(The Center Square) – An environmental group has filed a lawsuit against Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission asking for the electrical load projections for a $1 billion artificial intelligence data center in Beaver Dam.
The PSC released electrical load information for a planned 1,300 megawatt data center in Port Washington but denied releasing the data for the Beaver Dam facility after it was requested by the Midwest Environmental Advocates.
“It appears the PSC is unlawfully withholding this information because either Meta or a public utility is claiming the electricity demand for the data center is a trade secret,” MEA Legal Fellow Michael Greif said in a statement. “We call on Alliant Energy, American Transmission Company and Meta to be forthright with the public about their plans. These companies are asking a lot of the public and the public deserves, at least the very least, basic information about the data center’s massive energy needs.”
The Beaver Dam project is planned to require just 100 operational employees once it goes online in 2027 and will receive the benefit of a set of tax breaks from the state including a tax increment district that collects property taxes and gives it back to the company and a sales tax exemption on construction materials, electricity and equipment within the data center, a state exemption that has already far exceeded fiscal expectations by costing the state $70 million in sales tax in the first two years since implementation.
The energy companies have said that data centers will pay for the infrastructure of energy needs but questions remain about whether consumers will see increased costs if energy needs exceed the available energy in the state.
Data centers are expected to lead to the average American’s energy bill increasing from 25% to 70% in the next 10 years without intervention from policymakers, according to Washington, D.C.-based think tank the Jack Kemp Foundation.
Data centers in Port Washington and Mount Pleasant alone will use more energy than the rest of the consumers in the state.
“This lawsuit is about making sure Wisconsin residents have access to the critical information they need to understand and evaluate the impacts of the fast-growing data center industry,” Greif said. “Keeping the public in the dark about data centers and the amount of water and energy they will use deprives Wisconsinites of the transparency they deserve.”

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin saw its unemployment rate remain at 3.1% in September, according to data released Wednesday afternoon that was delayed due to the shutdown of the federal government.
Wisconsin’s Department of Workforce Development said it intends to release November numbers on Jan. 7 but there won’t be a release of October unemployment numbers because it was not collected during the shutdown.
“We are sort of trying to piece together the puzzle of what’s happening and about to happen,” DWD Section Chief of the Office of Economic Advisors Scott Hodek said.
The September numbers showed that, overall, Wisconsin’s labor force had 11,400 less workers than in August and 51,500 less than a year before.
Hodek said that the trend is expected with Wisconsin’s aging labor force and the numbers released in January would provide more context.

(The Center Square) – A report looking at potential developments on the property adjacent to the Milwaukee Brewers’ American Family Field highlights three potential location options estimated to cost between $700 to $800 million for developing a combination of multi-family residences, hotels, office space and stores near the stadium.
But the premise that developing those offerings near a sports stadium would help the businesses or community and is worth public funding or incentives is something that economists who have studied similar projects across the country have repeatedly shown does not work.
“It’s just your standard, for-hire, contracted report,” economist J.C. Bradbury of Georgia’s Kennesaw State University to TCS. “… Clearly it gives the impression that this is a worthwhile project that’s going to create something useful and I just don’t see anything useful in here that is convincing.”
Bradbury said that, in general, stadiums are not good development anchors and “I don’t see anything in here that would change my mind.”
The report was required to be completed by last week under the terms of the financial agreement with Wisconsin leaders that included $366 million from state taxpayers and $135 million from taxpayers in Milwaukee and Milwaukee County for American Family Field over the 27 years as the Brewers agreed to stay in the state until 2050.
The funding includes $67.5 million from both Milwaukee County and the city of Milwaukee.
Brewers president of business operations Rick Schlesinger told media in a statement that “There’s no doubt American Family Field is a strong economic engine for the region” but that is not backed up by numbers anywhere in the country.
