Patience, persuasion, and persistence paid off for Wisconsin’s electric cooperatives as the state Legislature last month closed out regular business for its two-year term. Through 2007 and early ’08, long-held priorities on the co-op legislative agenda finally negotiated the rocky path to enactment and were signed into law last month along with newer items of concern that moved through the process more swiftly.

Taking License

Introduced in four separate legislative sessions and compelled to win over opponents from a range of interest groups who ultimately joined in support, statewide licensing of electricians completed its seven-year journey to the statute books March 5 when it was signed into law by Governor Doyle.

Greeted by broad skepticism when first introduced in the 2001–02 Legislature, the measure aims to bring order and clarity to a system that has varied from one Wisconsin municipality to another, leaving the state without a predictable standard for the safety and quality of electrical work.

As State Representative Al Ott (R–Forest Junction) put it in a senate committee hearing last fall, “The public assumes electricians are licensed but there is nothing in state law requiring it.”

The result, Ott said, has been “a patchwork of regulatory standards” with no real consistency in what electricians must comply with or, conversely, what protections exist for consumers.

“The primary goal is to improve electrical safety, particularly in rural areas of the state,” Ott added, noting that in those areas licensing has been “rare or nonexistent,” along with any expectation that a trained inspector will verify the work is done properly.

Changing those things will take time, but thanks to sponsorship by Ott and lead Senate author Russ Decker (D–Schofield), the change is underway.

Trouble-free Transition

The Department of Commerce now has a year to develop administrative rules and standards for licensing electricians and electrical contractors, for electrical inspections, and for a state wiring code. (An existing state wiring code applies to places of employment and farms; the new code will apply regardless of building type.)

Those currently performing electrical work must pass a licensing examination within five years. After that, all but beginning electricians will need to be licensed before commencing work. Beginners will be required to register but needn’t submit to an exam until they seek advancement to a higher level. After five years, no electrical work can be performed unless a licensed master electrician has ultimate responsibility for it.

People working in their own residences or facilities are exempt, as are employees and subcontractors of electricity providers and persons who work on the utility side of substations and other distribution facilities owned or operated by customers or members of electricity providers. If some provisions sound like new burdens, there are also pains taken to put nobody out of business overnight. There will also be reciprocity with other states, so Wisconsin electricians can work across state lines. That isn’t automatically the case under current conditions; now, some job opportunities in fast-growing areas are simply out of bounds. Most fundamentally, the new provisions mean electricians working anywhere in the state will know the standard to which they’re held.

But in the early going, builders and contractors, real estate interests, large business associations, and others opposed the bill.

In the 2001–02 Legislature, it passed the state Senate but was not taken up by the Assembly.

In the 2003–04 Legislature, it bogged down in drafting details and, in the hands of an unenthusiastic sponsor who since left office, failed to be introduced as the clock ran out.

Through all this, negotiations continued. Stakeholders neared agreement during 2005–06, but it was too late in the session to introduce a bill. The breakthrough came in 2007, as years of compromise brought former opponents on board, satisfied that qualified personnel could perform their work without needless new restrictions.

The proposal was a high priority in legislative office visits by Wisconsin Electric Cooperative Association (WECA) members through several years of Education and Lobby Day events in Madison.

Looming over all other issues during the lengthy drive to enactment was Wisconsin’s practice of licensing many professions in which mistakes carry no threat of severe property damage or life-threatening injury.

“I won’t tell you it’s not important that this state licenses interior decorators, but I’ve never heard of anybody’s house burning down because the carpet clashed with the drapes,” one supporter told a Senate committee last fall.

By late 2007, a majority of lawmakers in both houses had signed on as co-sponsors of the bill and former opponents came before legislative committees to voice their support. A representative of the non-union Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) testified in a hearing last September that it was “unusual for organized labor and the ABC to agree on an issue but this is one of those issues.”

Warming up to Electric Heat

Another long-term WECA legislative priority, ending official discrimination against electric home heating, went into the law books in March as Governor Doyle signed a bill repealing the “superinsulation” requirement for electrically heated buildings.

Hoping to eliminate statutory language that piled on thousands of dollars of increased construction costs for electrically heated homes, WECA started the ball rolling early in 2004 with inquiries to the state Department of Commerce.

