DANE COUNTY, Wis. — On Thursday, Sept. 10, 2026, the Dane County Board of Supervisors approved 2026 RES-130, urging Midcontinent Grid Solutions (MGS) and the Public Service Commission (PSC) of Wisconsin to provide additional review and expanded opportunities for public input on the proposed Bell Center–Columbia–Sugar Creek–IL/WI State Line 765 kV Transmission Project, known as BECI.

BECI is a proposed approximately 190-mile, 765-kilovolt transmission project extending across portions of Wisconsin from Crawford County to Walworth County, passing through Dane County. Portions of the study area and potential route may affect communities and properties in and around the Towns of Bristol, Deansville, Sun Prairie, Medina, and York, and the Villages of DeForest, Deerfield, Windsor, Marshall, Cottage Grove, and Cambridge.

The resolution raises concerns that the public feedback timeline—which included only a single joint open house for Dane and Dodge counties and a now-expired Sept. 7, 2026 deadline—failed to give landowners, municipalities, and residents sufficient time to evaluate potential routes and property-specific impacts. This underscores the need for greater transparency regarding the project’s necessity, benefits, and local impacts across all nine affected counties. 

“A project of this scale deserves a level of scrutiny and public input that the current timeline simply does not allow,” said County Board Chair Patrick Miles. “Dane County is far from alone in this concern. Counties all along the proposed route share these questions, and residents, landowners, and local governments across the region need real time information to understand what this project would mean for their property, their farmland, and their communities before any decision is made.”

Through the resolution, the board requests that the MGS and the PSC delay consideration of the BECI proposal until additional research, analysis, and public review have been completed. The board is also calling for an independent analysis demonstrating the project’s necessity for Wisconsin, a detailed accounting of costs and benefits to ratepayers, a comprehensive environmental assessment comparing potential routes, an evaluation of alternatives, and a farmland-preservation analysis identifying the acres of prime farmland that would be affected by each potential route.

“Supervisor Marren and I drafted this resolution because it is an extremely important issue not just for our districts, but all of Wisconsin,” said Supervisor Paula Brandmeier (District 20). “MGS shouldn’t be able to run roughshod over our communities with very little notice and insufficient information about the project’s necessity, planned routes, cost, or environmental impact.”

The Dane County Board of Supervisors requests that the PSC provide sufficient time for the county, affected municipalities, property owners, state agencies, and members of the public to review the requested information and provide meaningful input before making any decision on the approval or routing of the BECI project.