Bradbury has extensively studied the Atlanta Braves’ Truist Park and the neighboring Battery development and has shown that the development costs Cobb County taxpayers about $15 million a year while a recent study from Bradbury and Berry College’s E. Frank Stevenson showed that the Braves’ stadium and development did not have a meaningful impact on hotel night stays in the county or in close proximity to the stadium.
Those findings are consistent with findings related to sports stadiums and events across the country.
The Brewers’ development report from consultants Brailsford & Dunlavey was recently presented to the Wisconsin Professional Baseball Park District before the deadline but the district made it clear it was not an endorsement of development, which the team, park district and Milwaukee entities would need to approve.
“While the District is not the entity to initiate or perform any redevelopment activity, this report and the information provided may be used to guide potential redevelopment planning and identifies opportunities as well as the challenges that will need to be addressed to make redevelopment of the site possible,” district facility manager Brian Dworak said in a statement.
The report recommended that, since the property is currently not subject to property taxes, any development should be subject to a Payment In Lieu of Property taxes agreement called a PILOT that could pay for new infrastructure needed at the site and provide an equal playing field with nearby businesses that are subject to property taxes.

(The Center Square) – Vehicle owners in Wisconsin now have two new options for a license plate after the state unveiled both a new blackout plate and an updated version of the butter-yellow retro plates.
Both will soon be available for order. The DMV said they should be on sale next month.
The blackout plate has a solid black background with shock-white letters and numbers. The butter-yellow plate is just that, a butter-yellow background with black letters. It’s an updated version of Wisconsin’s license plates from the 1970s.
“These new specialty plates are a win-win for Wisconsin. They not only meet long-standing demand for new plate designs Wisconsinites can choose from, but will also provide new, ongoing resources so we can continue working to fix the darn roads across our state,” Gov. Tony Evers said in a statement.
Evers is expecting a lot of money from the new plates. The governor says the total from Wisconsin’s specialty license plates could be as much as $25
million per year.
All license plates in Wisconsin cost at least $85 per year. The new plates will cost an extra $15 at first. Drivers will then have to pay an extra $25 renewal fee each year after that. It will cost more to personalize those plates as well.
Personalizing the plate’s numbers and letters costs an added $15 per year.
“Bringing back the butter yellow retro plate offers folks a sense of nostalgia while celebrating Wisconsin’s heritage as America’s Dairyland, and the new Blackout plate provides a contemporary look that folks have been asking for. Both plates embody a special sense of Wisconsin style, and I look forward to seeing them out on our roads,” Evers added.
Wisconsin now offers nearly 60 specialty license plates, including plates for the Brewers and Packers, and for causes like cancer, spaying and neutering pets, and the Sandhill crane.

(The Center Square) – Compliance and preparation for federal government audits of commercial driving license training providers is a business with a number of avenues to help across America.
The U.S. Department of Transportation recently shared a database of 3,015 training providers for commercial driver’s licenses removed from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Training Provider Registry. Another 4,554 were put on notice for potential noncompliance.
For the latter, the Transportation Department on Dec. 1 said providers receiving a notice of proposed removal have 30 days to respond and provide evidence in order to avoid removal.
Administrator Derek Barrs of the motor carrier safety administration and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy say those removed are cited for “falsifying or manipulating training data; neglecting to meet required curriculum standards, facility conditions or instructor qualifications; and failing to maintain accurate, complete documentation or refusing to provide records during federal audits or investigations.”
In Neenah, Wis., J.J. Keller & Associates says it is one of the firms able to help the providers through a free Entry-Level Driver Training Audit Checklist and its Safe & Smart ELDT Trainer Certification Program. The firm on Wednesday made it available free; the company has additional services for which it can be hired.
“The checklist covers everything from documentation to training materials, instructor qualifications, student and vehicle records, training assessments and record retention,” said Dustin Kufahl, vice president of consulting and training services.
The company bills itself as supplying “expert insights to help create safe work environments and simplify complex government regulations.” It serves the transportation industry in multiple ways, including risk management and regulatory compliance.
