Two of Wisconsin’s largest utilities have reached a deal to recover half a billion dollars from customers through higher rates next year due largely to rising inflation, natural gas prices and costs tied to their clean energy transition.

We Energies and Wisconsin Public Service filed the proposed settlement Monday with the Wisconsin Public Service Commission. The utilities reached the deal with ratepayer and renewable advocacy groups, labor unions and businesses intervening in utilities’ requests to increase rates next year.

Under the settlement, the utilities would recover more than $507 million in expenses next year. We Energies would refinance $100 million of roughly $500 million that’s yet to be paid off from investments in pollution controls at the Oak Creek power plant. The deal also writes off customer late fees from the COVID-19 pandemic, reduces fixed monthly charges for ratepayers and extends a low-income forgiveness program.

“We think that this settlement is a real positive step forward for our customers. It’s a balanced approach to resolving the major issues in these various rate cases,” said Brendan Conway, the utilities’ spokesperson. “It allows us to continue our efforts to build a bright, sustainable future (and) provides customers with affordable, reliable and clean energy now and in the future.”

The utilities would recoup that $507 million next year through rate increases for consumers. We Energies is proposing to raise electric rates by 8.4 percent and natural gas rates by 10.7 percent beginning next year. WPS wants to increase electric rates 6.2 percent and natural gas rates by 8.3 percent.

According to the utilities, the rate hikes are largely tied to around $1.5 billion of investment in clean energy projects through next year. At the same time, utilities and customers are facing financial pressures related to soaring inflation and natural gas prices.

The settlement contains significant benefits for customers, according to ratepayer advocate the Citizens Utility Board. Tom Content, the board’s executive director, said that includes refinancing the remaining balance on the Oak Creek coal plant and a discount rate for low-income ratepayers on their bills as part of a new pilot program.

“There are cost increases that can’t be controlled, but there are significant savings opportunities in here,” said Content. “It leaves us the ability to continue to fight on the issue of high utility profits that have been too high for too long and are costing customers billions of dollars around the country every year.”

The PSC will have the final say over the proposed settlement, as well as utilities’ profit rates and how those costs will be spread among residential and industrial customers.

United States manufacturing activity grew at its slowest pace in nearly two and a half years in September as new orders contracted while interest rates were aggressively hiked to cool demand and tame inflation.

The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) said on Monday that its manufacturing purchasing managers’ index or PMI dropped to 50.9 in September, the lowest reading since May 2020, from 52.8 in August. A reading above 50 indicates expansion in manufacturing, which accounts for 11.9 percent of the US economy.

The ISM survey’s forward-looking new orders subindex fell to 47.1 last month, also the lowest reading since May 2020, from 51.3 in August. It was the third time this year that the index has contracted. Order backlogs are also being whittled down. While that pointed to a further slowdown in manufacturing, it was also a function of easing bottlenecks in the supply chain.

The ISM’s measure of supplier deliveries fell to 52.4 from 55.1 in August. A reading above 50 percent indicates slower deliveries to factories.

With supply chains loosening, inflation pressures at the factory gate continued to subside.

A measure of prices paid by manufacturers dropped to 51.7, the lowest reading since June 2020, from 52.5 in August. The continued slowdown is being driven by retreating commodity prices. Annual consumer and producer inflation decelerated in August, raising hope that prices had peaked.

The Supreme Court is beginning its new term,  and the public is back for the first time since the court closed in March 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

On Monday, the court is considering an important water rights case that could limit federal regulation under the nation’s main water pollution law, the Clean Water Act.

Other significant cases include a controversial Republican-led appeal that could dramatically change the way elections for Congress and the presidency are conducted by handing more power to state legislatures. There’s also the case of a Colorado website designer who says her religious beliefs prevent her working with same-sex couples on their weddings. Next month, the justices will hear a challenge to the consideration of race in college admissions.

Wisconsin is likely headed for a big workforce shortage. Simply put: there aren’t enough young people here to replace the baby boomers who will turn 65 years old over the next decade.

