Build basic services to promote growth
4:10 PM 9/03/03

Squatting in your kitchen you'll find an example of what Wisconsin's economy needs now.

Today's refrigerators are an example of how technology investment, market incentives and good government can produce results. Modern fridges use a quarter of the power required by their 1970s ancestors because of improvements in technology, government-mandated minimum energy standards and the creation of incentives to get the job done.

Those same elements - technology, incentives and a policy nudge - can help keep the lights on for Wisconsin business while providing environmental gain for the rest of us.

Wisconsin has always supported business growth through its infrastructure: power, communications and transportation, especially. Milwaukee became a national manufacturing center thanks to extensive highway, rail and shipping links. The dairy industry rose to No. 1 in the nation using a state road system that gave farm cooperatives a way to speed their products to grocery shelves.

Now the state faces fresh demands. Road, rail and air transportation are as important as ever, but new types of businesses need affordable and impeccably reliable energy, and an up-to-date telecommunications system will be essential to business survival in the Internet era.

The demand for electricity, even with aggressive conservation and efficiency measures, will grow in Wisconsin by at least 2 percent per year (the growth rate was 3 percent per year during the 1990s).

A mix of new power sources will be needed, and a long-overdue upgrade of the electrical transmission grid will cost an estimated $2.8 billion over 10 years. The Arrowhead-Weston transmission line, debated too long already, must be built now. And more extensive and reliable power lines will need to be strung over hundreds of miles. Ratepayers need not be zapped by the costs, which can be spread out over many years among many users.

As for generating power, the cleaner-coal technology offered up for We Energies Oak Creek plant expansion will be reliable, cost-effective and capable of making environmental progress. Natural gas power has a place, too, but the volatility of its price is making it less attractive right now. And eventually, Wisconsin's moratorium on nuclear power plant construction should be reconsidered once a national nuclear waste repository leaps its many hurdles. To make sure Wisconsin meets its power demands, lawmakers moved in the right direction this summer by approving financial incentives for communities that accept power plants.

At the same time, as the Wisconsin Environmental Initiative suggests, we should also invest in renewable energy, find ways to reduce demand and explore "distributed generation," a system of decentralized, smaller-scale energy sources located closer to energy users than today's mega-plants.

On the other line, the state Public Service Commission should promote competitive local, long-distance and data telecommunications - while promoting technology investment incentives to expand the availability of broadband, wireless and other services critical to business growth.

Deregulation may help extend higher-speed broadband service to hard-to-reach areas in rural Wisconsin, but the tradeoffs could be high prices for high speeds, and limited choices. There is no easy solution, but it would be wrong to bar smaller communities from building their own service, as some lobbies have tried to do through legislation. Waupaca, Sun Prairie and Reedsburg are among pioneers bringing high-speed Internet access through their municipal utilities.

Meanwhile, transportation also demands investment and attention. We'll have to maintain highways, of course, but even more critical to economic growth are better airline connections with national business centers. Businesses themselves could band together in a buying consortium that would guarantee the airlines enough passengers for more direct flights between Wisconsin and the nation's major technology and finance centers.

And upgraded rail service would be a boon for southeastern Wisconsin businesses trying to make inroads in the Chicago market. Eventually, high-speed passenger rail linking key Midwestern cities would also aid regional economic development. Wisconsin and its neighbors should be prepared to drive this train as federal support for Amtrak wanes.

A state that neglects its infrastructure risks becoming a stagnant economic backwater. But the substantial public and private investment required now to bring Wisconsin up to standard will reap dividends over the long haul in terms of sustained economic growth.