Trucksafe Consulting, Compliance Navigation Specialists, Transportation Compliance Services USA, DOT Compliance Group and National Transportation Consultants are others known for audit preparation and consulting. The software and tech providers include Foley, Samsara, Verizon Connect, CDL Suite, SafetyCulture and DISA Global Solutions.
The auditing process has been ongoing throughout the second term of Republican President Donald Trump. Increased scrutiny of CDL licensure programs happened after triple-fatal crashes 66 days apart involving 18-wheelers in Florida and California.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin remains one of just six states without a state law matching the federal age to purchase tobacco products at 21.
That creates an issue for local law enforcement, who cannot enforce the age 21 restriction when state law says you have to be 18 to purchase tobacco.
A group of Wisconsin lawmakers is working to change that with Assembly Bill 524, which will be in front of the Assembly Committee on State Affairs for a vote on Wednesday.
“Wisconsin’s failure to update its own law creates confusion for retailers and law enforcement who face conflicting regulations,” Rep. Jeffrey Mursau, R-Crivitz, said in a public hearing on the bill.
He said that Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota and Iowa have all passed laws moving the age to purchase tobacco to 21.
The Wisconsin Department of Public Health Services said that there was a decline in tobacco sales to underage consumers from 13.6% in 2023 to 11.8% in 2024.
In 2019, when the federal law changed late in the year, the underage sale rate was 5.5% before it reached its highest point in 2021 when the rate was 14.1%.
“We are glad to see a decline in overall sales of tobacco and vape products to underage kids, yet the rate remains too high,” State Health Officer Paula Tran said in a statement earlier this year. “We know that more than 80% of adult smokers started before the age of 18, and about 95% of them before turning 21. This is why it is so important to continue the work to prevent young people from starting to use commercial tobacco and nicotine products to protect their health today and long into the future.”
Several lawmakers and groups showed support for the bill and the Wisconsin Department of Revenue recommended a technical change to the bill’s language because it could make asthma inhalers illegal for sale in the state.
“I have heard from both law enforcement and public health officials in my district with concerns about their inability to enforce the tobacco 21 law and the need to update the state law to align with the federal law,” said Rep. Karen Hurd, R-Withee.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin schools spent 41% of the $1.49 billion in pandemic recovery federal funding on permanent salaries rather than temporary learning recovery solutions while spending the funding slowly and without transparency, according to a new report.
The funding came as the state’s public schools added 2,141 staff while losing 47,092 students from 2019-2020 to 2024-2025, according to the in-depth spending analysis from the Institute for Reforming Government.
“It was a lack of guidance issue,” IRG Senior Research Director Quinton Klabon told TCS. “… It was a free-for-all, you could do mostly what you wanted to do and, as a result, districts backfilled expenses they wanted to have that they couldn’t afford with all the students leaving and that’s how we ended up with this situation.”
The result is that Wisconsin public schools had the most employees in state history in 2024-2025 while educating the fewest students it had since 1991-1992.
The IRG report analyzed 17,830 school district allocations from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund to evaluate the areas the additional pandemic funding was spent because the state and the Department of Public Instruction did not provide that information in a dashboard like many other states did, instead updating the spending in a long series of PDFs that were not meaningfully categorized, the analysis showed.
“Some states had very transparent live dashboards where every month they update the numbers and here’s a pie chart showing what we did on our website,” Klabon said. “DPI did not do that. They created just a webpage with 450 PDFs. They didn’t say which one was updated, so you wouldn’t know if it was updated if you didn’t know what to look for. There were over 18,000 line items of allocations that district had.”
The IRG numbers are available in a searchable district-based report.
The state’s schools had two years to allocate the funding, with districts accepting an extra $1,745.98 per public-school student over two years. Districts had allocated just 34% of the funding in the first six months of the program and 79% through the first 17 months in a program intended to combat pandemic learning loss.
