A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers is pushing a fix to a 2022 Wisconsin Supreme Court decision that hampered the public’s ability to obtain attorney fees in certain public records lawsuits against public officials — but the top Assembly Republican remains noncommittal about the bill.
The case, Friends of Frame Park v. City of Waukesha, involved a public records dispute between the city and a citizen group. Waukesha was working to bring a semi-professional baseball team to town. A group of concerned residents, Friends of Frame Park, submitted a public records request to the city seeking copies of any agreements the city had reached with the team’s owners or the semi-professional league.
The city partially denied the request and refused to produce a copy of a draft contract. Friends of Frame Park hired an attorney and sued. A day after the lawsuit was filed, and before the local circuit court took action, the city produced a copy of the draft contract.
The case eventually worked its way to the state Supreme Court, which determined that Friends of Frame Park was not entitled to attorney fees because it technically had not prevailed in court — the group received the record without action from the circuit court.
The ruling “actually incentivizes public officials to illegally withhold records because it forces requestors to incur legal costs that may never be recovered,” said Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, during a public hearing about the bill.
Max Lenz, an attorney representing the Wisconsin Newspaper Association, said the state Supreme Court ruling incentivizes public officials to “effectively dare the public to sue.”
“The Supreme Court’s ruling in Friends of Frame Park flipped the public records law presumption of openness on its head,” he said.
The legislation, spearheaded by state Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, would supersede the high court’s ruling and allow a requestor to obtain attorney fees if a judge determines that the filing of a lawsuit “was a substantial factor contributing to that voluntary or unilateral release” of records, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau.
The bill has garnered support from an unusual coalition of organizations. Seven groups, some of which frequently lobby, have registered in support of the bill, including the liberal ACLU of Wisconsin and the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty.
A similar version of the bill was approved by the state Senate last session but did not receive a vote in the Assembly. The legislation was approved by the state Senate last week.
The legislation’s path forward remains unclear. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, told reporters recently that “our caucus has never talked about it.”
“It’s certainly something we could discuss, but we don’t have a position on it at this time,” Vos added.
Are you interested in learning more about public records? Here’s a primer on what types of records should be accessible to you — and how to request them.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Wisconsin has just one nuclear power plant. Republican legislation, along with an initiative from Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, could move the state toward more nuclear power.
The GOP-led Senate Bill 125, introduced in March, would require the state Public Service Commission, which regulates electric and gas utilities in Wisconsin, to conduct a nuclear power siting study.
The study would identify nuclear power generation opportunities on existing power generation sites, as well as on sites not now used for power generation.
It would help Wisconsin “catch up with other states that have already made important strides in exploring new nuclear energy,” said Paul Wilson, chair of the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
State Sen. Julian Bradley, R-New Berlin, who introduced the bill, did not respond to requests for comment.
Groups registered in favor of the legislation include the Wisconsin Utilities Association and several employee unions. The PSC also supports the bill, noting that an amendment to the bill keeps the current timeline for the commission to review applications for such electricity generation.
Opponents include Sierra Club Wisconsin, which says nuclear power “poses significant risks due to its high costs, long construction timelines, unresolved radioactive waste issues and the potential for catastrophic accidents.”
The environmental group Clean Wisconsin says the nuclear industry, not taxpayers, should fund siting studies.
The effort to explore more nuclear energy is bipartisan in that, separately, Evers proposed in his 2025-27 state budget spending $1 million to do a nuclear power plant feasibility study.
Evers, calling nuclear energy clean, said in a statement to Wisconsin Watch that “with new advanced nuclear technology and the increasing need for energy across Wisconsin, it is long past time that we invest in new, innovative industries and technologies.”
Wisconsin’s only operating nuclear power plant, Point Beach, is near the Manitowoc County community of Two Rivers.
A Democratic bill seeks to bring down house prices in Wisconsin by blocking hedge funds from buying single-family homes in the state.
“We know that there’s an access and affordability crisis in housing right now,” lead bill sponsor Sen. Sarah Keyeski, D-Lodi, told Wisconsin Watch in an interview, calling it a nationwide problem. “And as a state legislator, I want to see if I can do something about that crisis locally.”
Hedge funds pool money, generally from wealthy investors, and invest it in a range of markets seeking to make a profit, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. That sizable pool of cash “really gives them almost unlimited power to buy what they would like at prices that are often out of reach for a typical purchaser,” Keyeski said.
