— The winners of a several hundred million-dollar transmission project construction bid called Wisconsin’s native transmission utility a “sore loser” for its efforts to overturn the bid award.
American Transmission Company in June asked federal regulators to overturn the decision-making that awarded Chicago-based Viridon a contract to build four extra high-voltage power lines and a new substation in eastern Wisconsin.
In a 61-page filing last week, Viridon excoriated ATC for its complaint, saying the utility was resorting to underhand means to undercut competition after failing to obtain preferential treatment from Wisconsin lawmakers.
“While each of the Qualified Developers submitting bids no doubt thought their proposal was the best, only ATC has challenged (the Midcontinent Independent System Operator’s) selection; not because ATC’s proposal was better for regional ratepayers, but because ATC is a sore loser that has been unable to secure the regional project through competition avoidance means and unable to win on the merits,” the Blackstone-backed grid developer wrote.
ATC in June argued MISO should be ordered to reevaluate the bids it received for what was originally a four-power-line, four-substation project, or rebid that project entirely.
That was because, the Wisconsin utility said, MISO had not adjusted its bid requirements after ATC notified the grid operator that it would need three area substations online by 2027, six years earlier than originally bid, to serve the Vantage-Oracle-OpenAI data center in Port Washington.
MISO in March reassigned responsibility to build those three substations to ATC, but kept the other substation and the power lines with Viridon.
Viridon argues that ATC is using the Port Washington data center’s service needs as a pretense to interrupt regional transmission planning in order to serve its own interests.
It claims that Wisconsin ratepayers are now on the hook for the cost of the three substations instead of power users across the region and that ATC is seeking to take over the entire regional transmission project in order to shift those costs back across the grid.
Viridon also cast doubt on ATC’s ability to finish the three substations it had been assigned in time to serve the Port Washington data center, noting that state regulators had recently thrown out ATC’s application for a $1 billion transmission project serving that facility.
MISO also filed a response to ATC last week defending its handling of the bid process and asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to deny the complaint.
The Electricity Transmission Competition Coalition also attacked ATC’s complaint in a filing last week, calling it “a kitchen-sink series of unsupported allegations in an effort to gain more control over transmission planning.”
In a statement, ATC said it “stands by its filing, will continue to participate in the FERC proceeding and defers to the Commission regarding next steps and timing.”
WPPI Energy, which is jointly owned by 51 municipal electric companies in the Upper Midwest, submitted a filing backing ATC’s complaint.
ATC, along with other Wisconsin utilities, has pushed to receive first dibs on regional transmission projects built in its service area.
In last year’s legislative session, the utility spent hundreds of hours lobbying for “right of first refusal” legislation. In April, it was part of a coalition of utilities that filed a complaint with FERC asking to be exempted from bidding rules for large transmission projects.
— Total equalized property values in Wisconsin reached $1.057 trillion at the start of 2026, marking an increase of 8% over the year.
The state Department of Revenue on Friday issued its annual Equalized Property Report, which shows growth across all classes of property. The total change in value over the course of 2025 was about $75 billion, according to the report.
Of that total, $56.55 billion or 6% was due to market value increases, while $16.43 billion or 2% was due to new construction.
While total residential value rose by 7% over the year, reaching $776 billion, commercial property value rose by 9% to reach nearly $211 billion, the report shows. The next largest category, manufacturing property, grew to $24 billion with 6% growth over the year.
At the same time, agricultural property also grew by 6% to reach $3.5 billion by the start of the year. Ag land value changes don’t represent changes in market value, instead representing the income that could be generated by renting it for farming, according to DOR.
At the county level, Buffalo County had the largest increase with 16.4%, while Green Lake County rose by 15.37% and Rusk County rose by 15.29%.
— An advocate with the Greater Wisconsin Agency on Aging Resources warned lawmakers about the risk of “extremely sophisticated” Medicare fraud enabled by AI.
Emily Peterson is the advocacy and public policy director for the agency and part of the Wisconsin Agency Advocacy Network. She spoke during last week’s inaugural meeting of the Legislative Council Study Committee on the Use of Artificial Intelligence in Health Care.
She noted monitors have seen an uptick in Medicare-related fraud, scam and abuse using AI in recent years, such as “deepfake” or “voice cloning” impersonations of doctors and other providers. Scammers are using these techniques to obtain sensitive health information such as Medicare card ID numbers, Peterson said.
“That can be a huge issue,” she told lawmakers on the committee.
In addition to Medicare patients being scammed directly, others are using AI to impersonate the beneficiaries themselves to manipulate the system, according to Peterson.
When telehealth was more widely used in the Medicare program during the COVID-19 pandemic, even though AI was less sophisticated, the technology was already being used to impersonate doctors providing virtual care.
“AI makes it very easy to have fake credentials,” Peterson said. “You can go onto ChatGPT right now and generate anything … and so that was a huge concern, and people were getting scammed that way.”
While Peterson touched on the “positive things” that AI can be used for in healthcare, such as improving administration and enrollment processes, or helping older adults navigate various systems, she stressed the need for transparency.
She argued patients should be allowed to opt in — or out — of having AI used during their healthcare visits.
