Brian Dake

The Federal Reserve raised interest rates for the ninth time in a row on Wednesday, opting to continue its campaign against high inflation despite stress in the banking industry following the collapse of two regional banks.

Fed policymakers voted unanimously to raise their benchmark interest rate by a quarter percentage point to just under 5%, which will make it more expensive for people seeking car loans or carrying a balance on their credit cards.

Members of the Fed’s rate-setting committee believe slighly higher rates may be necessary to restore price stability. On average, policymakers anticipate rates climbing by another quarter-percentage point by the end of this year, according to new projections that were also released on Wednesday.

“The Committee anticipates that some additional policy firming may be appropriate,” the Fed said in a statement.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has elected Chief Justice Annette Kingsland Ziegler to serve a second two-year term as chief justice, effective May 1, 2023. Chief Justice Ziegler was first elected to the Court in 2007 and became chief justice in 2021, succeeding former Chief Justice Patience Drake Roggensack in that role.

“I greatly appreciate the opportunity to continue serving the court system and the people of Wisconsin. There’s a lot of work aside from deciding cases that goes into keeping the courts running smoothly. I am fortunate to work with a group of very talented and passionate people, who understand and appreciate the role of the courts in our justice system and in our form of government,” Ziegler said.

Pursuant to Article VII, Section 4 (3) of the Wisconsin Constitution, the chief justice of the Supreme Court is the administrative head of the judicial system and exercises administrative authority pursuant to procedures adopted by the Supreme Court. In this role, the chief justice works with fellow justices, the director of state courts, chief judges and other administrators to ensure the courts operate efficiently.

Chief Justice Ziegler is the second justice to be elected to serve as Chief Justice since the 2015 constitutional amendment that permitted Supreme Court Justices to select the chief justice. Justice Roggensack, who will retire July 31, was the first justice to be elected by fellow justices to serve as chief justice.

Three utilities have received approval from Wisconsin utility regulators to buy the state’s largest renewable energy plant.

On Thursday, the Public Service Commission approved the $649 million purchase of the Koshkonong Solar Energy Center by We Energies, Wisconsin Public Service and Madison Gas and Electric.

The utilities are buying the solar plant from Chicago-based developer Invenergy. The commission approved its construction last year in the towns of Christiana and Deerfield in Dane County, the solar panels covering roughly half of the 4,600 acre site.

We Energies and WPS will own 90 percent of the plant while Madison Gas and Electric will own 10 percent.

The project has received the support of renewable energy and environmental groups. RENEW Wisconsin said the plant is the largest addition of zero-emission generation and storage capacity in state history.

“This is going to be one of the anchor renewable energy generating facilities to serve basically the entire state,” Michael Vickerman, clean energy deployment manager for RENEW Wisconsin, told Wisconsin Public Radio.

Construction of the plant is set to start later this year and go online by the end of 2025. Vickerman said the addition of Koshkonong would replace the shuttering of coal-fired units at a roughly 1,100-megawatt power plant in Columbia County owned by Alliant Energy, Wisconsin Public Service and Madison Gas and Electric. The plant is set to be shutdown by mid-2026 after supply chain constraints and fears of an energy shortage postponed its retirement.

Wisconsin’s longtime Democratic Secretary of State Doug La Follette abruptly resigned on Friday, saying he was leaving three months into his 11th consecutive term “to focus on my personal needs” after watching the office be stripped of its power over the past 50 years.

Gov. Tony Evers appointed former Treasurer Sarah Godlewski, who ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate last year, to fill out the four-year term. Wisconsin’s secretary of state has not been in charge of elections since 1974 and has almost no official duties.

“After many years of frustration, I’ve decided that I don’t want to spend the next three and a half years trying to run an office without adequate resources and staffing levels,” the 82-year-old La Follette said in his resignation letter.

He did not immediately return a telephone message left seeking comment.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu called on Evers to hold a special election, saying the appointment of Godlewski was “an insult to voters of Wisconsin and our democratic process.”

The Wisconsin Supreme Court is considering the legality of a new approach used by some municipalities to boost road revenues while bypassing state limits on property tax increases. Local supporters of Transportation Utility Fees say they’re one of few ways to keep up with rising costs, while GOP lawmakers and conservative groups say they violate the state Constitution.

