By Doug Singsen
For Milwaukeeans feeling the pinch of higher utility bills, enough is enough.
In a pair of public hearings held last week, community advocates repeatedly told the Wisconsin Public Service Commission (PSC) – whose three members were nowhere to be seen – that something had to be done.
The context for the hearings was the PSC’s endorsement in December of We Energies plan to increase consumer rates by nearly 11%, which has faced a massive outpouring of opposition from customers and their advocates. At the same time, the PSC also threw consumers the slenderest of possible lifelines in the form of a proposal to investigate the creation of a program that would put a limit on how much income consumers could be charged for electricity.
During the hearings, community advocates, including neighborhood nonprofit Walnut Way, urged the PSC to implement a Percentage of Income Payment Plan (PIPP) that would cap consumers’ annual energy payments at 6% of their total annual income.
Montré J. Moore, chair of Walnut Way’s Environmental Justice and Infrastructure Initiative, began his testimony at the first hearing by proclaiming that “The bill is too damn high,” echoing the famous words of New York City independent mayoral candidate Jimmy McMillan. Moore continued his testimony by saying that “Climate change isn’t coming, it’s here, and we have to talk about what that means for people at the bottom of the economic ladder.”
Pastor Theresa Thomas Boyd provided a personal story of a member of her congregation, stating that “I have one older member who’s single and lives alone. She’s on a fixed income and has some mental and emotional challenges and is having trouble paying her bills. I’m going to go back today and tell her that there’s hope.”
North Side Rising’s Keviea Guiden explained her reasons for testifying at the hearing by saying that “We’re here today to make sure we get an implementation of the PIPP program, which is geared to giving income assistance to all of Wisconsin,” adding that this program would not only help keep families safe from freezing temperatures in winter and potential heat exhaustion in summer but would also give them essential access to information and communication. She argued that “You have to understand that if you’re paying anywhere from 6% to 20%, that can be a huge burden if your income is low. And we have to remember that the minimum wage in Wisconsin is still just $7.25.” She continued that “We have to understand that this is due to racism and segregation and redlining. We’re living in homes that are over one hundred years old and are energy inefficient.” She also pointed out that We Energies is still using coal and gas that’s killing the environment, a point that was echoed in the testimony of Moore and the Sierra Club’s Cassie Steiner.
Versions of PIPP programs exist in over a dozen other states, including Illinois, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, where it has succeeded in maintaining low-income consumers’ access to electricity. The proposal being considered in Wisconsin would have a major impact on the lives of low-income Wisconsinites at only a modest cost. Antonio Butts, the Executive Director of Walnut Way, pointed out that We Energies has 2.5 million customers in the Milwaukee area, and only 60,000 of them would qualify for the PIPP program, making them around 2.4% of We Energies’ customer base.
We Energies exercises a monopoly on energy distribution in Milwaukee, in return for which it is theoretically supposed to keep costs down. However, it has no real incentive to do so, and in fact it benefits from a guaranteed profit rate by the PSC, which periodically makes adjustments to this amount. We Energies currently enjoys a guaranteed annual profit rate of 9.8% of their total capital investments, down slightly from 10.1% last year, when they made a total of $1.3 billion in profits. As if this weren’t enough, We Energies has requested that the PSC increase its rates by another 3% next year.
Despite these massive profits, Steiner pointed out that although We Energies knows which of its customers can’t afford their energy bills, they only offer customers economic assistance from programs they are eligible for if the customers specifically ask for the programs by name. We Energies thus withholds assistance from customers that it knows need it and are entitled to it. She further added that while a cap on energy bills at 6% of annual income was a good start, even more was needed.
The PSC is made up of three Commissioners, Cameron Valcq, Tyler Huebner, and Summer Strand, who are appointed by the governor to six-year terms. None of them attended either of the hearings, which were led by a PSC staff member named Stacy Schumacher. Schumacher repeatedly refused to respond to questions or criticisms of the PSC, saying that they were there to listen to community voices, not to answer questions or discuss policy. At one point, she said that it wasn’t the commission’s responsibility to do outreach to communities, which provoked pushback from audience members.
Many of those who testified at the hearings were skeptical that the PSC would act in consumers’ interests given the commission’s approval last year of a double-digit rate hike despite intense public opposition. In the words of Walnut Way’s Bryan Rogers, “The scales of the status quo are never in our favor. Achieving equity will require a transformation in the process.” One audience member agreed, stating that “The utility commission is not going to go to bat for us. They never have.”
Given the PSC’s history of ignoring public sentiment, Steven M Cook !E MonstA, a member of the Milwaukee chapter of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), argued that it was necessary to take more drastic steps to force We Energies to act in the public interest. According to him, the only real solution is “public ownership.” That way, “We don’t have to negotiate with private companies… We can own the power lines.” He was referring to DSA’s Power to the People campaign, which proposes that the city of Milwaukee use Chapter 197 of the Wisconsin State Statutes to replace We Energies with a publicly owned utility. According to DSA, this would reduce utility rates, speed up the transition to renewable energy sources, and ensure democratic control over the energy supply.
According to Corey Singletary of the Citizens Utility Board (CUB), an independent advocate for utility consumers and small businesses, the PSC is severely understaffed. Although it has somewhere around 120 employees, it is responsible for regulating around 400 utilities, far more than utility commissions in most other states are expected to handle.
Singletary said that a decision on PIPP is expected by the end of the summer. It will also be weighing in on We Energies’ request for an additional rate hike. Their decisions in these matters will provide yet another glimpse into whose interests the PSC really serves.
