Wisconsin Archives - Checks and Balances Project

Wisconsin Public Service Commission’s Visitors Log Tells Tales

2016-04-26

Nine Times More Meetings with Utility Lobbyists Than Clean Energy Reps On the third floor of the Public Service Commission (PSC) headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin, directly across from the elevator, is the guard’s desk. There you’ll find the visitors sign-in log. Our analysis of a 17-month period documents the Commission’s greater than 9-to-1 preference… Read more »

Wisconsin Public Service Commission: Slow-Walking Accountability?

2016-02-18

Part Three in a Series The Wisconsin Public Service Commission (PSCW) has agreed to fulfill our request for the release of records surrounding a powerful former staff member’s communications with the clients and lobbyists from the lobbying firm he joined right after he left the Commission. It took the PSCW three and a half months… Read more »

Wisconsin Public Service Commission Ex Parte Rules Gutted

2016-01-13

Part Two of a Series There are rules and then there are no rules. If you live in Wisconsin and want to talk to Public Service Commission of Wisconsin Chairperson Ellen Nowak or another commissioner about a utility’s proposal to, say, double the monthly fee for residential rooftop solar – essentially making it unaffordable –… Read more »

Wisconsin’s Strange Case of the Missing Job Description

2016-01-4

First in a series on Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission We recently received an intriguing tip that the most powerful person at the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin (PSC) isn’t Chairperson Ellen Nowak, or Commissioner (and former Chair) Phil Montgomery, or even the newest Commissioner, Mike Huebsch, whose previous job was managing Governor Scott Walker’s… Read more »

Checks and Balances Project Launches Captured Regulators Initiative

2015-02-25

Influence peddling in America is a $9 billion a year industry. It’s as big as Major League Baseball or NASA’s Mars spacecraft program, changing from direct meetings with lawmakers to a vertically integrated set of businesses that work every stage of government decision making – including the shaping of public opinion. Many have charted the… Read more »