Hedge funds’ ability to outbid other prospective home buyers, especially individuals, increases housing costs and prices out middle class families, Keyeski argued.
While the Democratic lawmaker acknowledged the practice of investor-backed groups gobbling up houses isn’t widespread in Wisconsin, she noted that groups with deep pockets bought more than a thousand houses in the Milwaukee area beginning around 2018.
Three companies, VineBrook Homes, SFR3 and Highgrove Holdings, owned about 1,500 homes as of the end of 2022, according to a 2023 analysis from John Johnson, a research fellow at Marquette University’s Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education.
VineBrook and SFR3 together owned almost 1,200 homes, deploying a “buy-to-rent” business model, Johnson said. However, in some instances, they were willing to flip their recently purchased homes. SFR3 paid about $2 million for 23 properties, Johnson found, later selling them for a total of $4.2 million.
Vinebrook now owns 703 properties, and SFR3 is down to 188, Johnson told Wisconsin Watch in an email.
There was an increase in investor-backed groups buying single-family homes in 2024, though still at a lower rate than before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to data from RedFin, a real estate brokerage and mortgage company. In the fourth quarter of 2024, for example, investor-backed groups bought 17% of the American homes sold in those three months.
The share of homes owned by large investment groups in the Milwaukee area was 14.9% in the last three months of last year, RedFin found, lower than the national average.
The increase in investor purchases was focused on single-family homes, RedFin found, as interest from deep-pocketed groups waned for townhouses, condos and multifamily properties.
Keyeski sees her bill as “a preemptive move” to protect other Wisconsin communities, she said.
The legislation also fits into a larger package of bills from Democratic lawmakers seeking to bring down costs for Wisconsin residents, Keyeski said.
The bill currently has 42 cosponsors — 41 Democrats and one Republican. But she said she has heard a positive response from both Democratic and Republican voters about the bill and is hopeful the legislation could get a hearing this session.
Legislative Republicans have so far not introduced any bills seeking to curb housing costs, according to a Wisconsin Watch review of legislative proposals. Sen. Romaine Quinn, R-Birchwood, who chairs the Senate Committee on Insurance, Housing, Rural Issues and Forestry, did not respond to questions about whether Keyeski’s legislation would get a hearing this session.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Democratic legislators on April 10 introduced Assembly Bill 227, which would expand Wisconsin’s existing election bribery laws to also prohibit people from making payments to voters in exchange for signing petitions during an election period.
The bill was introduced just nine days after the April 1 election, before which Elon Musk offered the public $100 to sign a petition opposing “activist judges.” At an event just two days before the election, Musk gave two Wisconsin voters $1 million checks.
Here’s what you need to know:
Context
Wisconsin law already prohibits election bribery and makes it illegal to offer “anything of value,” including money, to bribe an elector to go to or refrain from going to the polls, vote or refrain from voting, or vote or refrain from voting for or against a particular person.
In a deleted X post from March 27, Musk said $1 million checks would be awarded “in appreciation for you taking the time to vote” in the April 1 election between liberal Judge Susan Crawford and conservative Judge Brad Schimel. Musk followed this up with another X post a day later on March 28 to say the checks would be awarded to two individuals to be “spokesmen for the petition.”
On March 29, Democratic Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul filed a lawsuit against Musk and the Musk-affiliated America PAC. In the complaint, Kaul requested the court grant a temporary restraining order to stop Musk from promoting the $1 million gifts, calling the giveaway “a blatant attempt to violate Wis. Stat. § 12.11.”
But judges in Columbia County Circuit Court, the Court of Appeals and the Wisconsin Supreme Court refused to hear Kaul’s petition. Columbia County Circuit Court Judge W. Andrew Voight filed a dismissal order April 1, saying Kaul’s complaint lacked two of the four required elements for a temporary restraining order — no alleged irreparable harm and no explanation of why the temporary restraining order was the only possible solution.
Voight noted at the end of his dismissal that the court did not come to a conclusion as to whether Musk and America PAC’s actions were illegal.
Musk gave out the $1 million checks to two Wisconsin voters who signed his America PAC petition during a Green Bay rally on March 30.
The actions on behalf of Musk and America PAC consequently sparked debates regarding the legality and ethics of the petition.
