courts nationwide remain divided over whether immigrants can seek release from ICE custody while fighting their deportation cases.
Those disagreements have created a patchwork of rulings that federal appeals courts or the U.S. Supreme Court may ultimately resolve.
Pepper, appointed by then-President Barack Obama in 2014 and the district’s chief judge since 2019, is among the last of her colleagues to rule on the issue.
New detention policy sparks dispute
The dispute centers on opposing interpretations of a decades-old federal law.
The 1996 Immigration Reform Act requires immigration authorities to detain — without bond — anyone found crossing the U.S. border without authorization. Prior administrations applied that rule narrowly, allowing many immigrants arrested in the country’s interior to seek a bond hearing in immigration court.
The Trump administration bucked that approach in July 2025, when ICE Director Todd Lyons issued a new legal interpretation requiring detention without bond regardless of where immigrants are arrested.
The Board of Immigration Appeals, a panel of judges who set the rules for the federal immigration court system, signed off on the interpretation in September.
With bond off the table, thousands of immigrants in ICE custody have turned to a backup option: filing habeas corpus petitions in federal district courts to challenge their detention. Unlike immigration courts, which are part of the U.S. Department of Justice, federal district courts belong to the judicial branch and, therefore, are technically independent of the White House. When a federal district court grants a habeas petition, it generally orders an immigration court judge to hold a bond hearing.
If the district court judge grants the petition in time for an immigrant to leave custody on bond, the person’s removal case moves to the slower-moving “non-detained” docket, buying time to build a case for staying in the U.S.
The mandatory detention policy has triggered tens of thousands of habeas petitions over the past year, overwhelming the federal prosecutors responsible for defending ICE detentions. Wisconsin accounts for roughly 100 of those cases, filed in its Western and Eastern District courts. Pepper received 15, more than any other Eastern District judge.
Judges split over Trump policy
Legal battles over the validity of the mandatory detention policy are still unfolding in federal courts nationwide.
Judges in Wisconsin’s Western District have uniformly rejected the mandatory detention policy while those in Wisconsin’s Eastern District remain divided.
Eastern District judges Brett Ludwig, William Griesbach and J.P. Stadtmueller — appointed by Presidents Trump, George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan respectively — have consistently upheld the mandatory detention policy.
“It would make little sense to reward those undocumented immigrants who successfully evaded detection upon arrival in the United States and traveled into the interior of the country with discretionary release, while mandating the detention of those individuals who were not so successful or who sought entry at a border or port of entry,” Griesbach wrote in a December 2025 order denying a Venezuelan detainee’s petition.
Judges Lynn Adelman, Byron Conway, William Duffin and Nancy Joseph have each ruled against the mandatory detention policy at least once in the past year. Adelman and Conway were appointed by Democratic presidents; Duffin and Joseph were selected by a panel of judges.
“There are plausible reasons for treating noncitizens who are well-settled in communities, perhaps working jobs and supporting families, differently from new arrivals. As a noncitizen spends years in the country, it is expected that he or she will develop connections to the United States and its citizens that may help establish a defense to removal or a path to permanent legal status,” Adelman wrote in March.
Conway became the first Eastern District judge to rule on the issue last October, when he granted a habeas petition filed by a Nicaraguan man whom ICE agents arrested in Sun Prairie while searching for his roommate. Most Eastern District judges ruled on the mandatory detention policy within one to two months of receiving a petition challenging the policy.
Pepper didn’t grant a habeas petition until June, more than six months after that Nicaraguan petitioner sought the court’s intervention. She has yet to deny a petition.
Pepper echoed Adelman’s reasoning in her recent rulings, arguing in a June 17 order that the Trump administration’s interpretation of the 1996 law “cannot be squared with the text of the statute.”
Her order also noted inconsistencies within the federal appeals court that could settle the question in Wisconsin. Judges on the Chicago-based 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears appeals from Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, remain divided on the detention policy.
The U.S. Department of Justice requested in May that the 7th Circuit hold expedited oral arguments, but it has yet to do so.
Appellate courts based in New York, Cincinnati and Atlanta have ruled against the Trump administration’s policy. Courts based in St. Louis and New Orleans have sided with the administration. The Louisiana-based court has jurisdiction over most of ICE’s largest detention facilities.
The question may eventually fall to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“It’s up to the justices whether they want to take the case,” said Milwaukee immigration attorney Marc Christopher, “but traditionally on cases involving immigration, cases where there’s been a clear circuit split, and where it affects literally tens of thousands of people, I think it’s going to be near the top of the issues they want to resolve.”
Legal uncertainty, human costs
The lack of clarity only increased pressure for Wisconsin’s federal court judges to begin tackling the growing pile of habeas petitions, Milwaukee-area immigration attorney Jennifer Bizzotto said.
Even if Pepper were not the court’s chief judge, Bizzotto added, “there are so few judges that it really does matter a great deal.”
Pepper’s recent burst of activity brings relief to attorneys and immigrants with cases on her docket, but some lament the long wait’s human toll. “Of course people are happy to be released,” said Claire McNulty, another Milwaukee-area immigration attorney, “(but) how much of a win is it when it’s taken this long?”
“You’re just sitting in detention for months and months with no movement,” Bizzotto said. “These are real people’s lives that hang in the balance.”
Pepper’s recent rulings came too late for at least one immigrant in custody.
Jarwin Martinez Rayo, a Nicaraguan national arrested by ICE officers in Janesville shortly after President Trump’s second inauguration, filed a habeas petition in August 2025. Pepper took up the petition in late January, ordering DHS to respond within a month.
DHS placed Martinez Rayo on a flight to Mexico in mid-February — an increasingly common practice known as a “third-country removal” wherein federal authorities deport immigrants to countries other than their own. The agency did not notify the Eastern District court until June, at which point Pepper dismissed the case without commenting on the administration’s mandatory detention rule.
Bizzotto said the 7th Circuit’s split leaves even more immigrants in limbo.
“We’re all living on borrowed time here,” she said, “and if you want to go for optimism, at least we have one more judge who we know is willing to rule against (the policy).”
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A scam operation targeting Spanish-speaking injured workers is laying traps in Wisconsinites’ email inboxes.
Wisconsin’s Department of Workforce Development issued an alert this week about a possible “multi-state fraud scheme” that lures targets into fake worker’s compensation hearings to collect fees under false pretenses.
DWD spokesperson Haley McCoy told Wisconsin Watch that 10 Wisconsin workers reported receiving emails instructing them to attend “online workers’ compensation hearing(s)” via video call. The emails’ senders generally use “.org” addresses and bill themselves as government agencies like the “Workers’ Compensation Board.”
Workers who joined the calls via Zoom, WhatsApp, Teams and other video conferencing platforms sat through elaborate staged hearings complete with judges, bailiffs and attorneys, ending in a verdict in the workers’ favor. The fraudsters then told the injured workers that they could collect their compensation payout only after paying a fee to “finalize” the case. In some cases, victims also shared their Social Security numbers.
At least four Wisconsin workers have lost money to the scam since January, McCoy said, paying a combined $30,000 in sham legal fees.
McCoy also emphasized that attorneys involved in Wisconsin worker’s compensation cases must be licensed to practice law in the state. “Any ‘attorney’ not licensed in Wisconsin may be a fraudster,” she wrote in an email on Monday.
The DWD exclusively communicates with injured workers, employers and insurance carriers via mail, and telephone numbers on DWD correspondence will have Wisconsin area codes.
A June alert from the nonprofit National Insurance Crime Bureau cited other examples of the same fraud scheme targeting injured workers — primarily Spanish speakers — in Illinois, Indiana and Oregon.
Neither the bureau nor Wisconsin’s DWD has determined how the scam’s organizers obtained the email addresses of injured workers.
People who believe they’ve been victims of identity theft should contact the agency’s Consumer Protection Hotline at 800-422-7128 or DATCPHotline@wisconsin.gov, the agency said.