A new study by Forward Analytics, a Wisconsin-based research organization that provides state and local policymakers with nonpartisan analysis of issues affecting the state, shows increased migration may be the only answer to the workforce shortage.

Dale Knapp has followed the trends for almost 25 years, so the stats from his latest analysis on Wisconsin’s workforce weren’t surprising.

“What you’ve got is a bigger baby boom generation than we thought, retiring over the next 10 years, and we don’t have enough young people coming up behind them to replace them,” Knapp, the director of Forward Analytics, said.

Figures from the 2020 census show that if 2010-2020 migration patterns continue, the number of working Wisconsinites will drop about 130,000 by 2030.

Data from federal income tax returns shows a trend from 2012 to 2020, with the state losing 106,000 so-called “families” with the tax filer under age 26.

Often, these are single individuals, which is the group Knapp said he hopes will return to Wisconsin someday.

“If we can get them here, they tend to stay here because they realize we have quality schools, an affordable cost of living, low crime, and we have a lot of great amenities,” Knapp said.

According to the study, Wisconsin could potentially build on those factors to attract those headed into their 30s and 40s, which are the typical family formation years when people want to move back to the Badger State.

The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index increased in September for the second consecutive month. The Index now stands at 108.0 (1985=100), up from 103.6 in August. The Present Situation Index—based on consumers’ assessment of current business and labor market conditions—rose to 149.6 from 145.3 last month. The Expectations Index—based on consumers’ short-term outlook for income, business, and labor market conditions—increased to 80.3 from 75.8.

“Consumer confidence improved in September for the second consecutive month supported in particular by jobs, wages, and declining gas prices,” said Lynn Franco, Senior Director of Economic Indicators at The Conference Board. “The Present Situation Index rose again, after declining from April through July. The Expectations Index also improved from summer lows, but recession risks nonetheless persist. Concerns about inflation dissipated further in September—prompted largely by declining prices at the gas pump—and are now at their lowest level since the start of the year.”

“Meanwhile, purchasing intentions were mixed, with intentions to buy automobiles and big-ticket appliances up, while home purchasing intentions fell. The latter no doubt reflects rising mortgage rates and a cooling housing market. Looking ahead, the improvement in confidence may bode well for consumer spending in the final months of 2022, but inflation and interest-rate hikes remain strong headwinds to growth in the short term.”

The total value of all property in Wisconsin shot up by 13.8% percent this year, the biggest increase in the nearly 40 years since the nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum and its predecessors began tracking the trends.

Using tax levies and rates approved for December 2021 tax bills in every Wisconsin county, city, village and town, along with the updated property values that will be used to calculate those bills, Wisconsin Policy Forum researchers found that gross property tax levies imposed by local governments statewide rose by only 1.6%, an increase far below the current 8.3% inflation rate and lower than the growth seen every year since 2014.

As a result, the state’s property tax rates “continued their long-running decline,” the authors found, with the steepest drop since 2005. In 2021, property owners statewide owed $19.60 for every $1,000 of equalized property value. For 2022, they’ll owe $18.64, or 4.9% less.

Tax levies change as a result of changes made by any of the taxing jurisdictions in a given area, including the county, municipality, school district, technical college district, tax increment finance district, special district, and state, all of which set levies within state-established limits.

Some $45.6 billion in pandemic unemployment benefits may have been fraudulently paid to criminals between March 2020 and April 2022, the US Department of Labor’s Office of the Inspector General said in a memorandum on Thursday.

Fraud within the nation’s unemployment system skyrocketed after Congress enacted a historic expansion of the program to help Americans deal with the economic upheaval sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020. State unemployment agencies were overwhelmed with record numbers of claims and relaxed some requirements in an effort to get the money out the door quickly to those who had lost their jobs. Within five months, more than 57 million people filed claims for unemployment benefits, the inspector general’s office said.