The bill
In an effort led by Rep. Lee Snodgrass, D-Appleton, the “Petition Payment Prohibition Act” would expand existing election bribery laws to prohibit bribing voters to sign or refrain from signing election nomination papers, recall petitions and other petitions, including in support or opposition of candidates.
“To be clear, election bribery is already illegal in Wisconsin,” the co-authors wrote in a memo to their legislative colleagues. “However, Musk has attempted to circumvent this law by paying people to sign a petition instead — something not explicitly banned by current law.”
If passed, the bill would prohibit anyone from offering anything of value — exceeding $5 — to influence whether or not someone signs a petition relating to elections. These petitions include those opposing and supporting candidates or referendums, political or social issues, state law, and proposed or potential legislation, according to the bill.
The prohibition would only be enforced when it relates directly to an election or referendum or if it is circulated during an election period, which the bill defines as the period between Dec. 1 and the spring election or April 15 and the general election.
Under the bill, it would be illegal to pay someone $100 to sign a petition within an election period that is in support of a state referendum or a candidate.
Election bribery is currently a Class I felony, meaning if the bill passes, violators could face up to three-and-a-half years in prison, a fine as high as $10,000 or both.
So, what’s next?
So far 34 Democratic lawmakers support the “Petition Payment Prohibition Act,” in addition to Snodgrass. No Republicans have signed on.
The bill has been referred to the Committee on Campaigns and Elections where the Republican who heads the committee could schedule a public hearing and vote. Republicans who control the Legislature could then schedule it for a vote in the full Assembly. An identical version must also pass the Senate.
If this bill passes, it would be sent to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who can either sign or veto it.
Democratic sponsors said the bill should be bipartisan.
“Candidates and issue groups should use the strength of their message to attract voters to their cause, not cash bribes or promises of financial reward,” the sponsors said in a memo to colleagues. “It is a gross perversion of our democracy and must not be allowed to continue in future elections. Failing to act is a tacit acceptance that our votes are for sale. Rejecting this premise is something members of both parties should be able to agree on.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
When Larry Jones arrived at the Wisconsin State Capitol on March 12, he didn’t know what he was getting into — let alone that he would be a viral internet sensation the next day.
The 85-year-old self-described conservative had been invited by his grandson to a public hearing on a Republican-authored bill that would ban gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth in the state. He decided to make the short drive from his home in Milwaukee.
“I thought, ‘OK, I’ll go up there and listen to a couple people moaning about some kind of problems and be there for a couple hours and be long gone,’” Jones told Wisconsin Watch. “I got into something that I really didn’t know a heck of a lot about.”
The hearing was packed with speakers there to testify either for or against the bill. Most people were limited to two minutes, but the hearing lasted more than eight hours. Jones was there in support of the bill, but wasn’t intending to get up and speak. But after listening to nearly seven hours of testimony, he put his name down.
“I have very little knowledge of gay people and things like that there, so when I came here, my eyes were opened,” he told the state Assembly’s Health, Aging and Long-Term Care Committee just after 9 p.m. “I was one of the critics that sat on the side and made the decision there was only two genders, so I got an education that was unbelievable. And I don’t know just exactly how to say this, but my perspective for people has changed. … I’d like to apologize for being here, and I learned a very lot about this group of people.”
After he spoke, several attendees applauded.
Shortly after, his grandkids told him about a video of his testimony going viral online — as of Sunday the video had nearly 1 million views on YouTube. They called him a hero.
“Thank you for the compliment, but what the heck are you talking about?” he recalled responding.
Jones told Wisconsin Watch he doesn’t think he did anything out of the ordinary and spoke because he felt like he owed it to the people there protesting the bill. He never thought a few sentences would garner such attention.
“After a day or two, my 15 minutes of fame were long gone, and I went back to who I am, just plain old Larry,” Jones told Wisconsin Watch.
Others saw an act of courage.
“Listening to his testimony was incredible,” one user commented under the viral video of Jones on Instagram. “It is powerful and brave to admit that you were wrong and have learned. I wish many of our legislators had that same strength.”
The bill
Republican politicians in recent years have frequently targeted transgender rights. One of President Donald Trump’s first executive orders the day he took office disregarded biological nuance in declaring there are only two sexes, male and female, which can’t be changed, and that gender identity “does not provide a meaningful basis for identification and cannot be recognized as a replacement for sex.” A later order declared the country wouldn’t fund transition of youth from one sex to another or medical institutions that provide such health care.