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A major national credit rating agency downgraded Oracle’s rating last week, citing uncertainty about the tech giant’s investments in artificial intelligence. The drop comes just weeks after the company sued Wisconsin’s utility regulator over new credit requirements for data center operators in We Energies territory — a lawsuit spotlighting the company’s financial condition.
S&P Global Ratings, one of the “big three” ratings agencies responsible for assessing the creditworthiness of government and corporate debt, lowered Oracle’s rating from a BBB to a BBB- on July 9. The rating places Oracle on the bottom edge of S&P’s “investment-grade” tier; any additional downgrades will land the company’s credit rating in the “high yield” or “junk” tier.
“Oracle Corp.’s rapidly expanding AI infrastructure business is increasing its overall credit risk,” S&P analysts wrote in an announcement of the downgrade, pointing to high capital spending, “an uncertain path to profitability” and stiff competition as reasons to be “more cautious” in its approach to AI infrastructure businesses.
Still, S&P isn’t wholly pessimistic about Oracle’s finances.
“Despite the stretched leverage and cash-flow profile over the next two years, we expect Oracle to demonstrate consistent improvements toward profitability as capacity comes online and business scales,” the analysts added.
Oracle is co-developing a vast new data center campus in Ozaukee County, and its BBB- credit rating adds a hurdle to its efforts to connect the campus’ servers to the grid.
The reason: new rules for data centers seeking electrical service in We Energies territory. Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission (PSC) recently approved a rate structure for We Energies’ “very large customers” that requires operators like Oracle to pay for the construction of new power plants needed to meet data center energy needs.
But constructing a new plant can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and any unpaid debts tied to the plants could fall to We Energies’ other customers if a data center operator becomes insolvent.
To shield ratepayers from a potential cost shift, the PSC set a AAA- credit rating threshold for data center operators seeking electric service from We Energies. Companies below the threshold must post steep collateral, either in cash or lines of credit, as a backstop.
For Oracle, that could mean paying $100 million or more a year as a condition of receiving electric service for Port Washington servers.
“In practical terms, tens of billions of dollars in Oracle’s value would need to be destroyed before creditors or counterparties, such as Wisconsin Electric and its other customers, could experience losses,” the utility’s lawyers wrote.
Oracle sued the commission in Ozaukee County Circuit Court as a backup to the reopener request. The company’s lawsuit asks Judge Sandy Williams to “set aside, reverse, and remand” the credit rating requirements, arguing that they aren’t “needed to prevent harm” to We Energies’ other customers or shareholders.
In a response filed July 9, the commission accused Oracle of trying to dodge regulatory scrutiny. The company seeks “to overturn over one-hundred years of established caselaw and allow it to dictate one-off preferential terms of service with the utility, bypassing Commission oversight altogether,” commission attorneys wrote.
Wisconsin’s Citizens Utility Board (CUB) and renewable energy advocacy group Clean Wisconsin also weighed in this week to support the credit ratings requirements.
“An investment grade credit rating provides little advance warning of financial difficulties that may worsen rapidly,” CUB attorney Daniel Narvey wrote in a position statement filed Monday in Ozaukee County Circuit Court. “If a data center customer suffered financial distress and had not been required to post collateral, (We Energies) and its other customers could be on the hook for billions of dollars of stranded investments.”
Oracle’s stock value has tumbled by more than 25% in the month since it sued the PSC.
Wisconsin isn’t the only state embroiled in a fight over Oracle’s data center operations. In March, Michigan’s Public Service Commission declined to revisit its approval of an electrical service agreement between utility DTE Energy, Oracle and OpenAI. Michigan’s utility regulator approved the contracts in an expedited, uncontested process that drew criticism from ratepayer advocates and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel.
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Wisconsin’s largest transmission utility is seeking federal intervention months after the Midwest’s regional grid operator awarded a major project to a startup competitor.
The American Transmission Company (ATC), which owns and operates transmission lines across eastern and central Wisconsin, asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) last month to force the grid operator to either redo its bidding process or reconsider earlier bids.
The request escalates a protracted fight over who profits from billions of dollars in new transmission investments — costs that electricity customers pay through their utility bills — and whether competitive bidding limits those costs. The race to serve energy-hungry data centers has raised the stakes, and ATC’s request is intertwined with plans to connect a massive data center campus in Port Washington to the grid by the end of next year.
The fight to build transmission lines
Wisconsin’s latest high-capacity transmission buildout began in 2022, when the nonprofit Midcontinent Independent Systems Operator (MISO) approved $10 billion in upgrades across the Upper Midwest. Another round of approvals in 2024 brought the total projected price tag to roughly $32 billion. The upgrades are a core part of MISO’s effort to improve grid reliability and connect population centers to abundant electricity from renewable sources, especially from wind farms on the Great Plains.
Included in the buildout are a set of transmission lines and substations circling Milwaukee, stretching south to the Illinois border and north to Fond du Lac and Sheboygan. MISO originally expected the projects to enter service by 2033.
Decade-old federal rules require competitive bidding for multistate transmission projects, and utilities and developers from around the country lined up to compete for a share of the Midwest’s buildout. The winners gain a reliable source of revenue via a fixed “return on equity” — profit per dollar invested — approved by regulators and paid for by electricity customers.
Supporters of the bidding requirement, including Wisconsin’s Citizens Utility Board, say it forces developers to compete on cost, thereby shielding ratepayers from cost overruns and excessive profits.
But investor-owned monopoly utilities have spent years seeking exemptions from competition, contending that the requirement hinders efficient grid development.
Those lobbying efforts have paid dividends elsewhere in the Midwest: Minnesota and Michigan, for instance, enacted right-of-first-refusal (ROFR) laws giving local utilities first dibs on any transmission projects within their territory, including those planned by grid operators like MISO.
Utilities argue ROFR laws ensure projects go to the companies best-equipped to complete them: local monopolies with well-established relationships with local labor and regulators. The companies also argue that claims of cost savings from competitive bidding are overblown.
With no Wisconsin law shielding it from competition, ATC has sought other means to control projects in its territory.
Two months after bidding on the eastern Wisconsin project last July, ATC asked the state Public Service Commission (PSC) for permission to build infrastructure for a planned data center campus in Ozaukee County. Port Washington’s city council approved the campus shortly after MISO signed off on the nearby transmission upgrades.
ATC, which manages the existing local transmission infrastructure, is responsible for ensuring the campus connects to the grid by December 2027. Three of the substations ATC proposed to state regulators would occupy roughly the same locations as MISO’s planned substations, though the data center would require higher-capacity infrastructure on a shorter timeline.
Winning the larger project would allow ATC to meet both needs with one set of substations, but if MISO chose another bidder, the utility said it would still seek state permission to build substations for the data center.
Instead, MISO initially awarded the project to Chicago-based Viridon, a startup owned by private equity firm Blackstone. Viridon’s roughly $350 million bid was the lowest — just over half of MISO’s estimate and more than $100 million below the next-cheapest bid. In its January announcement, MISO acknowledged the budget “may not be achievable” but cited Viridon’s promises to limit cost overruns and profits as reasons to pick the company over its competitors.
ATC pressed the issue. MISO agreed in February to move up the eastern Wisconsin project deadline to 2027. A month later, the operator reassigned the three substations to ATC outright, citing uncertainty over whether Viridon could clear the administrative hurdles in time to meet the new deadline.
Viridon kept only a fraction of the original eastern Wisconsin project, including a set of transmission lines and one substation, all still scheduled for completion by 2033.
ATC appeals to Washington
As ATC awaits PSC’s final approval of the eastern Wisconsin buildout, the utility has opened a new front in its fight against competition by asking FERC to step in.
In April, a group of utilities calling themselves the “Grid Acceleration Coalition” asked FERC to exempt at least some major grid upgrade projects from the competitive bidding requirement. The coalition argued that “bureaucratic red tape” can tack months onto project timelines and strain the country’s ability to “achieve dominance” in artificial intelligence. ATC is a member of the coalition, as is Xcel Energy, owner of Northern States Power Company-Wisconsin.
“This complaint is about whether our country will seize, or squander, a generational chance to own the next century,” the utilities wrote, pointing to the tug-of-war over MISO’s eastern Wisconsin project as an example of delays that could stymie AI development.