A Harvard study showed Wisconsin schools ranked 30th in reading recovery and 16th in math.
Specific spending examples included Milwaukee spending $193 million on construction projects, including athletics facilities and renovations at schools likely to close.
IRG said that the funding should have been used for one-time needs such as curriculum purchases, technology upgrades, deferred renovations and short-burst tutoring rather than spending it on permanent staffing increases.
“I think, when you add an employee or two every year and it adds up to 10 or 20 over the decade or, when you lose students and you don’t realize you have more adults per student than you’ve ever had in Wisconsin history, by a long shot, I just don’t think they think of that historical understanding,” Klabon said. “So they look at their budgets and they’re running out of money … A lot more districts need to understand that this is the result of choices that have added up over the years.”

(The Center Square) – It is now illegal in Wisconsin to blackmail someone over sexually-related pictures or videos after Gov. Tony Evers signed Bradyn’s Law.
The new law specifically outlaws sextortion, which is when someone blackmails another person by threatening to release sexual pictures or videos. It is named after Bradyn Bohn, a 15-year-old student from the Wausau Area who took his own life earlier this year after he was sextorted.
“We wouldn’t be here today without Bradyn’s family and their relentless advocacy to keep kids safe online and hold predators accountable,” Evers said. “We will be able to protect more of Wisconsin’s kids because of Bradyn’s family’s efforts to fight back, and I’m honored to be able to be here with them today.”
Extortion has long been illegal in Wisconsin, but the new law specifically outlaws the new crimes of using sexually explicit pictures and videos. And the new law also carries enhancers if a sextortion victim takes their life or attempts to take the life.
The law:
● Creates a new crime of sexual extortion;
● Includes graduated penalties on offenses depending on the actor, the act, the victim’s actions, or the victim’s age; and
● Modifies and expands the crime victim compensation program, including by adding a victim’s suicide or attempted suicide to the list of acts that may be compensated by Department of Justice.
“Bradyn’s Law ensures harsh penalties for those who exploit Wisconsin children online,” Bradyn’s parents, Brittney and Luke Bird, said in a statement. “Our mission continues: to educate families and protect children from online predators.”
The Evers Administration said the FBI reported that between October 2021 to March 2023, there were more than 13,000 reports of online financial sextortion of minors. That includes at least 12,600 victims – primarily boys – and led to at least 20 suicides.

(The Center Square) – WisconsinEye has raised $30,000 through small online donations over the past two weeks and is hoping to schedule meetings soon with Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu and Gov. Tony Evens soon.
Its deadline to stop programming and take its archives offline on Dec. 15 is a week away.
WisEye President and CEO Jon Henkes told TCS on Monday afternoon that, had he known what changes would occur in the philanthropic environment since Wisconsin lawmakers approved $10 million in matching donation funds to go toward the company’s endowment, he would have requested less stipulations on the matching language for the funds.
Instead, the company is working to raise the $300,000 to fund it through the first quarter of 2026 along with receiving firm commitments for the $887,000 it says it will cost to carry on operations for all of 2026.
“We understand that this is going to be a process that is going to take some time,” Henkes told TCS. “… We’ve been out there very public with what the need is and what our timeline is. We’re grateful that there is money in this account with WisconsinEye’s name on it with the match requirement.”
Henkes knows the funds were put into the Wisconsin budget to secure the long-term financial health of WisconsinEye but said that the donation environment has changed so much in the meantime that the company has not been able to separately raise the funds for the 2026 budget.
He said that taking the more than 30,000 hours of archives offline is to show donors the value of WisconsinEye’s work and the fiscal situation for the company. Henkes hopes to make that strong case to state leaders soon and close on a few larger scale donations to “get us over the hump.”
“We’re optimistic of a positive outcome, it’s just a really difficult season for us,” Henkes said.