Wisconsin Assembly Bill 104 would ban gender-affirming health care, including puberty-blocking drugs, hormone replacement therapy or surgery, for those under the age of 18. Under the bill, medical providers found to be providing this care could have their licenses revoked. The legislation faces a certain veto by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who has vetoed a similar bill before.
The authors of the bill — Sen. Cory Tomczyk, R-Mosinee, and Rep. Scott Allen, R-Waukesha — say it would “protect minors from making life-altering, irreversible decisions that cause mental and bodily harm.”
“They’re not voting on this bill as a person, they’re voting Republican party lines,” Jones told Wisconsin Watch. “That shouldn’t be that way. … Party line is a bunch of garbage.”
It was just one of four bills raised in the Legislature in recent weeks targeting transgender youth in Wisconsin. Twoothers are aimed at banning transgender girls and women from participating in high school and collegiate women’s sports. Another would prohibit school employees from using a student’s preferred name and pronouns without parental consent.
For hours, Jones listened to the stories of kids who wanted to transition and said it seemed like “their brain was tearing them apart.” He now believes the decision to receive gender-affirming care should involve a child, a qualified doctor and a parent — not lawmakers. He likened the issue to lawmakers banning doctors from providing abortions.
Just the introduction of such bills can have negative effects on LGBTQ+ kids, research shows. The Trevor Project, a nonprofit that works to end LGBTQ+ youth suicide, found in a 2024 national survey that 90% of LGBTQ+ young people said their well-being was negatively impacted due to recent politics. Research also shows that transgender youth who are called by their preferred names and pronouns are happier and healthier.
Larry Jones, shown in his Milwaukee home on March 21, says testimony from a transgender teen helped change his perspective about a proposed ban on gender-affirming care for minors in Wisconsin. “All of these kids, they deserve a chance to see where they belong,” he says. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Jones said a 14-year-old transgender teen — one of the youngest speakers who advocated for their right to go on hormones — helped to change his perspective at the hearing. In their testimony, they shared that they had recently contemplated suicide.
“I started to listen to this kid, and it wasn’t some kind of whim or something like that. This kid was actually suffering,” Jones said. “And I thought to myself, nobody has to do that. You’re only a kid.”
The GOP-controlled committee voted to advance the bill. Republican lawmakers in the Assembly passed it last week.
“Children are not allowed to get tattoos, sign contracts, get married, or smoke — so why would we allow them to physically change their gender?” Rep. Tyler August, R-Walworth, said in a statement.
Jones had a different take.
“All of these kids, they deserve a chance to see where they belong,” he said.
Who is Larry?
Jones grew up in a small, rural unincorporated town in northern Michigan before moving to Milwaukee when he was 19 years old.
“When I moved to the city, it was like I was a kid in a candy store. I discovered books, and once I discovered books, I discovered the world,” he said.
For most of his life, he worked in the maintenance department at the Milwaukee County Community Reintegration Center — a prison formerly known as the House of Corrections. There, he encountered gay men and women, but said he had never met someone who was transgender.
“If there’s something you don’t understand or don’t know anything about, it kind of frightens you a little bit,” Jones said.
When he was younger, he said LGBTQ+ people were “hidden.”
“In the area where I grew up … men were men,” Jones said. “I was taught by men who had their own visions of what gay people were like. They were called ‘queers’ and ‘fairies’ and off-the-wall, ungodly names back in the day. As I grew older … the whole world changed.”
A note given to Larry Jones by a young woman lies on a table in his Milwaukee home on March 21, 2025. As Jones was leaving a Wisconsin Assembly hearing on a bill that would ban gender-affirming care for minors, a woman in her early 20s tapped him on the shoulder and handed him this note that reads, “Thank you for being open to hearing all this and being open to changing your mind. That’s brave.” (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Jones calls himself conservative, but said he’s willing to look at both sides of an issue. He mostly tunes into Fox News and local TV stations. He said he still has a lot to learn about the transgender community, and he’s made that his mission for the next six months or so.
Prior to the hearing, he said he believed that someone who was transgender was “play acting” and simply changed their name and clothes along with a few other cosmetic things.