FERC has been flooded with similar requests as the nationwide data center boom strains grid capacity and spurs utilities to spend billions of dollars on new infrastructure. The fragmented U.S. energy system is poorly equipped to manage the scale of the buildout, and the five-person commission has begun weighing in on questions about speeding grid connections and shielding residential ratepayers from data-center-related costs.
The Grid Acceleration Coalition’s April request specified that it did not seek to “claw back” projects already awarded via competitive bidding.
ATC’s June complaint goes further. The utility asked FERC last month to either “re-bid” or “reevaluate the existing bids” for MISO’s eastern Wisconsin project, arguing the grid operator botched its earlier review. If FERC agrees, Viridon could lose its remaining portions of the project.
Tom Content of the Citizens Utility Board told Wisconsin Watch that CUB will “support a full evaluation of the process and any concerns,” but said the timing of ATC’s request — months after MISO first awarded the project — was a surprise.
ATC said it brought the issue to FERC rather than appealing to MISO because the commission offers a more neutral venue. The company said it does not know when FERC will decide whether to take up the request. It remains unclear whether ATC’s effort to reopen bidding would delay construction of the substations needed to plug in the Port Washington data center to the grid.
Correction: A previous version of the story incorrectly described the remedy American Transmission Company is seeking in its petition to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
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Whether artificial intelligence data centers are essential to modern life, an existential threat or something in between, one impact is clear:
As they pave over homes and farmland, they are minting millionaires — and even generation-changing wealth.
In Wisconsin, the clearest example is in Port Washington, a city of 13,000 north of Milwaukee where a 672-acre data center is under construction.
Some land deals were eye-popping, according to public records analyzed by Wisconsin Watch:
Members of the Karrels family and their family farming business earned at least $20 million. The largest sale was $10.2 million for 173 acres, or $59,000 per acre, 17 times the fair market value of $590,000.
Members of the Schlenvogt family, which has a long history in local government, sold properties for well above fair market value. Bonnie Schlenvogt sold her Lake Drive home and 65 acres for $3.44 million, nearly eight times the fair market value of $437,000. Her daughter-in-law, former Town of Port Washington Clerk Jennifer Schlenvogt, sold her nearly 3,000-square-foot Lake Drive home for $1.87 million, more than four times the fair market value.
A couple in their 60s, Peter and Ellie Burmesch, sold their 2,000-square-foot Tudor Revival on five acres for $2.13 million — seven times the estimated fair market value.
An adult group home with a fair market value of $320,700 sold for $6.5 million. Part of the deal involves relocating the facility.
Those sellers declined to comment.
Mayor Ted Neitzke, the data center’s most prominent supporter, said sellers fear being targeted by facility opponents.
“There’s a vocal minority that’s decided it needs to be louder,” he said. “That’s uncomfortable for (sellers) and they’re just not going to engage in it.”
Neitzke said the sellers are humble and not looking for publicity.
“They woke up one day and they just happened to live in the right spot.”
Port different from other data centers
Nationally, data center developers are willing to overpay for land near electric power and to beat competitors in what has turned into a land rush.
In Wisconsin, besides the Vantage-Oracle-Open AI $15 billion project in Port Washington, Microsoft is building a $20 billion data center in Mount Pleasant and Meta is building a $1 billion facility in Beaver Dam.
In Mount Pleasant, 25 miles south of Milwaukee in Racine County, most of the land had already been purchased by the village for a project launched by Foxconn that never fully developed. Racine County property sales records suggest Microsoft spent roughly $260 million on land alone.
In Beaver Dam, 40 miles northeast of Madison in Dodge County, the data center is located on 520 acres that were previously part of the Alliant Energy Commerce Park. Meta paid roughly at least $10.4 million for the land. Dodge County property sale records indicate that the tech giant purchased at least another 226 acres in Beaver Dam and neighboring Trenton from private landowners.
In Port Washington, on Lake Michigan’s shore in Ozaukee County, developers made big purchases from individuals. County property sale records show developers spent at least $125 million acquiring 1,500 acres of land or more.
Unhappy sellers
Curtiss Smith looks on at the property of his former home where the Vantage AI data center is now being built in Port Washington, May 21, 2026. (Trisha Young / Wisconsin Watch)
The windfall might have been welcomed by some sellers in Port Washington, but not others.
Ryan Nowak sold his 65-acre Lake Drive property for $1.75 million — over $1.3 million more than fair market value. But now, living on a 1.5-acre property about 10 miles north of Port Washington, he regrets it.
Nowak recalled that, before hiring an attorney, he signed documents that he said prevented him from discussing sale offers with his neighbors.
“On paper it looked OK, until you go to replace what you had,” Nowak said. “I don’t even have a fraction of what I had and it’s not like I have a ton more money left over or anything. I don’t know. I upgraded. What I have now is nicer, but it’s a fraction of the size of a property and buildings and everything else.”
Curtiss Smith also said there are misconceptions about his new wealth.
“People that weren’t part of it, they’re like, ‘Oh, now you’re a millionaire,’” he said. “Far from it.”
Smith, a 53-year-old crane operator, remembers the developer’s agent telling him his property would sell for three times the value of his four-acre property.
Sure enough, the property with a fair market value of $258,000 sold last August for $895,000.
The transaction left Smith appreciative but, having negotiated the deal alone, feeling some of his neighbors did better.
“After the fact, you hear what everybody else got,” he said. “You’re like, what the heck? Why did I sign so early, you know?”
Smith said the data center would have practically been in his backyard had he not sold. But, having bought a farmhouse a mile away, he still sees the data center every day.
Residents like Amanda Mueller — who live near the data center, but not close enough to get a purchase offer — are unhappy, too. They worry whether the project will cause environmental problems and bleed their property values.
“For all the people that moved here, for the tranquil beauty, the silence,” Mueller lamented. “It just seems so absurd now to look back at it and go, ‘Oh, God, if only we had a crystal ball. If only we knew.’
“I don’t think this town is ready for the culture change that’s going to happen,” she said. “So we’re looking at the future that’s really uncertain. And unfortunately, we’re trapped in the shadow of this thing.”
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Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission (PSC) has no plans to reconsider We Energies’ request to loosen credit rating rules for data center developers.
The commission voted in April to require data center developers with below-threshold credit ratings to provide financial guarantees before receiving electric service from We Energies. Ratepayer advocates say the requirement shields other customers from financial risk if a data center operator can’t afford to pay for infrastructure built on its behalf.
That requirement could cost tech giant Oracle, the co-developer of a Port Washington data center campus, over $100 million per year. We Energies asked the PSC to reconsider the rule last month, arguing that the added cost could dissuade other companies from operating in Wisconsin.
The three-member commission has until Friday to act on the request. The commissioners did not include the request on Thursday’s meeting agenda, and, as of Thursday evening, had not scheduled a Friday meeting to consider it. State law requires the commission to notify the public of scheduled meetings at least 24 hours in advance.
The PSC will instead defend the credit rating requirements in Ozaukee County Circuit Court, where Oracle sued the agency last month.
Guardrails
Commissioners approved the credit rating rules as one of several guardrails in We Energies’ new “very large customer” rate structure to prevent cost shifts from data center developers to the utility’s other customers.
The new rate structure requires We Energies to bill data center customers alone for power plants built to serve them. A single power plant can cost hundreds of millions of dollars — or, in the case of the proposed Red Oak Ridge plant in the town of Paris, more than a billion dollars. If a data center developer goes bankrupt, We Energies’ other customers could be on the hook for any remaining costs tied to the power plants.
With that worst-case scenario in mind, the PSC set a credit rating threshold for data center developers seeking We Energies electric service. Credit ratings measure a company’s financial health and likelihood of repaying debts on time. Developers with credit ratings below A- must provide financial guarantees to receive service. Those financial guarantees would help cover costs if a developer runs into financial trouble.
Wisconsin’s Citizens Utility Board and other ratepayer advocacy groups supported the “belt-and-suspender” approach to protecting smaller customers.
