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 Jim Carpenter, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
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