“Hundreds of billions in pandemic funds attracted fraudsters seeking to exploit the UI program — resulting in historic levels of fraud and other improper payments,” Inspector General Larry Turner said in a statement.

Nearly a million Social Security numbers were used by people who filed for benefits in two or more states, resulting in benefits paid from more than one state, the inspector general’s office said. They received nearly $29 billion in potentially fraudulent payments. And 1.7 million Social Security numbers associated with suspicious email addresses were used to file for $16.2 billion in benefits.

The inspector general’s office said that it has had difficulty getting unemployment insurance data from state workforce agencies until subpoenas were issued. In some cases, the data sent was incomplete or unusable.

The inspector general’s office also took issue with the Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration, which oversees the unemployment insurance program, saying the agency has not implemented the office’s previous recommendations including to collaborate with state agencies to establish effective controls to mitigate fraud and to work with Congress to require state agencies to cross-match high-risk areas.

“ETA’s lack of sufficient action significantly increases the risk of even more UI payments to ineligible claimants,” the inspector general’s office wrote in the memorandum.

The inspector general’s office also announced Thursday that more than 1,000 people have been charged with crimes involving unemployment benefits fraud since March 2020, and there have been more than 400 convictions to date. It has opened more than 190,000 investigations into unemployment benefits fraud, an increase of more than 1,000 times in the volume of the office’s unemployment insurance work.

Yesterday, the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin (PSC) announced the creation of a new, additional area code to overlay the area in which the 608 area code is now in service.

The 608 area code is expected to run out of assignable prefixes (the three numbers in a phone number following the area code) in the first quarter of 2024. The new 353 area code will be used to provide telephone numbers to new customers. All current customers will retain their existing telephone numbers and will continue to dial and receive calls without change.

The Commission approved the petition by the North American Numbering Plan Administrator (NANPA), the neutral third-party area code relief planner, to overlay a new area code. This decision will provide additional numbering resources to meet the demand for telephone numbers. The new 353 area code will be in service by late 2023.

An area code overlay adds a second area code to the geographic region served by the existing area code. Therefore, multiple area codes co-exist within the same geographic region. Once the 608 area code runs out of assignable prefixes, new customers in southcentral and southwestern Wisconsin may be assigned telephone numbers in the new 353 area code. Customers will continue to dial the three-digit area code for all calls to and from telephone numbers with the 608 and 353 area codes. The price of a call will not change due to the overlay. Customers can still dial just three digits to reach 911, as well as 211, 311, 411, 511, 611, 711, 811, and 988, the new Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

The plan filed by the North American Numbering Plan Administrator can be found here: PSC REF#: 440694

Americans owed a stunning $887 billion in credit card debt as of June 2022, according to recent data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That was an increase of about 5.5% from the first quarter of the year, and a 13% increase from the year-ago period.

“Americans are borrowing more, but a big part of the increased borrowing is attributable to higher prices,” researchers for the New York Fed said in a news release.

Still, despite the heavier use of credit cards and debt, the New York Fed noted that delinquency rates remain relatively low.

The numbers come against the backdrop of stubbornly high inflation that has shown little sign of cooling off: New data released last week by the Labor Department showed the consumer price index unexpectedly climbed 0.1% in August, dashing hopes for an inflation slowdown. On an annual basis, inflation soared 8.3%, hovering near the fastest pace since 1981.

President Biden has issued nearly 100 executive orders, which will cost taxpayers up to $1.5 trillion, as the national debt nears $31 trillion, according to an expert.

“President Biden’s executive actions have cost taxpayers more than $1 trillion so far,” according to the Heritage Foundation’s Matthew Dickerson.

“But earlier this year, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office produced an analysis showing that less than ten of President Biden’s earlier executive actions cost taxpayers already more than $500 billion,” Dickerson said.

“So it could be up to $1.5 trillion in cost to taxpayers just on executive actions, not legislation going through Congress and being signed into law and being debated,” Dickerson added. “It’s just pure executive actions taken by President Biden costing taxpayers up to $1.5 trillion.”