Exemption sought for Oracle
Oracle, a Texas-based cloud computing giant, currently holds a BBB credit rating — a tier below the A- threshold but still considered investment-grade by ratings agencies. The company’s aggressive borrowing in support of its artificial intelligence ventures pushed Oracle’s debt-to-equity ratio above 400% as of May, and its stock price has tumbled more than $50 in the past month alone.
The PSC-approved rate structure would require the Oracle subsidiary involved in the Port Washington project to provide more than $100 million a year in cash deposits or letters of credit to receive We Energies service.
“If the Commission does not reopen its decision on this issue, the implications for Wisconsin would be significant and limit the ability of numerous investment-grade companies to invest in Wisconsin,” We Energies wrote in its June 10 request that the PSC reconsider the credit rating rules.
The utility urged the commission to exempt companies with “investment-grade” credit ratings, including BBB ratings, and to waive the Oracle subsidiary’s financial backing requirements.
We Energies maintains that concerns about Oracle’s credit-worthiness are misplaced.
“In practical terms, tens of billions of dollars in Oracle’s value would need to be destroyed before creditors or counterparties, such as Wisconsin Electric and its other customers, could experience losses,” the utility’s attorneys wrote in their petition.
Friday’s deadline is the commission’s last chance to act on the request, but We Energies doesn’t expect any last-minute action.
“We are disappointed the commission chose not to revisit the financial support requirements under our Very Large Customer rate,” We Energies spokesperson Brendan Conway wrote in an email to Wisconsin Watch on Thursday. “We believe updating the financial support requirements will help ensure the policy meets the goal we all agree on: protecting customers while supporting jobs and economic growth in Wisconsin.
The environmental advocacy group Clean Wisconsin, on the other hand, applauded the commissioners.
“The Public Service Commission did the right thing when it created this special rate structure for AI data centers, and it’s doing the right thing now by rejecting the petition,” Brett Korte, the nonprofit’s attorney, wrote in a Thursday press release. “This is about protecting We Energies’ other customers — families, small businesses, schools, manufacturers — and shielding them from the risks associated with these enormous energy users.”
Oracle is asking the Ozaukee County Circuit Court to intervene.
In its June 19 lawsuit, the company argues the commission acted outside its authority and without sufficient evidence to justify the rule. Oracle also maintains that the A- threshold isn’t “needed to prevent harm” to We Energies’ other customers or shareholders.
Microsoft’s questions
Also absent from the PSC’s agenda this week: a request from Microsoft to “clarify” parts of the data center rate structure.
Microsoft, the developer of the new data center campus in Mt. Pleasant, asked the PSC last month about the impact of potential changes to federal rules dictating how transmission utilities spread the construction costs of new infrastructure.
The five-member Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) — not the Wisconsin PSC — has jurisdiction over how utilities allocate transmission costs.
The data center boom will require new transmission infrastructure, and FERC has yet to develop new rules to assign the cost of those projects to data center developers. The American Transmission Company, Wisconsin’s largest transmission utility, signaled this spring that it plans to ask FERC to approve a new cost allocation model.
In the meantime, Wisconsin’s PSC approved what commissioner Christi Nieto called a “temporary stopgap measure.” We Energies passes transmission costs to customers based on their electricity use, and the commission-approved rate structure sets a floor for data centers’ transmission bills based on projected electricity needs.
Microsoft argues that the possible federal rule changes create enough “ambiguity” to merit reconsidering how it will be billed for transmission costs after FERC considers new options.
The PSC also had until Friday to act on Microsoft’s request.
This story was updated July 10 to include information about Microsoft’s We Energies rate structure.
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An undocumented construction worker was paralyzed after falling through a roof in Madison in 2023 while working for contractors that lacked Wisconsin worker’s compensation insurance. He waited for months in a hospital while attorneys and state investigators determined who would be held responsible — a common consequence of informal employment arrangements.
Wisconsin’s Uninsured Employers Fund ultimately covered the worker’s nearly $1 million claim, including medical care, disability compensation and transportation back to Nicaragua. The fund exists for crises like his, but it does not solve the underlying problem.
Construction companies account for a disproportionate share of uninsured employer cases, and many businesses dissolve or disappear before regulators can recover costs. Undocumented workers paid in cash often struggle to prove they were employed, making it difficult to access benefits after serious injuries.
The worker’s injury was never investigated by OSHA. State worker’s compensation systems and federal workplace safety investigators rarely coordinate. Advocates say limited reporting requirements, staffing shortages and poor coordination allow many serious workplace injuries to escape regulatory scrutiny.
Juan can no longer walk. A fall through a Madison auto repair shop roof in 2023 paralyzed him from the neck down.
Juan spent two lonely years in Wisconsin health care facilities while his attorneys and state regulators worked out how to cover his medical bills and compensate him for the abrupt end of his working life.
Like many undocumented immigrants working in construction, Juan found the job repairing a sheet-metal roof in Madison through a blurry relationship between a labor recruiter and a general contractor. Neither had the worker’s compensation insurance state law requires.
The Department of Workforce Development (DWD) investigates thousands of employers each year for potentially violating those requirements. In 2024 alone, investigators issued more than 4,400 penalties totaling $8.7 million against employers for operating without insurance. The penalties flow into Wisconsin’s Uninsured Employers Fund, which compensates injured workers while the state attempts to recoup costs from their employer.
But even identifying his employer after his injury proved difficult, Juan said. Wisconsin Watch is using only part of his name to protect his identity.
While he eventually received compensation, Juan considers his lengthy hospitalization a cautionary tale both for regulators and for fellow immigrants afraid to ask who cuts their checks for fear of losing work. “Sometimes people just work and work without asking questions,” he said, “and that’s what happened to me.”
Meanwhile, disconnects between worker’s compensation systems and federal workplace safety investigators can shield dangerous conditions from scrutiny, leaving more workers at risk of life-altering injuries.
Many fled after police responded violently to widespread protests against President Daniel Ortega’s totalitarian regime. Juan said he headed north to support his family back home.
He waded across the Rio Grande to Eagle Pass, Texas, on an early morning in December 2022.
After a brief encounter with U.S. Border Patrol officers, Juan joined a nephew in Florida. Eager to work and constrained by his lack of work authorization, Juan fit the target demographic for labor recruiters connecting employers in agriculture, construction and food processing with Florida’s then-booming population of newly arrived undocumented immigrants.
A recruiter named Angel connected Juan with his first gig: renovating his nephew’s apartment complex. One job led to another, and he soon found himself crisscrossing the Midwest as an itinerant construction worker.
“One week we’d go to one place in Wisconsin; the next week we’d be in another,” he said.
The work itself was a blur. “Sometimes we’d work up to 13 hours,” he recalled — usually at an unrelenting pace. Wary of asking questions that could cost him a job, Juan said he never fully knew who called the shots. “That’s the problem,” he said. “You start working and you don’t investigate who owns the company…. Sometimes they don’t think it’s good to investigate.”
Juan still didn’t know his employer’s identity when he climbed onto the auto repair shop’s roof on a cloudy Friday in August. The site supervisor hadn’t provided him with a safety harness, he added, so nothing broke his fall when he accidentally stepped through a sheet of insulation.
He fractured his spine upon impact with the concrete floor below.
Juan struggled to remain conscious as the site supervisor debated whether to call an ambulance. “It seemed like he was scared,” he recalled. “Afraid they would cause trouble for him because I had fallen. I kept telling him, ‘Call someone! Call someone! I’m dying!’”
Who pays when a worker is hurt?
Confined to a trauma unit bed at University Hospital in Madison, Juan was in a bind.
Among other looming questions, “there was some doubt about who was going to cover the medical bills,” said Gabriel Manzano, an attorney who represented Juan.
Aaron Halstead, also on Juan’s legal team, estimates that roughly three-quarters of Uninsured Employers Fund claims he pursued over his three-decade career involved undocumented workers. Spanish-speaking worker’s compensation attorneys are few and far between in Wisconsin, and undocumented workers are overrepresented in injury-prone trades.
