Supervisors Protest Transmission Project Over Utility Rate Hikes

We Energies Oak Creek Power Plant. Photo taken Aug. 30, 2025 by Graham Kilmer.

Milwaukee County Supervisors wanted to use an electric transmission project to send a message to We Energies about proposed utility rate increases.

American Transmission Company (ATC), a subsidiary of WEC Energy Group, is building a $400 million transmission line project from Menomonee Falls to Wauwatosa and needs to run a short section of transmission cables through the Menomonee River Parkway to do it.

The Parkway is owned by Milwaukee County Parks. The county regularly grants easements to utility companies in exchange for payment for infrastructure running through parkland. However, the ATC power line project comes at a politically sensitive time for We Energies, with growing public backlash to artificial intelligence and the energy-sucking data centers that power it.

The county board’s Committee on Parks and Culture reviewed the easement Tuesday and initially deadlocked over whether to approve it, with Supervisors Anne O’Connor, Juan Miguel Martinez and Priscilla E. Coggs-Jones voting against the proposal. Supervisors Steve Taylor, Sheldon Wasserman and Jack Eckblad voted to approve the easement.

Not wanting to send the item to the full Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors without a recommendation from the committee, Wasserman sought to reopen conversation on the item with advice from one of the county’s attorneys.

As far as state law is concerned, the vote is largely perfunctory. The easement request comes to the county board with a certificate of public necessity from the Public Service Commission (PSC), which means if the county denies the easement a court will grant it instead. Then the county and ATC will enter arbitration to determine its value, Assistant Corporation Counsel James Davies told supervisors on the committee.

Sup. O’Connor said she was opposed to the easement because of an abiding concern about We Energies’ proposed 14% rate increase and the general powerlessness of the public to stop it.

“I feel like we’re really at the whim of We Energies, the Public Service Commission,” O’Connor said. “Our understanding is that a lot of the expansions are being justified because of the influx of data centers and other large end users, and again, it is not clear how consumers are being protected and not footing the bill for some of these large corporate users.”

After the committee deadlocked on the easement, Davies told supervisors it was unlikely the county would secure more money through arbitration and even suggested it could lose money through arbitration costs.

Eckblad said he shared his colleagues’ frustrations, but worried supervisors were “shooting ourselves in the foot for the sake of making a point.”

There are other ways for the board to work on the issue, Eckblad said. “It just seems really unfortunate to create a cost to the taxpayer directly for the sake of having zero impact on the actual source of our frustration.”

Others on the committee lamented the powerlessness of the county relative to We Energies on the easement but voted to approve it out of financial prudence. The committee approved the easement 4-1, with only O’Connor voting against it.

Taylor said he agreed with everything his colleagues said but added he thought it would be “foolish” not to accept the easement given the circumstances.

“I mean this is a joke, right?” Taylor said. “The fact that this before us, even though the decision’s been made.”