Henkes said that support for the company and its mission of providing nonpartisan live video and archives of news conferences, government conferences and state government meetings in the state remains strong, including in meetings with vendors such as the company’s internet provider, which is currently owed money.
“I can’t give you the name of one person or group that says ‘We don’t want you to succeed,’ “ Henkes said. “It takes work and it takes some time.”
Henkes said that expenses relate more to staffing concerns of producing live coverage than the archived video but that the archives are also a valuable resource for everyone in the state.
“If we’re going to make a strong statement on the need for support, then we have to do what’s in our best interest and that is to apply the right kind of pressure that we are a cause worth of support and I would say that that is aimed more at the philanthropic community who give all kinds of money to campaigns, candidates and causes,” Henkes said.

(The Center Square) – The average price of a gallon of unleaded gas is down to $2.56 Monday in Wisconsin and the national average is $2.90, according to GasBuddy.
Gas prices across the country are expected to remain low heading into the new year barring any “major disruptions,” according to Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at the Dallas-headquartered technology company known for crowd-sourcing in the convenience retailer industry.
“Gas prices continued to decline in most states last week, while some price-cycling states saw temporary spikes to restore margins,” De Haan wrote Monday. “With the national average falling further, we’re now at multi-year lows heading into Christmas. Diesel prices are also easing, and in the cheapest cities, averages have dipped into the low-$2 range, with a few stations still offering gas under $2 per gallon.”
Wisconsin’s average is down from the $2.73 average heading into Thanksgiving.
The state average was $2.70 a year ago.
Wisconsin’s lowest reported gas prices are $2.33 at Costco in New Berlin and $2.34 at a Citgo and Exxon in Kenosha. Several stations offer $2.35 across Wauwatosa, Pewaukee, West Allis and South Milwaukee.
De Haan wrote that the country’s most common gas price and the median price are $2.74 with five states averaging below $2.50, 22 below $2.75 and 37 below $3 per gallon.
Wisconsin’s 32.9-cent gas tax ranks 20th in the country.
The average price in neighboring Illinois is $2.90 per gallon while Michigan is $2.79 and Minnesota $2.82. Michigan’s average price has dropped 13 cents over the past week.
California has the highest average at $4.41 and Oklahoma has the lowest at $2.30.

(The Center Square) – Mandela Barnes during the weekend said he is looking to take on Tom Tiffany next November for governor of Wisconsin.
“We’re making sure that we have everything, every resource ready to take on Tom Tiffany because he is the likely nominee,” Barnes said.
Barnes is the former lieutenant governor from 2019-23. Tiffany is the 7th Congressional District representative to the U.S. House of Representatives and a former state senator.
Barnes became the seventh Democrat in a crowded primary field last week. He said he’s not disrespecting anyone while making clear that he is focusing on November’s general election.
“It’s not about confidence,” Barnes said. “I’m going to tell you right now, I’m going to work harder than anybody. I have a lot of respect. I take every challenger, I take it completely seriously. I have respect for, I am friends with the people who are running, but my focus is on Tom Tiffany.”
Some Democrats, however, did not want Barnes to run. An op-ed in a Milwaukee paper said Barnes blew his shot to win the U.S. Senate race in 2022.
“Some people have favorites, and that’s fine,” Barnes said. “This is a primary election. I think that people should have options. I think that is the beauty of democracy. I truly think these kind of primaries are healthy because we get to express ideas, and most importantly, express a vision.”
Barnes’ position on police and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is mixed. For example, in a 2022 advertisement of 30 seconds, he said critics’ saying he wants to “defund the police and abolish ICE” are a lie. CNN reported at the time Barnes’ 2018 social media activity indicated he was in favor of both.
“I’ve made it very clear, I don’t support defunding the police,” he said during the weekend. “I want to make sure that our communities and our law enforcement officers have the resources they need to keep our communities safe.”
Tiffany, who has been a frequent critic of Barnes, also has a primary opponent in Republican Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann.