The case to raise utility rates

By Amy Dalrymple | Editor

By Jeff Beach

Montana-Dakota Utilities has begun making its case for a 14.5% rate increase while separately moving forward on a data center project.

The company needs approval from the North Dakota Public Service Commission, which briefly discussed the rate case Monday. The commission will first take up an interim rate increase while the PSC considers the case. 

MDU has proposed an interim rate increase in which a typical residential customer will see an increase of about $12.90 per month, or 12.3% over current rates. If approved, interim rates would kick in Sept. 1.

Travis Jacobson, vice president for regulatory affairs for MDU, told lawmakers last week that the rate increase request is not related to data centers it serves or data center projects. 

By Jack Zaleski

A reasonable dialogue about the startling proliferation of huge data centers in North Dakota (and elsewhere) has been effectively nullified by special interests that don’t want elected officials, regulators or members of the public scrutinizing their multi-million-dollar installations. They have skillfully managed and manipulated the debate by pitting neighbor against neighbor, community against community, and red politics against blue politics.

All of this sophisticated sophistry has been masterfully crafted in order to discredit and marginalize North Dakotans who dare to ask legitimate questions about what data centers mean in the here and now, and how they will affect the future of the towns that have been finagled into hosting them.

By Amelia Twyman

A proposed federal commission on artificial intelligence ethics could help address moral questions associated with the rapidly developing technology, but there are still some areas in which they believe the proposal falls short, experts say.   

Sens. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, and Raphael Warnock, a Georgia Democrat, introduced a bill last week that would create a cross-party body of experts to “advise Congress on the ethical and policy implications of emerging technologies” such as artificial intelligence. 

According to a summary of the bill, titled the Human Dignity and Emerging Technologies Act, the federal government lacks an institution dedicated to studying the deeper ethics of AI and the threats it poses to human dignity.

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