“It’s through no fault of their own. I don’t think there’s a medical problem. I think these kids were born this way,” Jones said. “I looked at it through a different perspective, from a different set of eyes, and I promised myself that I would look into this with a clearer sense of understanding.”
After his testimony, a young woman handed him a note that read, “Thank you for being open to hearing all this and being open to changing your mind. That’s brave.” Jones kept it.
His advice to others? “Don’t wear a pair of blinders and walk down the road. Keep an open mind.”
Wisconsin Watch reporter Jack Kelly contributed to this report.
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Dueling proposals would protect certain “innocent landowners” — those who didn’t knowingly cause PFAS pollution on their land — from financial liability to clean it up under the state’s spills law.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ narrower proposal would exempt only residential and agricultural properties polluted with PFAS-contaminated sludge.
Republican draft bills would prevent the Department of Natural Resources from enforcing the spills law on a broader swath of “innocent landowners,” leaving the DNR to clean up property at its own expense.
Both proposals would create grant programs for municipalities and owners of PFAS-contaminated properties, but only Evers’ proposal would release an additional $125 million in aid to PFAS-affected communities that has sat in a trust fund for 18 months.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Republican lawmakers continue to dig in their heels during a yearslong tug-of-war over how regulators should hold property owners liable for contamination caused by “forever chemicals” known as PFAS.
They are pushing competing proposals to protect so-called innocent landowners — those who didn’t knowingly cause their PFAS pollution — from liability under Wisconsin’s decades-old environmental cleanup law.
Evers’ two-year budget proposal, introduced last week, exempts some owners of residential and agricultural land. The proposal would also fund testing and cleanups of affected properties.
During the previous legislative session, Sen. Eric Wimberger of Oconto co-authored an innocent landowner bill that lawmakers passed along party lines before an Evers veto.
The governor accused Republicans of using farmers as “scapegoats” to constrain state authority. His staff warned that if Republicans present the same proposal this session, Evers might veto it again.
Gov. Tony Evers delivers his 2025 state budget address Feb. 18, 2025, at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis. His budget proposal exempts some owners of residential and agricultural land from liability for cleaning up PFAS pollution they didn’t knowingly cause. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Sen. Eric Wimberger, R-Oconto, co-authored a vetoed bill last session to protect “innocent landowners” from PFAS pollution they didn’t knowingly cause. He’s now circulating draft bills that contain provisions virtually identical to the vetoed legislation. He is shown during a Senate session on June 28, 2023, in the Wisconsin State Capitol building in Madison, Wis. (Drake White-Bergey / Wisconsin Watch)
Wimberger says Evers’ staff has failed to respond to his requests for an outline of innocent landowner exemptions Evers would support. Wimberger is now circulating two draft bills co-authored with state Rep. Jeff Mursau, R-Crivitz, that contain provisions virtually identical to the vetoed legislation. Those include grants for municipalities and owners of PFAS-contaminated properties.
The proposals also would limit the Department of Natural Resources’ power to require property owners to pay for cleanups and extend liability exemptions to certain businesses and municipalities.
“The governor needlessly vetoed the plan over protections for innocent landowners,” Wimberger said in a statement. “Now, after delaying this relief for a year, he says he wants to protect innocent landowners. While it’s encouraging to see him change his mind, he is no champion for pollution victims.”
How does the state handle PFAS-contaminated farmland?
Wisconsin’s spills law requires reporting and cleanup by parties that pollute air, soil or water or if they discover contamination from a past owner. That is because, in part, allowing pollution to remain on the landscape could be more dangerous to human health than the initial spill.
The DNR has held parties liable for PFAS contamination they didn’t cause but also has exercised discretion by seeking remediation from past spillers instead of current property owners.
A reverse osmosis filtration system is seen under the kitchen sink of town of Campbell, Wis., supervisor Lee Donahue on July 20, 2022. The household was among more than 1,350 on French Island that had received free bottled water from the city of La Crosse and the state. (Coburn Dukehart / Wisconsin Watch)
PFAS, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a family of more than 12,000 compounds commonly found in consumer products like food wrappers, nonstick pans and raincoats along with firefighting foam used to smother hot blazes. Some are toxic.
The chemicals pass through the waste stream and into sewage treatment plants, which commonly contract with farmers to accept processed sludge as fertilizer.