Department personnel indicated willingness to examine software problems that unfairly downgraded the energy-efficiency ratings of electric heating systems and also to consider administrative rule changes to remedy the discrimination.

By the summer of 2005, a dual strategy pursuing both administrative rule changes and legislation was adopted. That August, 11 electric cooperatives and representatives of engineering and construction interests participated in a conference at the WECA offices in Madison to lay plans for changing the law.

The superinsulation requirement dates to the early 1980s when the dynamics of energy conservation and the efficiency levels of various technologies were much different from today. Back then—a quarter-century ago—many lawmakers equated electric heat with power plants running harder, something they were anxious to prevent.

Nowadays, technological improvements enable electric heating to be a path to less fossil fuel consumption.

At the August 2005 conference in Madison, one participant said efficiency gains in electric heat had made it more sensible to impose a superinsulation requirement on homes heated with natural gas than on those using electricity—a move no one actually proposed then or since.

Then-statewide WECA Manager David Jenkins pointed out that the superinsulation requirement had never been defined in the statutes or by administrative rule. He also noted that modern systems such as electric thermal storage and ground-source heat pumps offer heating capacity that far outweighs their minimal electricity consumption.

Other participants agreed that Wisconsin was the only state discriminating against electric heat. One said, “We’re the Lone Ranger here.”

In the legislative session just ended, the repeal measure ceased to be controversial. Like the electrician-licensing bill, it emerged from years of negotiation and plodding progress to roll up a series of mostly unanimous committee votes recommending passage.

Early last month, a bill authored by State Rep. Scott Suder (R–Abbotsford) and Sen. Pat Kreitlow (D–Chippewa Falls) cleared both houses on voice votes with no dissent heard. It was signed by the governor in a matter of days.

Stop, Thief!

A newer concern for electric co-op members and customers of all utilities is the growing incidence of copper theft and the expense of repairing and replacing damaged and stolen facilities and equipment.

With the higher cost of basic commodities, rising scrap-metal prices have brought a wave of raids on utility infrastructure by thieves looking to cash in. No part of the nation has been immune.

And the obvious risk of “cashing in” in a more figurative sense does not seem to deter. Thieves have managed to steal energized conductor from power poles in remote areas. It’s clear they knew exactly what they were doing, because the conductor was gone and no bodies were found.

They have also become bolder. Police in Wichita, Kansas, recently asked citizens to watch for suspicious activity when it appeared that thieves disguised as utility workers were stealing buried grounding wire from substations and even pilfering the wires from light poles in parking lots.

Here in Wisconsin, WECA met for many months with municipal and investor-owned utilities, their statewide trade associations, and recyclers and scrap dealers to work out their differences and produce a legislative draft.

As always, there were concerns about interference with legitimate businesses and the negotiations were complicated. They were also on target: Once the bill was ready to move, it did so quickly. Led by Jeff Plale (D–South Milwaukee) in the Senate and Phil Montgomery (R–Ashwaubenon) in the Assembly, lawmakers passed the bill through both houses in mid-February without a dissenting vote.

Most opportunities for theft occur in places where activity is less likely to be observed, so the measure seeks to improve chances of apprehending thieves after the fact. Scrap dealers must now keep detailed records identifying sellers, their vehicles, and the materials purchased. The new law also makes thieves directly responsible for the replacement cost of stolen materials.

Persistence Pays

If there’s one lesson in the experience of the last four legislative sessions, it’s that nothing gets done just because it’s a sensible idea. Each accomplishment described here had to overcome opposition and accommodate honest concerns of sometimes parallel, sometimes competing, interests. Often, this means finding ways for rivals to agree, a difficult and sometimes frustrating exercise but one that can build the trust necessary to disarm future difficulties.

In the words of WECA Government Relations Director Beata Kalies, who first worked on electrician licensing as a legislative staffer in 2001, “It’s about time.” It is, and in more ways than one.

It’s about the time people are willing to invest in an idea, an ingredient of legislative success in which cooperative members seem to have an edge. Patient, persistent, advocacy by co-op leaders from across the state has accomplished what common sense couldn’t safely be left to achieve on its own.—Dave Hoopman