The types of opaque employment arrangements that left Juan in limbo are especially common among undocumented immigrants, Halstead said.
“They get paid in cash by some guy they may or may not know,” he added, and when disaster strikes, they’re left without an easy way to prove the identity of their employer.
The state denies a claim if a worker or attorneys cannot gather sufficient evidence to identify an employer, said Jim O’Malley, who directs the legal services for DWD’s worker’s compensation division.
“They need to be able to give us something that establishes a relationship (with an employer),” added Aaron Galarowicz, chief of DWD’s uninsured employers fund unit. “Pay stubs are easy,” he said, “but when they’re paid in cash… that’s a little bit more difficult.”
Tracking down the responsible employer requires a degree of “amateur detective” work, he added. Text messages, worksite photos and cellphone location history can all help solve the mystery, Halstead said — or at least create a clear enough picture to bring a claim to DWD.
Leads in Juan’s case pointed to two possible employers: Luis Villafuerte, the subcontractor who brought Juan to Madison, and RestoreMasters, a then-Florida-based contractor in charge of the roof repair.
Neither had worker’s compensation insurance in Wisconsin. Employers sometimes forgo insurance to cut costs, Halstead said. “Some percentage of them end up with injured workers,” he added, “and they hope that no one’s going to do anything about it.”
RestoreMasters, which did not respond to requests for comment, carried insurance elsewhere but failed to get a Wisconsin endorsement on its policy before taking the Madison job, Halstead said.
Not all states offer a fallback. Had he been injured while working for an uninsured contractor while living in Florida, for example, Juan’s only path to compensation would require filing a lawsuit against his employer.
In Wisconsin, however, DWD’s Uninsured Employers Fund could step into the gap as investigators sorted out which contractor to hold accountable.
A million-dollar claim
Passing interactions with fellow Spanish-speaking patients provided Juan moments of comfort during his initial hospital stay. Those connections dried up once he transferred to a medical rehabilitation facility. He had no family or close friends in the area. “I felt alone,” he recalled. “I felt devastated … to not be able to see anyone.”
State investigators reached a decision in February 2024. RestoreMasters was his employer at the time of his injury, DWD determined, so it bore responsibility for failing to secure a worker’s compensation insurance policy in Wisconsin.
By the time the state secured an agreement with RestoreMasters to cover his ballooning medical bills, Juan had another request: a flight back to Nicaragua. With nobody in the U.S. to care for him, returning was his only viable option.
The final payout, including all medical costs, compensation for Juan’s injuries and a chartered flight to Managua, reached nearly $1 million. Only one other uninsured employer — a now-dissolved trucking company in Oshkosh — paid a larger sum to the Uninsured Employers Fund in the past two decades.
Construction dominates uninsured employer cases
Construction firms like RestoreMasters made up a disproportionate share of the uninsured employers that settled with DWD. Roughly one in four businesses that settled with the Uninsured Employers Fund between 2013 and 2023 offered construction or remodeling services. By comparison, the construction industry accounted for one in 14 worker’s compensation claims filed in Wisconsin during the same period, according to DWD data.
But RestoreMasters, a business with a portfolio spanning half the country, wasn’t a typical uninsured employer. “Employers with Uninsured Employers Fund claims tend to be less established than other businesses,” DWD spokesperson Haley McCoy wrote — and difficult to track.
A quarter of the roughly 150 employers that faced Uninsured Employers Fund claims between 2020 and 2025 have since dissolved, Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions records show. Some may have reincorporated under a different name. State records list another 20% as “delinquent,” having failed to file required reports or pay state taxes.
Less than half of employers still incorporated in Wisconsin with names matching Uninsured Employers Fund records have obtained worker’s compensation policies since encountering DWD.
The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development building is shown in downtown Madison, Wis. (Steven Potter / WPR)
Of the more than two dozen businesses Wisconsin Watch contacted about their experiences navigating Uninsured Employers Fund claims, only one responded: a used car dealership on Milwaukee’s South Side owned by former Greenfield alderwoman Linda Lubotsky.
Her business is among those that have not obtained insurance policies; Lubotsky told Wisconsin Watch that she now runs a one-person operation that isn’t subject to Wisconsin’s worker’s compensation insurance requirement.
Lubotsky called her business’s run-in with DWD as a “witch hunt,” accusing the former employee who filed a worker’s compensation claim in 2024 of fraud and the agency of failing to act as a neutral arbiter. “I spent $15,000 on attorney fees,” she said, “and I’m currently in the appeal process.”
Employers and employees appealing Uninsured Employers Fund decisions first make their case to an administrative law judge. They can then appeal to Wisconsin’s Labor and Industry Review Commission before taking a case to court.
When serious injury escapes OSHA scrutiny
Even as the state investigated and settled with RestoreMasters, the company faced no scrutiny from federal workplace safety regulators after Juan’s fall.
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) serious injury records from 2023 contain no mention of the incident, and the agency’s enforcement data shows no penalties against RestoreMasters for workplace safety rule violations.
Federal rules require employers to report workplace accidents resulting in deaths, overnight hospitalizations or the loss of a body part, and employers that fail to report injuries can face financial penalties.
“OSHA can barely enforce those penalties,” said Debbie Berkowitz, a fellow at Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor and a former Obama administration senior policy adviser for OSHA.
Others aware of Juan’s fall could have reported the incident to OSHA. But Wisconsin DWD has “no established reporting process” for sharing information about Uninsured Employers Fund payouts with the federal agency, McCoy wrote.
That disconnect goes both ways. “OSHA doesn’t double-check worker’s (compensation) records,” said Eric Frumin, health and safety director for the Strategic Organizing Center, a coalition of national labor unions. The agency’s investigations aren’t primarily driven by workplace injuries, he added, so worker’s compensation data would be “a bit out of their wheelhouse.”
Even in states that enforce workplace safety laws through OSHA-approved programs, including Iowa, Michigan and Minnesota, regulators do not use worker’s compensation records, Frumin said.
But properly reporting injuries to OSHA doesn’t guarantee follow-up investigations, Berkowitz noted. In 2021, for instance, OSHA compliance officers investigated less than 40% of reports of severe workplace injuries.
A long road back
Juan boarded a chartered flight to Managua last fall. The final leg of his return — an eight-hour drive from the capital to his rural hometown — sapped what remained of his energy.
“I arrived home in terrible shape,” he said. “But I made it back.”
He’ll spend the rest of his life in a house he built with the payout from RestoreMasters. “Nothing fancy,” he said — but with a floor plan he can navigate in a wheelchair.
Know your rights
How to research your employer
What is the legal name of the business you work for? Who owns it? Where is it based?
How to check whether your employer has worker’s compensation insurance Wisconsin requires coverage for employers with three or more employees or those that pay $500 or more in wages during a calendar quarter. The same requirements apply to out-of-state employers.
Click here to check whether your employer has a worker’s compensation insurance policy.
What to do if you’re injured at work
Report the injury or suspected work-related illness to your supervisor, human resources department or other designated employer representative.
Get medical treatment as soon as possible. You have the right to choose your own doctor. Get a doctor’s note detailing your work restrictions and give it to your employer.
Click here for more information from the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development about worker’s compensation benefits and filing a claim.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Tuesday that its agents arrested 39 people across Wisconsin over the final weekend in June — among the largest enforcement operations in the state since President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025.
An ICE spokesperson claimed that “many” of those arrested had criminal records, including convictions for sexual abuse, driving under the influence and drug possession; Wisconsin Watch and NNS could not independently verify the agency’s count nor the number of detainees with prior convictions.
“All of the illegal aliens arrested have or will receive full due process. They will remain in ICE custody pending their removal or removal proceedings,” the spokesperson wrote.
The operation sent shock waves through the city’s immigrant neighborhoods as residents shared video and photos of alleged ICE enforcement actions in Milwaukee across social media.
Immigrant rights advocacy group Voces de la Frontera told reporters at a Tuesday morning press conference that its network of volunteers has recorded more than two dozen arrests over the past week, primarily in and around Milwaukee. Executive Director Christine Neumann-Ortiz interrupted her remarks to share reports of an additional three arrests in Fitchburg, a Madison suburb. Neumann-Ortiz said her team is aware of Wisconsin detainees held as far away as Florida, though many remain in detention facilities in Wisconsin and Illinois.