On Monday, the state’s high court heard oral arguments in a lawsuit against the Town of Buchanan that alleges its Transportation Utility Fee, or TUF, created in 2019 is actually a tax created to bypass state law restricting property tax increases beyond the value of new construction within a community.

The lawsuit was filed by Wisconsin Property Taxpayers Inc., a nonpartisan group that is represented in court by the conservative firm Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty.

Representing the town, Attorney Richard Carlson told the court a state statute dating back to 1915 authorizes towns, villages and cities to establish utility districts to raise property taxes for improvements including district highways, sewers, sidewalks and fire protection. He said the town’s utility district raised around $875,000, and the money was used to improve roads that directly benefit homeowners, who pay fees of $315 per year.

Some justices on the state’s Supreme Court seemed skeptical about the novel use of the 1915 statute. Carlson was asked why the town didn’t ask voters to raise property taxes for roads via a referendum vote. Carlson said a referendum would have required a permanent tax increase, which town leaders wanted to avoid.

He said the fee has “legal roots” similar to what are called special assessments, which are not subject to the state’s levy limit law. Those are paid by homeowners when a street or sidewalk is improved adjacent to their property.

Carlson said it cost the town $3.6 million to rebuild one mile of a major road in the town. Even with a $2 million federal grant, property owners along the route were assessed costs of $3,000 each. The remaining funds came from TUF revenues.

“This whole thing, this $875,000 that was raised by the town of Buchanan for this tax on property could have been raised by a special assessment,” Carlson said. “And it would not be counted against the levy limit.”

WILL Attorney Lucas Vebber told the court Buchanan’s TUF, and others used by local governments in Wisconsin, are illegal for multiple reasons. He said the 1915 law wasn’t intended to allow local governments to create a utility district covering an entire municipality.

“Second, even if the TUF were a property tax, it would violate statutory levy limits,” Vebber said. “And third, if it were a property tax, it would also violate the constitutional requirement of uniformity.”

Vebber said that’s because the town charges different fees to owners of single family and non-residential properties.

“The towns and local governments can’t simply create another entity to grab taxes as a means of evading their levy limits,” Vebber said. “And for that reason, I think that the services argument is kind of immaterial here. It’s a property tax.”

The Biden administration said Monday it is approving a huge oil-drilling project on Alaska’s petroleum-rich North Slope.

The approval of ConocoPhillips’ big Willow drilling project by the Bureau of Land Management will allow three drill sites including up to 199 total wells. Two other drill sites proposed for the project will be denied. ConocoPhillips Chairman and CEO Ryan Lance called the order “the right decision for Alaska and our nation.” The Houston-based company will relinquish rights to about 68,000 acres of existing leases in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

The Willow project could produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil a day, create up to 2,500 jobs during construction and 300 long-term jobs, and generate billions of dollars in royalties and tax revenues for the federal, state and local governments, the company said.

The project, located in the federally designated National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, enjoys widespread political support in the state. Alaska’s bipartisan congressional delegation met with Biden and his advisers in early March to plead their case for the project, and Alaska Native state lawmakers recently met with Haaland to urge support.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said Monday the decision was “very good news for the country.”

“Not only will this mean jobs and revenue for Alaska, it will be resources that are needed for the country and for our friends and allies,” Murkowski said. “The administration listened to Alaska voices. They listened to the delegation as we pressed the case for energy security and national security.”

Fellow Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan said conditions attached to the project should not reduce Willow’s ability to produce up to 180,000 barrels of crude a day. But he said it was “infuriating” that Biden also had moved to prevent or limit oil drilling elsewhere in Alaska.

The Labor Department said Tuesday that the consumer price index, a broad measure of the price for everyday goods including gasoline, groceries and rents, rose 0.4% in February from the previous month. Prices climbed 6% on an annual basis.

Core prices – which strip out the more volatile measurements of food and energy – climbed 0.5% over the course of February, slightly faster than in January. On a 12-month basis, core prices are up 5.5%.

“February CPI data was a mixed bag, but the rise in core inflation shows we’re stuck on a plateau for now,” said Robert Frick, corporate economist with Navy Federal Credit Union. “Inflation should start moving strongly lower this spring and summer, especially as lower rent costs work themselves into the numbers.”