Testing is now unearthing PFAS on cropland from Maine to Texas. Several hot spots are located in Wisconsin too, among the more than 100 PFAS-contaminated case files the DNR currently monitors.
The agency maintains it has never, and has no plans to, enforce the spills law against a property owner who unknowingly received PFAS-contaminated fertilizer. But Republican lawmakers don’t trust those promises.
How do the budget and draft bill proposals compare?
Evers’ bill would exempt only residential and agricultural properties polluted with PFAS-contaminated sludge. Affected landowners would have to provide the DNR access to their property for cleanup and not worsen the contamination.
Evers’ innocent landowner exemption would sunset by 2036.
Meanwhile, the Republican draft bills would prevent the DNR from enforcing the spills law when the responsible party qualifies as an innocent landowner and allow the department to clean up its property at its own expense.
The first bill focuses on innocent landowner provisions, while the second, larger proposal adds grant programs without specifying appropriations. Wimberger explained introducing two bills would “ensure the victims of PFAS pollution get the debate they deserve” and prevent Democrats from “playing politics” with PFAS funding and policy.
The Legislature allocated the funds in the previous two-year budget, but its GOP-controlled finance committee hasn’t transferred the cash to the DNR.
Lawmakers in both parties have bristled over the languishing money, with Democrats contending the committee could transfer it without passing a new law. The nonpartisan Wisconsin Legislative Council says lawmakers would be on “relatively firm legal footing” if they did so.
Republicans, meanwhile, say transferring the dollars without limiting DNR enforcement powers would not effectively help impacted landowners. They say the DNR could treat a landowner’s request for state assistance as an invitation for punishment.
The previous, vetoed bill garnered support from all three Wisconsin local government associations, but environmental groups, the DNR and Evers said it shifted PFAS cleanup costs to taxpayers.
Environmental groups also feared Republicans on the finance committee would continue withholding the $125 million even if the legislation had advanced — protracting the stalemate while weakening the DNR.
Nor would risking “unintended consequences” of weakening the spills law be worth $125 million, which would scratch the surface of remediation costs, environmental critics said.
The Milwaukee Business Journal reported the company upped its reserves by $255 million to finance the cleanup. With the increase, the company has recorded charges of about $400 million since 2019.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
A bill that would empower Wisconsin municipalities to block the construction of solar and wind farms in their backyards has been introduced a second time.
Currently, local governments possess limited authority to regulate the siting and operations of solar and wind farms, but as the number and size of projects grow — solar panel fields spanning thousands of acres and wind turbines as tall as the Statue of Liberty — some residents from the Driftless Area and central Wisconsin say the state’s system for approving energy projects unfairly stacks the scales of power against communities that live alongside the facilities.
Meanwhile, a clean energy advocacy group and former Wisconsin utility regulator said the bill would enable a discontented minority to dictate energy policy for the entire state, effectively kill renewable energy development and generate uncertainty for businesses.
The Republican-backed proposal comes amid a wave of construction after federal lawmakers invested billions of dollars during the Biden administration to slow the pace of climate change. The ensuing backlash and enactment of local restrictions are playing out across the country.
Here’s what you need to know:
Some context: Investment in renewable energy has been a state priority for decades and a requirement for Wisconsin’s utilities. It also is central to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ ambitious climate goals. Wisconsin seeks to operate a carbon-free electric grid by 2050.
In 2023, 9% of net electricity generated within the state came from renewable sources, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The governor’s Task Force on Climate Change expects most future emissions reductions to come from large-scale utility projects, especially the replacement of aging coal plants with solar farms.
In 2016, the state generated just 3,000 megawatt-hours of electricity from utility-scale solar facilities. Seven years later, it increased to 1.2 million. Nearly two dozen more solar farms are in the pipeline.
Wisconsin’s utility regulator, the Public Service Commission, oversees the approval of large projects, but opponents say gaps in state oversight make Wisconsin attractive to private developers, who aren’t mandated to share project expenses or evaluate ratepayer impacts.
They don’t have to demonstrate the energy created by the new installation is even needed at all — requirements if a public utility were to construct the facility. (The commission considers costs when utilities want to purchase power or an energy facility.) But developers can sell solar and wind farms to Wisconsin utilities. Ratepayers shoulder the infrastructure costs and pay state-authorized rates of return.