Neumann-Ortiz, flanked by Milwaukee Ald. Marina Dimitrijevic and Milwaukee County supervisor Juan Miguel Martinez, also noted that ICE agents used the Milwaukee Police Department’s (MPD) District 2 station parking lot as a staging area for operations at least once during the weekend’s operation. MPD has since clarified that it did not give ICE officers permission to use the parking lot and, upon learning of the incident, asked the federal agency not to stage in the lot.
The Common Council voted unanimously in March to bar ICE officers from using city property as staging areas during enforcement operations. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson enacted a similar rule via executive order last fall as ICE mounted a much larger enforcement push in Illinois.
While both MPD and the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office do not conduct immigration arrests as a matter of policy, both agencies have raised questions about their roles in enforcing local laws intended to constrain ICE activity. “No one has given us an answer” as to the circumstances in which local law enforcement officers could arrest a federal counterpart, Milwaukee County Sheriff Denita Ball said during a February town hall on Milwaukee’s South Side.
“Given the legal questions that have been presented,” an MPD spokesperson wrote in an email on Tuesday afternoon, “the Department has requested a formal written legal opinion from the City Attorney’s Office regarding the ordinance’s applicability and enforceability.” The Milwaukee City Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Martinez suggested that local governments could sue the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — ICE’s parent agency — for violating city and county rules. “Right now, we’re just gathering as much information as we possibly can,” he said on Tuesday.
ICE’s ongoing operation in Wisconsin seems to mark a departure from the agency’s standard operations in the state over the past year. Agency records indicate most of the at least 1,700 immigration arrests in Wisconsin over the past year took place in prisons, jails, courts and the DHS field office in downtown Milwaukee.
While roughly 80% of those arrested by ICE in Wisconsin between January 2025 and March 2026 had prior criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, most immigrants arrested during check-ins at the DHS office had no prior criminal history.
Daylight arrests in full view of the public have been relatively rare, but relatives of those arrested over the weekend — and some detainees themselves — describe a shift in tactics.
A car sits parked in front of a beauty salon in Milwaukee on June 30, 2026, where a person was arrested by ICE agents the previous day. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
Galo Suárez, a Nicaraguan asylum seeker detained alongside his fiancee and her brother on Sunday, offered a vivid account of his arrest on Milwaukee’s South Side. An unmarked truck pulled in front of his car along S. 13th Street, and four more appeared to box him in. “An agent broke the window with his gun drawn,” he told reporters. “They didn’t ask for our identification, they didn’t ask for our names. They just took us down violently, and when my fiancee tried to ask why, one of them pushed her against the car (and) said she was provoking him.”
He also alleged that an agent called his fiancee a “bitch” during the arrest.
Asylum seekers like Suárez, his fiancee and her brother are eligible for work permits while awaiting rulings on their asylum applications. The agent who found his work permit while searching his wallet insisted it was forged, Suárez said.
Agents released Suárez later that day, but his fiancee, 25-year-old Reyna Elizabeth Garcia, remains in custody in Kenosha County. He doesn’t know the whereabouts of his would-be brother-in-law, 37-year-old Teodoro Rafael Garcia. “They took the cuffs off and told me to not look back,” he said. Shaken by his run-in with immigration authorities, Suárez said he plans to leave Milwaukee for the time being.
Friends and relatives of Estenderly Marte Polanco, an undocumented immigrant from the Dominican Republic, shared photographs of bruises, scrapes and cuts on Marte Polanco’s neck, arms and lip — all allegedly left by immigration officers who pulled her out of her car on Saturday morning during a traffic stop on Milwaukee’s South Side. Marte Polanco’s son watched the arrest from the car’s back seat.
“Our kids are not doing well,” said Frankeli, the father of Marte Polanco’s children. Frankeli, who is undocumented, asked Wisconsin Watch to refer to him by his first name alone while he navigates the aftermath of Marte Polanco’s arrest.
Wisconsin court records show no prior convictions or citations under Marte Polanco’s name, nor any prior convictions or citations tied to Suárez, his fiancee or her brother.
Olivia Villarreal, the wife and business partner of El Rey grocery store chain co-founder Ernesto Villarreal, said a manager of her store on West Burnham Street saw ICE agents follow a vehicle into the parking lot, arrest a man and leave quickly Monday. An onlooker caught the arrest on video.
Villarreal’s message for the wary public: “Don’t be intimidated and try to live your normal life. You have to live and feed your family, attend church and school.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Wisconsin will begin enforcing new federal eligibility restrictions for FoodShare and Medicaid this week, cutting off thousands of refugees, asylees and other legally present immigrants from public benefits they were previously eligible to receive.
The state’s refugee services providers warn that fallback options are already stretched thin.
The Trump administration narrowed eligibility for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which helps low-income households purchase groceries. The Wisconsin program, called FoodShare, is federally funded but administered by states. The new rules — which President Donald Trump last July signed into law as part of his “big beautiful” spending bill — exclude many noncitizens previously eligible for the program, including refugees, asylees and victims of human trafficking.
Wisconsin’s Department of Health Services (DHS) will begin enforcing the FoodShare eligibility rules on July 1, barring immigrants who fall into one of the now-excluded categories from enrolling in the program or renewing their benefits. The state will implement the Medicaid eligibility restrictions beginning Oct. 1, with some exceptions. DHS estimates roughly 7,200 people will lose access to one or both programs, nearly two-thirds of whom live in greater Milwaukee.
Neighboring states have already begun enforcing the new SNAP restrictions. Illinois, for instance, began barring refugees and asylees without green cards from the program in April. DHS spokesperson Elizabeth Goodsitt attributed Wisconsin’s slower rollout to the state’s “complex, combined eligibility system” and effort needed to “design and implement” changes.
Refugee services providers spent months bracing for impact, receiving formal notice of the cutoffs at roughly the same time as affected refugees and asylees. To ensure language barriers didn’t leave families in the dark, Lutheran Social Services of Wisconsin and Upper Michigan refugee program director Omar Mohamed said his team is checking in with affected households individually.
Those with green cards will retain access to the programs, but Mohamed noted that a recent barrage of visa restrictions leaves green cards out of reach for many recent arrivals. Refugees can typically apply for green cards a year after settling in the U.S., but the Trump administration in January froze green card processing for anyone from 39 countries — including Myanmar, the largest source of refugees resettled in Wisconsin in recent years. Of the nearly 170 people Lutheran Social Services resettled in Wisconsin between October 2024 and September 2025, only one has secured a green card, Mohamed said.
Ongoing legal battles over the visa restrictions have yet to clear the path to legal permanent residency.
Without access to legal permanent residency, refugees and asylees face what amounts to an “indefinite ban on the eligibility” for SNAP and Medicaid, said Matthew Soerens, vice president of advocacy and policy for refugee services nonprofit World Relief, which has offices in Appleton, Eau Claire and Oshkosh.
Food pantries may be many refugees’ and asylees’ best backup when they lose access to SNAP, but advocates say donated food cannot directly replace lost benefits. Milwaukee food bank Hunger Task Force has seen pantry traffic increase by 50% in the past two years, said public policy and advocacy director Reno Wright.
The nonprofit is helping other food pantries prepare for the cutoff, but those programs are “meant to provide supplemental assistance and not long-term ongoing assistance,” Wright said.
What families should know
Mixed-status households should still apply for benefits for the members of their families who still qualify, Wright added. U.S. citizen children of refugee parents, for instance, will remain eligible for nutrition assistance — albeit only for their own needs, not their parents’.
Children who lose access to FoodShare can turn to Milwaukee’s summer meal program, organized by Hunger Task Force and a coalition of school districts and community organizations. The program provides free meals to children ages 18 and under at more than 100 locations in greater Milwaukee.