The report is the last before the Federal Reserve Bank’s next policy-setting meeting on March 21-22 and will have major implications for the U.S. central bank, which is tightening monetary policy at the fastest rate in decades as it tries to crush out-of-control inflation.

Officials have already approved eight straight rate increases, lifting the federal funds rate to a range of 4.5% to 4.75%, well into restrictive levels. In recent weeks, policymakers have indicated that rates may need to climb higher than previously anticipated in the face of hotter-than-expected economic data.

Depositors of the Silicon Valley Bank will have access to all of their money – following the bank’s failure on Friday – at no loss to American taxpayers, the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) said in a joint statement Sunday.

“Today we are taking decisive actions to protect the U.S. economy by strengthening public confidence in our banking system,” the joint statement read. “This step will ensure that the U.S. banking system continues to perform its vital roles of protecting deposits and providing access to credit to households and businesses in a manner that promotes strong and sustainable economic growth.”

The statement said Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen had approved actions enabling the FDIC to complete its resolution of SVB “in a manner that fully protects depositors.”

Depositors will have access to all of their money starting Monday, March 13. The taxpayer will bear no losses associated with the resolution of SVB.

Notably, the regulators’ statement also announced the shutdown of New York-based Signature Bank.

“We are also announcing a similar systemic risk exception for Signature Bank, New York, New York, which was closed today by its state chartering authority,” the joint statement read.

Any losses to the Deposit Insurance Fund to support uninsured depositors will be recovered by a special assessment on banks, as required by law.

The Federal Reserve said it would make additional funding available to “eligible depository institutions to help assure banks have the ability to meet the needs of all their depositors.”

Silicon Valley Bank, the nation’s 16th-largest bank, failed Friday after depositors hurried to withdraw money this week amid anxiety over the bank’s health. It was the second-biggest bank failure in U.S. history after the collapse of Washington Mutual in 2008.

On Thursday, President Joe Biden unveiled his new $6.8 trillion budget. In addition to more military spending, the White House maintains it will cut nearly $3 trillion from the deficit over the next decade. Taxes would also go up on the rich, in part, to fund new social programs for the middle and lower class.

His proposal falls into four main categories: deficit reduction, lower costs for families, protecting and strengthening Medicare and Social Security, and investing in America.

Republicans say it’s unnecessary to raise taxes as the president has suggested. The key, they say, is to cut spending.

“If you look at the revenue that’s coming into America today, it’s higher than any 50-year average. But our expenses are much higher and if you look since (Biden’s) been in office, the added $6 trillion, the 30 percent increase in discretionary spending, just in the last four years, that has been a real challenge and I think that’s where the real problem lies,” said House Speaker Kevin McCarthy when asked Wednesday about the president’s upcoming budget announcement.

As Congress argues over how to bring down the national debt, both sides agree something must be done. U.S. debt currently sits at $32 trillion and is expected to reach $50 trillion by 2030.

“In the next 10 years, Americans will pay $10.5 trillion in interest on our debt. Now to put that in perspective, since 1940 until today, America has only paid $9 trillion in interest. So the next 10 years, we’ll pay more than we paid the last 80 years,” said McCarthy.

Wisconsin’s top Republican said Wednesday that a plan put forward by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and the Milwaukee Brewers to spend nearly $300 million in taxpayer money on improvements to the stadium where the team plays was likely dead in the GOP-controlled Legislature.

But Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said he hoped Republicans could devise a better deal that would look for a commitment from the team to remain in Milwaukee longer and not rely as heavily on money from a one-time budget surplus.

Under the Evers plan, in exchange for the state spending $290 million on repairs, the Brewers’ lease would be extended by 13 years, through 2043.

“I’m not sure the amount of time he’s asking the team to stay here is correct,” Vos told reporters. “I think the deal that he cut is not a very good one for the taxpayer.”

Earlier Wednesday, a coalition of Wisconsin business, tourism and health care leaders, former office holders and others announced that it is working to find a bipartisan solution to keep the Brewers in the state “for the next generation,” said the group’s leader, Omar Shaikh, a Milwaukee-area restaurant owner and developer.