We Energies wants to raise your rates. Residential customers would see electric bills go up $5 to $6 per month to cover what We Energies calls the largest clean-energy transition in its history, according to our partners at the Milwaukee Business Journal.

The proposed electric rate increases would be 5% to 6%, the company said.

The investment includes $175 million for a solar farm in southwest Wisconsin. It creates nearly as much power as the biggest coal burning unit at the Oak Creek power plant with zero emissions.

It also includes $660 million for two large solar and battery projects in southeast Wisconsin. The company said it also plans to spend $700 million over the next decade to bury power lines and strengthen its delivery against severe weather, the Milwaukee Business Journal reports.

The typical customer’s rate increase will amount to $4 to $8 per month for natural gas. However, the majority of a customer’s gas bill results from therms used rather than the base rate.

A final decision on the rate change is expected later this year.

Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced across the economy, shrank by 1.4% on an annualized basis in the three-month period from January through March, the Commerce Department said in its first reading of the data on Thursday.

The substantial downturn stems from a widening trade deficit, with the U.S. importing far more than it exported: In the three-month period from January to March, imports surged by nearly 20% as businesses and consumers bought more goods from abroad. But exports fell about 6% – an imbalance that widened the trade deficit.

The U.S. also saw a slower pace of inventory investment by businesses in the first quarter, following a surge in inventors at the end of 2021 as companies restocked in anticipation of the holiday-shopping season.

But key pillars of the economy – consumer spending and business investment – remained solid last quarter: Businesses and consumers boosted their spending by 3.6% at the start of the year, compared with 6.1% last year. Another bright spot in the economy is the jobs market. Unemployment fell to 3.6% last month, the lowest level since the pandemic began in February 2020, and jobless claims have continued to fall amid an exceptionally tight labor market.

The Legislature’s budget committee has approved the bulk of a plan by the state Department of Transportation to spend more than $280 million in extra federal highway aid.

The funding is roughly 35 percent higher than Wisconsin expected to receive from the federal government when the Legislature passed the current state budget last year.

Part of the funding came from the bipartisan federal infrastructure bill signed by President Joe Biden in November while the rest came from a federal funding bill passed in March.

The Wisconsin DOT’s plan for the money would spend about $124 million on state highway rehabilitation, $83 million on local transportation facilities and $61 million on local bridge improvements. The DOT’s plan also calls for spending about $10 million on a program that funds the construction and planning of on-road and off-road bicycle, pedestrian and other non-motorized vehicle facilities, as well as viewing areas like overlooks and turnouts.

The only point of conflict on the funding was over the DOT’s plan to spend $4 million on a “Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program,” which funds projects like improvements to traffic signal timing to improve traffic flow or the construction of bicycle facilities for commuters. Under a modification authored by Republicans, that funding could only be used on projects that reduce congestion or improve traffic flow within a highway right-of-way, meaning they could not be used for bicycle facilities.

GOP lawmakers, including state Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, the co-chair of the Legislature’s budget committee, all voted in favor of the modified plan. “I think that overall the plan is — since the money’s here — is a good investment in our infrastructure,” Born said.

Home prices showed no sign of a letup in February, rising 19.8%, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index released on Tuesday.

The reading follows a 19.1% increase in January and continues a red-hot pace for housing that has been a hallmark of the past two years, a combination of low inventory of available properties for sale and strong demand exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. Buyers continue to outnumber sellers.

“Today’s S&P Case Shiller Index highlights a housing market experiencing a renewed sense of urgency in February, as buyers worked through a small number of homes for sale in an effort to get ahead of surging mortgage rates,” George Ratiu, manager of economic research at Realtor.com, said. “The imbalance between strong demand and insufficient supply pushed prices higher.”

On May 1, 2022, the United States Postal Service (USPS) will implement new service standards for First-Class Package Service (FCPS) and update Priority Mail service standards.

FCPS applies to the domestic shipment of packages that weigh less than one pound and have a maximum combined length and girth of 108 inches. Items can be sent in an envelope, poly mailer, or plain or branded box.

By way of background, postal service delivery standards are “the stated delivery performance goal[s] for a mail class or product. A service standard reflects the number of days after acceptance of mail by which the sender and recipient can expect it to be delivered.

According to the USPS Fact Sheet on the new service standards, the majority of FCPS volume will not be impacted – 64% will still be subject to a standard of 2-3 days. Some FCPS (4% of volume) will upgrade from a 3-day to a 2-day service standard. Meanwhile, 17% of 3-day FCPS volume will shift to a 4-day service standard, and 15% will shift to a 5-day service standard. Packages traveling the longest distances (e.g., New York to California) will be most affected.

Postal customers may still opt to use Priority Mail Express and Priority Mail services to ship packages within the contiguous United States with a 1-to-3-day service standard. The Postal Service is removing an extra day for Priority Mail transported via ground. The extra day was temporarily put in place in April 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Yesterday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that it will extend temporary Title 19 requirements and continue to require non-U.S. travelers entering the United States via land ports of entry and ferry terminals at the U.S.-Mexico and U.S.-Canada borders to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and provide related proof of vaccination upon request. These requirements will continue to apply to non-U.S. travelers who are traveling both for essential and non-essential reasons, and do not apply to U.S. citizens, Lawful Permanent Residents, or U.S. nationals.

These requirements were extended in consultation with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and several other federal agencies. According to CDC, vaccines remain the most effective public health measure to protect people from severe illness or death from COVID-19, slow the transmission of COVID-19, and reduce the likelihood of new COVID-19 variants emerging.