Alternatives to Medicaid benefits are even harder to find. Free clinics often operate at capacity, Soerens said, and while refugees may still qualify for emergency medical coverage through Medicaid Emergency Services, the program sets a high bar for eligibility and does not cover preventative care or ongoing treatment for chronic conditions.
While some Milwaukee-area clinics are mulling subscription-based alternatives to Medicaid, Mohamed said many of the families his organization supports can’t fit a health care subscription into their budgets.
For now, Lutheran Social Services and its counterparts elsewhere in Wisconsin will rely on donors and community partners to shore up the assistance they provide to refugees and asylees. That need has grown since the Trump administration largely suspended refugee admissions last January, cutting off funding tied to new arrivals and forcing agencies to lay off staff.
But refugee arrivals haven’t ceased entirely. At least 218 refugees have resettled in Wisconsin since last January, all from South Africa.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Federal immigration authorities conducted a wave of arrests in greater Milwaukee over the final weekend in June as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) launched what it called a “targeted operation” in and around the city.
The operation — likely the largest in Milwaukee since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025 — sent shock waves through the city’s immigrant neighborhoods as residents shared video and photos of alleged ICE enforcement actions in Milwaukee across social media.
Immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera tallied 18 arrests in the metro area within the last week, though Wisconsin Watch and NNS have not yet independently corroborated that total.
Details remain scarce, but an attorney representing several of the arrestees says none of his clients have prior convictions in Wisconsin or outstanding removal orders.
Milwaukee immigration attorney Marc Christopher cited three examples from the past weekend: a woman from the Dominican Republic arrested in front of her 7-year-old son; twins from Mexico cornered in their driveway on Milwaukee’s South Side; and a Salvadoran man picked up outside the Waukesha County Courthouse after appearing for a traffic ticket.
ICE activity
ICE officers surrounded Estenderly Marte Polanco near South 23rd and Greenfield streets on Milwaukee’s South Side Saturday morning.
“There were four of them,” said Frankeli, the father of Marte Polanco’s children. Both Marte Polanco and Frankeli are undocumented; he asked NNS to refer to him by his first name alone out of fear that authorities could target him next.
The remnants of Estenderly Marte Polanco’s driver-side window remain on the pavement after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested the mother from the Dominican Republic in Milwaukee on June 27, 2026. (Courtesy of the family of Estenderly Marte Polanco)
The pair were running errands with their son when agents stopped their car, shattered a window and handcuffed Marte Polanco, he said. Wisconsin court records show no prior convictions or citations under Marte Polanco’s name. Frankeli said he heard the ICE agents shout that she had an arrest warrant as they took her away.
“They didn’t give us anything (on paper),” he said. Marte Polanco was in custody at the Waukesha County jail as of Monday, according to Christopher — one of six county detention facilities in Wisconsin that hold ICE detainees.
Christopher’s client from El Salvador was awaiting a hearing in his ongoing immigration court case at the time of his arrest in Waukesha on Saturday. “He hadn’t even missed a court date,” Christopher said. Federal immigration courts do not hear criminal cases, but the Trump administration broke with decades of precedent last year by requiring detention for any immigrant facing an active removal case.
Court records confirm the 32-year-old has no prior criminal convictions in Wisconsin. His traffic ticket — a May citation for driving without a license — is a common infraction for undocumented immigrants barred from obtaining driver’s licenses under Wisconsin law. Wisconsin Watch and NNS have not been able to reach the man to ask permission to use his name. An ICE detainee locator listed him in custody in Greene County, Missouri, as of Monday morning.
Federal authorities informed the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) that they planned to conduct “targeted enforcement for criminal activity in the area,” according to an MPD spokesperson. Both the police department and the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office referred questions about the operations to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), ICE’s parent agency.
DHS did not respond to questions about the scope of the operation. Instead, a spokesperson offered details about a June 26 traffic stop in which officers “encountered three illegal aliens including some with criminal histories including misappropriating identification to obtain money.”
The arrests prompted advocacy group Forward Latino to issue a community alert on June 27, and other immigrant rights organizations are still gathering details on the weekend’s events.
Videos like this one, whose details Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service have not verified, are circulating in Milwaukee as Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched what it called a “targeted operation” in and around the city. (Screenshot from Noticias Wisconsin video)
“We know how ICE has arrested people for everything from parking tickets to — whatever — in the past,” said Milwaukee Turners Executive Director Emilio De Torre. “I have no confidence that they’re just seeking people that are under lawful deportation orders.”
Voces de la Frontera, an immigrant rights organization based on Milwaukee’s South Side, issued alerts on Friday and Monday of confirmed ICE sightings in the city and also Waukesha. The group has been canvassing the South Side sharing information with residents on what to do if they encounter ICE agents.
Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera, also issued a video statement, urging residents to stay cautious and know their rights.
“You are not obligated to answer any questions and should demand to speak to a lawyer before you respond or sign anything,” she said.
Immigration enforcement records through March 2026 released by the nonprofit Deportation Data Project suggest ICE officers arrested at least 1,700 people in Wisconsin between January 2025 and March 2026. Roughly 20% of immigrants arrested in Wisconsin during that period had neither prior convictions nor pending criminal charges, including more than 100 people arrested during check-ins at the DHS field office in downtown Milwaukee.
The tactics on display over the weekend — daylight traffic stops and multiple alleged uses of force — have been rare in Wisconsin up to this point.
Devin Blake and Edgar Mendez of Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service contributed reporting.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correctly identify the gender of the child who witnessed Estenderly Marte Polanco’s arrest.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Milwaukee’s Public Transportation, Utilities and Waterways Review Board waded into the statewide fight over utility regulation on Wednesday with a three-hour hearing discussing forming a publicly-owned electric utility.
The proposed starting point: assuming control over We Energies’ infrastructure within city limits.
“Energy networks are best delivered by monopolies,” said JimCarpenter, a board member. “The problem is that We Energies is a profit-driven monopoly, and sometimes profits get in the way of providing the best solution to a problem.”
The board has no power to recommend action by Milwaukee’s Common Council; Wednesday’s meeting was the board’s first since 2023. Instead, Aldermen Alex Brower and Robert Bauman used the hearing to open a discussion about the viability, risks and potential benefits of a possible city-owned electric utility. Backers and critics alike packed the board room, some eager to weigh in on the proposal.
“Everyone deserves to have savings. Everyone deserves to have the option to have control over their power,” said Cleopatra White, a working-class single mother in Milwaukee’s Southgate neighborhood.
She said she wanted to show support for creating a publicly-owned utility because it’s an issue that affects everyone in Milwaukee, regardless of political party.
Ald. Alex Brower speaks during a rally before a meeting of the Public Transportation, Utilities, and Waterways Review Board, June 24, 2026 at Milwaukee’s City Hall. The board discussed the logistics of creating a publicly-owned electric utility. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
What is a public utility?
Wisconsin’s publicly-owned utilities — Manitowoc Public Utilities, for instance — generate roughly 11% of the electricity produced in the state, often with lower electric rates than their investor-owned counterparts.
Wisconsin law allows municipalities to acquire utilities’ property, but that option is largely untested.
Brower pitched the takeover as a means to shield residents from electrical rate increases. We Energies filed its most recent rate case in April, projecting a roughly 9.3% increase in customers’ electricity rates over the next two years.
Attendees packed into a board room at Milwaukee City Hall for a meeting of the Public Transportation, Utilities, and Waterways Review Board on June 24, 2026. Others sat in an overflow room. (Photo by Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
But the plan faces pushback from We Energies and the union representing its workers. They argue that residents benefit from the economies of scale that a large, well-established utility provides.
“Reliability is not created by changing who owns the utility,” said James Meyer, business manager for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 2150. “It comes from trained workers, proven emergency response systems and the ability to move crews, equipment and materials quickly when customers need help. Milwaukee has that today, and this proposal puts it at risk.”
We Energies spokesperson Brendan Conway said his company is responsive to ratepayers’ concerns about costs and service.
“We know many families in Milwaukee are feeling pressure from rising energy costs, and we’re focused on keeping bills low while delivering the reliable energy customers count on every day,” Conway wrote in an email.
How would a municipal utility be created?
