<body><div><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=302Atx_1GnT4sMx00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=302Atx_1GnT4sMx00" width="980" height="735" ></figure>Tom Content, leading CUB through historic times.As public attention to rising energy costs and hyperscale data centers has surged, Wisconsin’s utility watchdog is in the thick of it. “I dare say there hasn’t been a year like this for CUB in its whole history,” says Tom Content, executive director of the Citizens Utility Board since 2017. They’re the voice of residential and small business consumers when investor-owned utilities seek permission from regulators to raise rates. CUB was created by the state Legislature in 1979, the nation’s first state consumer advocacy group for utility customers. In 1986, it reorganized as a nonprofit following a U.S. Supreme Court decision sparked by California’s CUB. The state Legislature cut the board’s budget in 2015, but lawmakers restored funding in 2021. CUB’s budget now runs roughly $1.1 million a year. Each year it submits a budget request to the state’s Public Service Commission, for authority to spend up to $900,000. Once approved, the funds come from fees paid by most customers of investor-owned utilities. Content calls the charge per customer “about a penny and a half for CUB.” The last fifth of their funding comes from 501(c)(3) donations and CUB’s participation in Community Shares of Wisconsin. CUB has six staff positions, including an in-house attorney; in the months ahead they hope to replace the recently retired longtime development and outreach director, Richard Storck. In 2025, CUB estimates its work helped customers of Alliant Energy, Madison Gas &amp; Electric, and Xcel Energy save a combined $178 million. Since 2017, the group estimates they’ve saved customers more than $1.4 billion. While rate cases are CUB’s “bread and butter,” they’ve also been a party to cases where utilities seek special tariffs for large data centers. Content says that it’s been a constant pivot because “there are so many next things coming at us simultaneously.”After a year of consideration, state regulators in April approved a request from We Energies for a special tariff to power data centers. In doing so, regulators at the Public Service Commission rejected an option where data center companies would have covered just 75% of costs. Instead, the PSC required companies to cover 100% of them, one of several points CUB pushed for. Content estimates the decision saved another $1 billion for everyday consumers over time. More utility companies are seeking their own data center tariffs, and CUB is scrutinizing each application. In May, the PSC approved Alliant Energy rates for a Meta data center campus in Beaver Dam, but instructed the utility to establish a tariff for future large customers. Xcel Energy filed a similar tariff application in June and Madison Gas &amp; Electric filed in July. Content seems, at any time, happy to talk about energy affordability — to retired teachers in Kenosha, at a church breakfast in Menomonee Falls, at a town hall in Beaver Dam, on drivetime radio in Janesville. It’s meant attending and speaking at dozens of events this year alone: “We are at the center of what people are concerned about in this state right now, in terms of angst about data centers. Are they going to pay their way?” Content is a former award-winning journalist who had a long career covering the utility and energy industry at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and the Green Bay Press Gazette before that. Former colleagues sometimes ask if he wishes he was still a journalist, covering the biggest energy story in decades. “No!” he exclaims. He likes being in the center of things: “It’s just a critical time for there to be a nonpartisan consumer advocate that thinks changes are needed.”This article is part of The Nonprofit Issue, the special November 2026 print edition of Isthmus. See the other stories here. </div></body>

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Tom Content, leading CUB through historic times. As public attention to rising energy costs and hyperscale data centers has surged, Wisconsin’s utility watchdog is in the thick of it. “I dare say there hasn’t been a year like this for CUB in its whole history,” says Tom Content, executive...

Keeping energy bills in check

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Tom Content, leading CUB through historic times. As public attention to rising energy costs and hyperscale data centers has surged, Wisconsin’s utility wat

Keeping energy bills in check

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