Who Approves Your Rate Increase

When your utility asks to raise your electric rates, three people decide whether the increase is justified. They're the Public Service Commission — appointed by the governor, not elected. Same with the department that sets drinking water standards, the one that administers Medicaid, and the one that maintains your roads. A Wisconsin governor can't write a law. What a governor can do is veto, and appoint. For the last eight years, that's mostly meant blocking. Republicans have held the Legislature since 2011; a Democrat has held the governor's office since 2019. New maps made both chambers competitive again — so this November, one party could hold all of it for the first time since 2018. Campaign ads are about taxes and crime. They're rarely about who'll sit on the commission that approves your next rate increase. Learn More The Public Service Commission. Three commissioners regulate Wisconsin's investor-owned electric, natural gas, and water utilities. When a utility requests a rate increase, the PSC reviews the filing — the company's costs, its requested return, its capital plans — and decides what portion is justified. The commissioners are supported by a full-time staff of auditors, accountants, engineers, rate analysts, attorneys, economists, and consumer specialists. Most activities of Wisconsin's 28 electric cooperatives fall outside PSC jurisdiction. Tom Content, executive director of the Citizens Utility Board of Wisconsin, on the commissioners: "These are the three most important people in state government that nobody has ever heard of." That is the script's thesis, from a named source. The agency typically operates with little public attention, though a wave of proposed energy-intensive data centers has recently drawn wider scrutiny to its decisions. (Wisconsin Watch; PSC of Wisconsin) How the appointments actually work — an important qualifier. Under Wis. Stat. § 15.06(1)(a), commission members are nominated by the governor and appointed "with the advice and consent of the senate" to staggered six-year terms. The governor designates one commissioner as chair for a two-year term. Cabinet secretaries, including the DNR secretary, are likewise nominated by the governor with Senate consent under § 15.05, and serve at the governor's pleasure. So "appointed by the governor, not elected" is accurate but incomplete: the Senate confirms, and it has used that power. Since Evers took office in 2019, the Senate has rejected 21 of his appointees — including eight fired in a single fall session and a Public Service Commission nominee in January 2024. Republican lawmakers note they have approved the large majority: the Legislative Reference Bureau counted 579 confirmations as of October 2024, with 175 appointees then awaiting action. The DNR secretary position sat vacant for more than a year in part because of the confirmation fight; Evers told WPR the firings made hiring a replacement more difficult. This complication is omitted from the script for length, and because the core claim survives it: all three sitting PSC commissioners are Evers appointees. But it belongs here, and it reinforces rather than undercuts the script's divided-government point. (Wis. Stat. § 15.06; Ballotpedia; WPR) The current commissioners. Chair Summer Strand, appointed March 2023 and designated chair in January 2024; Kristy Nieto, appointed February 2024; Marcus Hawkins, appointed April 2024. All three were named by Gov. Evers. Nieto and Hawkins previously served on PSC staff. Wisconsin Watch notes that former commissioners occasionally take positions with the utilities they once regulated. What else the governor appoints. Beyond the PSC: the secretaries of Natural Resources (drinking water standards, PFAS, environmental enforcement), Health Services (Medicaid administration), and Transportation (road construction and maintenance), along with most other cabinet agencies. The governor also appoints 16 of the 18 University of Wisconsin Regents to seven-year terms. Not appointed: the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, who is elected statewide — which is why education is absent from the script's list. Party control of Wisconsin state government. 2009-2010: Democratic unified control — Gov. Jim Doyle with Democratic majorities in both chambers. 2011-2018: Republican unified control — Gov. Scott Walker with Republican majorities. 2019-present: Divided — Gov. Tony Evers with a Republican Legislature. The last Democratic trifecta ended in January 2011, sixteen years ago. The script states this as "one party has held everything for eight of the last sixteen years" rather than framing it as one party being owed a turn, which would be a values claim rather than a description. Verify before airing: the claim that new maps have made both chambers genuinely competitive. This has been treated as established but was not independently sourced during this drafting session. The 2024 maps did substantially change the partisan landscape; confirm the current competitive assessment before the script airs. What divided government has meant in practice. Two illustrations, both bipartisan in their resolution: PFAS. The 2023-25 budget created a $125 million trust fund for PFAS remediation. The Joint Finance Committee declined to release it to the DNR; Evers vetoed a Republican bill in April 2024 that would have released the money while limiting DNR enforcement authority against polluters. The fund grew to $133 million on accumulated interest while unspent. The stalemate ended in 2026: the Assembly passed a package in February, the Senate on March 17, and Evers signed a $133 million bipartisan compromise in April, ending what WisBusiness called "a yearslong standoff." In August 2026, the finance committee approved spending $10 million from a Tyco settlement on well testing and replacement in the Marinette and Peshtigo areas. Knowles-Nelson. In July 2025 the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled 6-1 that statutes allowing the Joint Finance Committee to block spending the full Legislature had already authorized were unconstitutional, in a case arising from the committee's move to kill $4 million for the Pelican River Forest. (PBS Wisconsin; WisBusiness; Wisconsin Examiner; WPR) The partial veto. Not covered in this script, but the other half of what a Wisconsin governor can do. Wisconsin's is the broadest in the country: in appropriation bills the governor may strike individual words and digits, and what remains becomes law. Tommy Thompson converted a property tax credit into a school tax credit in 1987; Tony Evers struck four digits in 2023 to extend a school funding increase to the year 2425. Voters have narrowed the power twice by constitutional amendment, in 1990 and 2008, and Republican legislators have proposed a third amendment. See CM-1 (The Partial Veto). Related Civic Minute segments: The Partial Veto (CM-1), the Education series on school funding, the Energy series on utility regulation, and the Michigan utility campaign finance script — which covers the same conflict from the donation side. Together they form a pair: Michigan asks whether a regulated utility should fund the officials who oversee it; this script asks who those officials actually are.