The commission reports that, compared to the Midwest and national averages, Wisconsin residents pay higher rates but less on their monthly bills because they consume less energy.
Opponents of large-scale projects also criticize the state’s disclosure requirements, which enable developers to acquire land rental agreements, often confidential, before communities are officially notified.
Residents often accuse industry of minimizing their concerns over impacts to wildlife, roads, aesthetics, property values, utility bills, health, topsoil and water quality.
Yet climate change jeopardizes those same things, and land rental and municipal payments can be a lifeline. The construction of solar and wind farms can divide towns and neighbors. Public hearings quickly get messy.
Organizers have mounted challenges, playing out in boardrooms, courthouses and the Legislature. Several towns enacted restrictions on renewable energy projects, a push supported by Farmland First, a central Wisconsin advocacy and fundraising group. Last year, a developer sued two Marathon County towns over their wind farm rules.
President Donald Trump is the latest to seed doubt over the merits of large-scale renewable projects after issuing a Jan. 20 executive order that suspends federal permitting for any wind farm while agency officials review government leasing and permitting practices.
The bill: The proposal requires solar and wind developers to obtain approval from every city, village and town in which a facility would be located before the Public Service Commission could greenlight the project.
Senate Bill 3’s authors, Rep. Travis Tranel, R-Cuba City, and Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, said the measure responds to constituents who feel their concerns over continued development in the Driftless Area continue to fall on deaf ears.
“We are hoping to kick-start a conversation because the way I view it now, renewable energy projects are essentially the wild wild West,” Tranel said. “People have figured out that they can profit exorbitant amounts of money off these projects, and they are just popping them up left and right, and our current attitude is long-term ramifications be damned, and I don’t think that that makes any sense.”
Currently, the commission reviews proposals for energy facilities with a capacity of at least 100 megawatts. For scale, an average wind turbine in 2023 had a capacity of 3 ½ megawatts. A megawatt of solar generation might cover 7 ½ acres.
Local governments review projects less than 100 megawatts in capacity, but municipalities can impose restrictions on solar and wind farms only in limited instances, such as demonstrating they will protect public health or safety — a tall order. Additionally, municipalities that enact siting restrictions on wind farms cannot impose criteria more stringent than commission rules.
The bill would apply to any solar or wind farm with a 15-megawatt capacity or more. If a municipality fails to take action within an allotted period, the proposed facility would be approved automatically.
An identical proposal introduced during the previous legislative session, exclusively backed by GOP lawmakers, failed to receive a committee hearing.
Yea: Some of the bill’s backers view the influx of large energy projects as the harbinger of “utility districts” across Wisconsin’s rural spaces, primarily for the benefit of urbanites.
It’s not that proponents of local control snub clean energy, said Chris Klopp, a Cross Plains organizer who has joined challenges to transmission and solar projects. Rather, regulators could respond to climate change more equitably.
“This idea that you can just decide you’re going to sacrifice certain people, well, I think there’s a problem with that,” she said. “Who decides, and who gets sacrificed? None of that is a good conversation. It should be something that works for everyone.”
Nay: Representatives from EDP Renewables, NextEra Energy, Pattern Energy and Invenergy — developers with a Wisconsin presence — didn’t respond to requests for comment.
But former Public Service Commission Chair Phil Montgomery said local governments lack the agency’s battery of professionals it takes to evaluate whether an energy project would meet the state’s energy needs.
Empowering Wisconsin’s 1,245 towns, 190 cities and 415 villages to weigh the facts against their own standards would spell disaster for ratepayers, he said.
Michael Vickerman, former executive director of RENEW Wisconsin, a renewable energy advocacy nonprofit, said the bill unfairly targets wind and solar.
“You’re deciding that this industry will no longer be welcome in this state,” he said. “It becomes such an arbitrary and mysterious, unstable, unpredictable process that the developer says, ‘Screw it. I’ll just go to Minnesota. I’ll go to Illinois.’”
What’s next? More than 20 co-sponsors, all Republicans, signed on to the bill, and it has been referred to a Senate committee. Klopp hopes to rally more lawmakers to obtain a two-thirds, veto-proof majority.
Montgomery said even if it leads nowhere, the bill certainly sends a message to investors.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify information provided by former Public Service Commission Chair Phil Montgomery.
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