State law offers two routes for municipalities to assume control of utility infrastructure within their territory: seizing the facilities through eminent domain or negotiating a purchase agreement.
The eminent domain route would likely require legal action by the city to prove the “necessity of the taking,” attorneys working with the Milwaukee Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) wrote ahead of Wednesday’s hearing.
Brower won his seat representing District 3 in a special election last April with the backing of Milwaukee’s DSA chapter, which helps organize the “Power to the People” campaign drumming up support for a municipal electric utility. Many of its members attended the hearing.
Experts and members of the Public Transportation, Utilities, and Waterways Review Board speak during a meeting at Milwaukee City Hall, June 24, 2026. (Photo by Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
Both options would require a referendum and a hearing before Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission to determine a fair price for We Energies’ property. But Milwaukee’s suburbs rely on much of the same infrastructure as the city, which could block Milwaukee from acquiring shared infrastructure.
Shorewood Village Manager Rebecca Ewald, whose community shares a substation with Milwaukee, told Wisconsin Watch that she hasn’t discussed the idea with its sponsors. Oak Creek City Administrator Andrew Vickers declined to comment on the plan; his city, which borders Milwaukee’s southern edge, hosts several We Energies power plants.
Milwaukee itself has only one We Energies power plant: the Valley Power Plant along the Menomonee River near the city’s central business district. It generates enough electricity to meet roughly 10% of Milwaukee’s annual needs, Conway said.
Brower argues the current lack of generation within city limits wouldn’t hinder his goals. “We have the power to purchase (electricity) on the wholesale markets,” he told Wisconsin Watch.
State law allows municipal utilities to construct generators outside of their boundaries. In Brower’s view, Milwaukee could expand rooftop solar and battery storage to meet some energy needs — possibly sited on the city’s abundant vacant land.
Municipal control of We Energies’ substations and transmission assets could also mean shrinking the pool of customers paying for that infrastructure, including We Energies’ new mixed-use Juneautown substation in the city’s Historic Third Ward.
Act 10, a 2011 state law stripping most public-sector employees of collective bargaining rights, also complicates the picture.
Brower believes a Milwaukee public electrical utility should aim to hire the We Energies workers who currently operate infrastructure within the city, but doing so would make them public-sector employees. “We don’t want that,” he said.
“We are seriously considering a legal option of outsourcing the day-to-day management to a third-party entity once we acquire the utility infrastructure,” he added — a possible workaround to ensure that employees under a municipal utility would retain their current rights.
Rally attendees chant while walking to the meeting of the Public Transportation, Utilities, and Waterways Review Board, June 24, 2026. (Photo by Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
Attendees sit in an overflow room and watch a meeting of the Public Transportation, Utilities, and Waterways Review Board, June 24, 2026 in Milwaukee. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
His pitch has yet to sway the IBEW, which generally supports We Energies in cases before the PSC and Legislature.
“If the workers are forced into uncertainty over pensions, healthcare, seniority, contracts and union protections, many may not move to the city from the utility,” said Sam Rozenberg, an IBEW member and We Energies dispatcher who spoke at the hearing. “They have options. And if they leave, Milwaukee loses more than employees. It loses the people who know this system and know how to restore service safely.”
While there is no guarantee current We Energies workers would join a new municipal electric utility, Ursula Schryver, senior vice president of education, training and events for the American Public Power Association, told the board that Milwaukee could tap into a national network of public utilities to respond to natural disasters.
Other cities explore municipal utilities
Milwaukee isn’t the only city exploring this option.
St. Petersburg, Florida’s city council approved a feasibility study earlier this year. Ann Arbor, Michigan’s city council voted down a proposal to study a municipal takeover of electric infrastructure last spring, though the plan’s backers now plan to take the matter to voters as a ballot petition.
A similar study commissioned by the San Diego, California city council produced an $8 billion cost estimate, prompting some city leaders to balk at the idea. The same study also suggested that San Diego residents could recoup the costs in the long run.
Brower said San Diego’s deliberations offer a chance to pressure an investor-owned utility to make concessions. Even if the possibility of a municipal takeover in Milwaukee acts as a bargaining chip during an upcoming rate case, he said, “there’s power in winning concessions. But we are fighting for the entire thing.”
Samuel Mendoza, who recently moved with his wife to Milwaukee near the Harambee neighborhood, discussed his experience working in public works for the City of Los Angeles. While he didn’t work under the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, he said the municipal utility paid its nearly 12,000 workers well.
“I’m surprised coming here that there wasn’t already something municipal,” Mendoza said. “Especially things that are really specific to the city, you’d want to have a utility company that could handle those issues instead of just being so widespread.”
What happens next?
We Energies was absent from the hearing. Brower invited the company to join a meeting with the board or the city’s representatives to make its case.
As for next steps, Bauman suggested exploring the public utility concept through a task force made up of members of the Common Council, mayoral administration and Department of Public Works and then requesting that the council fund a feasibility study.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Tech firm Oracle is suing Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission (PSC) in Ozaukee County Circuit Court, opening a new front in a fight over financial protections for Wisconsin ratepayers.
The June 19 lawsuit comes as Oracle and We Energies — the utility set to power the company’s planned data center in Port Washington — are asking the PSC to reconsider credit rating requirements for data center developers that could cost the company millions of dollars a year.
Oracle’s lawsuit seeks to accomplish the same ends through the courts.
The PSC approved We Energies’ “very large customer” rate structure in April, requiring the utility to exclusively bill data center customers for new energy generation infrastructure needed to serve them, among other protections for existing ratepayers. The agreement also requires data center developers with credit ratings below A- to post financial guarantees to reduce the risk of shifting costs to other customers if a developer runs into financial trouble.
Oracle currently holds a BBB credit rating — a tier below the PSC standard, but still considered investment-grade by ratings agencies — largely because of aggressive borrowing to finance new artificial intelligence infrastructure. Under the current rate structure, the Oracle subsidiary involved in the Port Washington project would need to provide cash deposits or letters of credit exceeding $100 million per year to receive service from We Energies.
“If the Commission does not reopen its decision on this issue, the implications for Wisconsin would be significant and limit the ability of numerous investment-grade companies to invest in Wisconsin,” the utility’s attorneys wrote in a June 10 request to reopen the case.
We Energies also contended that Oracle runs little risk of defaulting on its obligations.
“Tens of billions of dollars in Oracle’s value would need to be destroyed before creditors and counterparties, such as Wisconsin Electric and its other customers, could experience losses,” the utility’s attorneys wrote. Even in a bankruptcy, they added, generators built to serve data centers “will still have value and will be able to provide electricity to other customers.”
We Energies and Oracle asked the PSC to consider a stepped approach to security requirements that eases the burden on companies with “investment-grade” credit ratings, including BBB ratings, and to waive the Oracle subsidiary’s financial backing obligations.
In its lawsuit, Oracle asked the court to “set aside, reverse and remand” the credit rating limits in the PSC-approved agreement, arguing that the commission acted outside of its authority and without sufficient evidence to justify the rule. The company maintains that the A- bar isn’t “needed to prevent harm” to We Energies’ other customers or shareholders, and that the commission “failed to consider the significant, adverse impacts” of the requirement on Oracle.
Ratepayer advocates and clean energy groups support the PSC credit rating requirements, and some of the same groups are pushing back against Oracle’s efforts to reopen the issue.
“We believe that PSC did its job,” Clean Wisconsin spokesperson Amy Barrilleaux said. “It cannot leave all these other thousands of customers vulnerable.”
The company hired attorneys from the Madison office of law firm Husch Blackwell. One of those attorneys, David Zoppo, has previously represented investor-owned utilities before the PSC. Oracle’s attorneys did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The credit rating dispute could shape future electrical service contracts between data center developers and utilities.
Northern States Power Company, a subsidiary of utility giant Xcel Energy that provides electrical service to parts of northwestern Wisconsin, asked the PSC on Monday for its own “very large” customer rate structure.
That proposal would set the credit rating bar at BBB-, the lowest investment-grade category. Potential data center customers below that threshold would need to provide additional financial guarantees.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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