Non-U.S. travelers entering the United States via land ports of entry and ferry terminals, whether for essential or non-essential reasons, must continue to:

• verbally attest to their COVID-19 vaccination status;
• provide, upon request, proof of a CDC-approved COVID-19 vaccination, as outlined on the CDC website;
• present a valid Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI)-compliant document, such as a valid passport, Trusted Traveler Program card, or Enhanced Tribal Card; and,
• be prepared to present any other relevant documents requested by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer during a border inspection.

COVID-19 testing is not required to enter the United States via a land port of entry or ferry terminal.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has received requests from taxpayers and their advisors for relief from penalties arising when additional income tax is owed because the deduction for qualified wages is reduced by the amount of a retroactively claimed employee retention tax credit (ERTC), but the taxpayer is unable to pay the additional income tax because the ERTC refund payment has not yet been received.

The IRS is aware that this situation may arise, in part, due to the IRS backlog in processing adjusted employment tax returns (e.g., Form 941-X) on which the taxpayers claim ERTC retroactively. Based on applicable law, IRS guidance provides that an employer must reduce its income tax deduction for the ERTC qualified wages by the amount of the ERTC for the tax year in which such wages were paid or incurred.

Taxpayers that claimed the ERTC retroactively and filed an amended income tax return reducing their deduction for the ERTC qualified wages paid or incurred in the tax year for which the ERTC is retroactively claimed have an increased income tax liability but may not yet have received their ERTC refund.

The IRS reminds taxpayers that, consistent with the relief from penalties for failure to timely pay, they may be eligible for relief from penalties for failing to pay their taxes if they can show reasonable cause and not willful neglect for the failure to pay. In general, taxpayers may also qualify for administrative relief from penalties for failing to pay on time under the IRS First Time Penalty Abatement program if the taxpayer:

• Did not previously have to file a return or had no penalties for the three prior tax years;
• Filed all currently required returns or filed an extension of time to file; and
• Paid, or arranged to pay, any tax due.

For more information, visit the IRS Penalty Relief webpage https://www.irs.gov/payments/penalty-relief

Wisconsin is in line for an additional $283 million in federal transportation aid in the current fiscal year.

The bulk of the additional money comes from the recently signed bipartisan infrastructure law. The Department of Transportation wants to put $123.6 million of it into the state highway rehabilitation program, according to a letter the agency sent to the Joint Finance Committee.

The letter noted an abundance of projects awaiting funding from the state’s main highway improvement program. That would make it easier to get the money obligated by September 30, 2022. That’s the deadline for the state to allocate the bulk of the additional federal money. Otherwise, it would risk losing the funds, according to the letter.

The agency also wants to put $83.8 million into local transportation facility assistance and $60.7 million into local bridge assistance.

Under state law, the agency must submit a plan to the Joint Finance Committee for review anytime federal funds are 105 percent or more of what had been appropriated in a fiscal year. The extra $283 million is 35.2 percent above what the state had expected to receive from the feds.

The pot of additional money includes $55 million that the federal government redistributed after states that had received the funds failed to use it by a deadline.

The infrastructure law was signed last fall with several resolutions approved earlier this year to allocate the money. DOT noted in its letter the state is still awaiting word on two smaller pots of money. But it wants Joint Finance to move forward on the plan now to avoid the risk of losing the funding if it’s not spent by the deadline.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Friday adopted Republican-drawn maps for the state Legislature, handing the GOP a victory just weeks after initially approving maps drawn by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.

The court reversed itself after the U.S. Supreme Court in March said Evers’ maps were incorrectly adopted, and came just as candidates were about to begin circulating nominating papers to appear on this year’s ballot without being sure of district boundaries.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court had adopted Evers’ map on March 3, but the U.S. Supreme Court overturned it on March 23. The high court ruled that Evers’ map failed to consider whether a “race-neutral alternative that did not add a seventh majority-black district would deny black voters equal political opportunity.”

Evers told the state Supreme Court it could still adopt his map with some additional analysis, or an alternative with six majority-Black districts. The Republican-controlled Legislature argued that its map should be implemented.

The Wisconsin court, controlled 4-3 by conservatives, sided with the Legislature.

“The maps proposed by the Governor … are racially motivated and, under the Equal Protection Clause, they fail strict scrutiny,” Chief Justice Annette Ziegler wrote for the majority, joined by Justices Patience Roggensack, Rebecca Grassl Bradley and Brian Hagedorn.

The Legislature’s maps, they wrote, “are race neutral” and “comply with the Equal Protection Clause, along with all other application federal and state legal requirements.”

Hagedorn, a conservative swing justice, initially backed Evers’ map but reversed himself once the matter came back before the court. In a separate concurrence, he wrote that the U.S. Supreme Court decision required the state court to adopt a race-neutral map, and the Legislature’s maps “are the only legally compliant maps we received.”

The court’s three liberal justices — Jill Karofsky, Ann Walsh Bradley and Rebecca Dallet — dissented. Karofsky, writing for the minority, said the Legislature’s maps “fare no better than the Governor’s under the U.S. Supreme Court’s rationale.”

Long-term U.S. mortgage rates continued to climb this week as the key 30-year loan rate reached 5% for the first time in more than a decade amid persistent high inflation.

The average 5% rate on the 30-year mortgage was up from 4.72% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac reported Thursday. The average rates in recent months have been showing the fastest pace of increases since 1994. By contrast, a year ago the 30-year rate stood at 3.04%.

The average rate on 15-year, fixed-rate mortgages, popular among those refinancing their homes, jumped to 4.17% from 3.91% last week.

With inflation at a four-decade high, rising mortgage rates, elevated home prices and tight supply of homes available for sale, the goal of homeownership has become the most expensive in a generation, Freddie Mac says. And this comes as the spring homebuying season begins.

Home prices are up about 15% over the past year and as much as 30% in some cities. Available homes had been in short supply even before the coronavirus pandemic started just over two years ago.