“We knew that even prior to AI, Medicare beneficiaries were being scammed,” she said, adding “now that there’s additional ways for people to be victims of scams and fraud, we want to be sure that whoever’s collecting their private health information, just like there’s an expectation of privacy and protection now, that if AI’s in the picture, there’s a continuation of that expectation.”
— Meanwhile, lawmakers on the AI in healthcare study committee want rules that keep people in decision-making roles and protect patients’ data.
Sen. Rachael Cabral-Guevara, R-Fox Crossing, said she wants to hear more from medical professionals – she cited radiologists and nurses in particular – about how AI is already being incorporated into medicine, while Rep. Adam Neylon, R-Pewaukee said he wanted rules that keep practitioners in the loop as AI grows more prevalent.
“How do we ensure that maybe there are some guidelines or standards that say here in Wisconsin, we encourage AI, but there’s always a human interaction involved with our health system?” Neylon asked during last week’s meeting.
Cabral-Guevara and Neylon are the chair and vice-chair of the committee.
The committee is charged with reviewing existing AI usage by providers, insurers and medical assistance programs like Medicaid and prescribing regulation governing the technology’s use.
Along with lawmakers, the study committee also includes a UW-Oshkosh lecturer, a pharmacist and executives from several health care companies, including Epic Systems and Abbott Labs.
Neylon also suggested writing regulations to protect patients’ privacy, though he acknowledged providers and insurers were already building their own proprietary tools to comply with existing privacy rules.
However, David Hoffert, AI policy director for Epic, noted that patient privacy laws had limited scope.
“HIPPA will cover the use of AI by a health care provider,” Hoffert said. “Its not going to cover your wearable, which is not a health care provider. It’s not going to cover if your patient requests their records from you and then uploads them to a large-language model.”
Rep. Mike Bare, D-Verona, suggested the committee needed to come up with a broader set of principles governing future legislation.
“We’re heading into this frontier realm that doesn’t fit very neatly into what we have regulated and legislated in the past, and that has really presented some challenges,” Bare said.
— Madison’s Elephas Biosciences Corporation has formed an agreement with Neuberg Diagnostics to bring its “elive” immunotherapy assessment platform to India.
The biotech firm, which has a platform for predicting the body’s response to certain cancer treatments using living tissue, recently announced the exclusive partnership with India-based Neuberg Diagnostics.
The effort will bring the platform into Neuberg’s laboratory infrastructure while the company will act as Elephas’ commercial partner in India, with a goal of launching its own clinical test there by end of this year. Neuberg will also serve as research partner for Elephas in India, processing cancer biopsies at its main lab in Ahmedabad, a city in the country’s western region.
Maneesh Arora, founder and CEO of Elephas, touted Neuberg as a “recognized leader in oncology diagnostics” with a strong presence in India.
“Pairing their molecular diagnostics expertise with the elive platform lays the groundwork to bring functional immunotherapy response assessment to oncology care in India,” Arora said in a statement.
The company last month announced a similar partnership with Invitrocue, which will act as its commercial partner for extending its reach into Singapore and Malaysia, establishing a foothold in southeast Asia.
For more of the most relevant health care news, reports on groundbreaking research in Wisconsin, links to top stories and more, sign up today for the free daily Health Care Report from WisPolitics and WisBusiness.com.
— While Wisconsin has seen steady growth in its homeless population over the last five years, its trend over the past decade beats other Midwest states and the nation overall.
That’s according to the latest Wisconsin Policy Forum report, which shows the state had 5,495 homeless people in January, an increase of 4.8% over the year.
After years of declines, the state’s homeless population has been rising each year since 2021, likely driven by the end of pandemic-era support such as a federal eviction moratorium and rent assistance, along with household incomes not keeping up with housing costs, authors wrote.
Still, the state’s homeless population in 2025 remained 13.4% lower than in 2015. By comparison, the United States saw a 32% increase in homelessness over the same 10-year period. Among Midwest states, only Michigan also saw a decline over the period with 2.7% fewer homeless people, while others had increases ranging from 9.1% to 13.8%.
Wisconsin has also had the smallest homeless population in the Midwest every year since 2016, along with the lowest rate of homelessness in the region with 8.8 homeless people for every 10,000 state residents. The national rate is 21.6 per 10,000. Among Midwest states, Minnesota has the highest rate with 14.4 per 10,000.
While authors say they can’t “fully explain” why Wisconsin has a lower homelessness rate than peer states, they point to coordination among the state’s continuum of care organizations including a shared information management system.
Authors say policymakers and homelessness program leaders could consider expanding housing programs and funding for programs that have helped stave off homelessness, while boosting prevention efforts targeting root causes.
“Keeping people housed before they experience homelessness is often less costly and disruptive than helping them recover after they have lost their homes,” they wrote.
Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from the latest WisBusiness column by manufacturing expert Buckley Brinkman.
— Reality is catching up with AI’s true believers.
The excitement about AI’s market potential, its promised transformations, and the riches it is supposed to deliver is colliding with the reality of business returns, competitive pressure, and the yawning gap between addressable markets and real ones. The top AI players know exactly what they’ve invested, what returns their investors expect, and what happens if they miss those stretch goals.
Read the full column by Buckley Brinkman here.
Find more columns from Brinkman at the AI in Wisconsin page.
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