The (Almost) Daily Brief

Attorney General Puts Xcel’s Google Agreement at $1 Billion in Net Costs to Ratepayers

By Megan Dayton · 10/2/2026

Join me Thursday, Oct. 8 at the Edina Country Club for a Leadership Breakfast focused on workforce trends. September put architectural and engineering services up 45,000 jobs over the year, and I will walk through the demographic and economic forces behind numbers like that, and what they mean for company strategy. 8am to 10:30am, $55. Registration is open.

POLICY  Four senators introduced a permitting bill that would give federal regulators authority to site transmission lines. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, Sen. Mike Lee, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, and Sen. Martin Heinrich introduced the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026 on Sept. 30. The bill would let the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issue permits for the construction or modification of electric transmission facilities project by project where the work is consistent with the public interest, eliminate National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors, and end the federal right of first refusal that gives incumbent utilities the first claim on new regional lines. It would require FERC to order each transmission planning region to file a consolidated interconnection and regional transmission planning process, modeled on the one the commission approved for the Southwest Power Pool in March. The bill assigns transmission costs to the owners and operators of computational loads, and for loads at or above 20 megawatts it mandates exit charges and bars recovery of the load’s incremental costs from any other customer. It also provides that a permitted project keeps its permits absent extraordinary circumstances, a violation of law, or a court order, and lets an applicant sue when a federal permit is improperly denied or unreasonably delayed because of the type of project. The sponsors say the bill preserves Tribal consultation and existing environmental safeguards.

Sources: Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Sept. 30; Utility Dive, Oct. 1

ENG  Public comment open on Mankato's $38.39 million construction program. Street work accounts for $23.27 million of the total. The city will also pay $7.6 million toward MnDOT’s $37 million Highway 169 rebuild from the Veterans Memorial Bridge to the northern city limits, and $4.5 million toward Blue Earth County’s reconstruction and possible redesign of County Road 16, Stoltzman Road, from Riverfront Drive to Stadium Road. The largest city-led projects are a $5.1 million reconstruction of Long Street and Emerson Lane and a $5.4 million reconstruction of Rita Road, with $1.1 million of resurfacing on Balcerzak Drive between Monks Avenue and Pohl Road and on Bruels Street from Glenwood Avenue to Main Street. The plan the City Council votes on in December covers five years of investment. The city is taking comment on several of the 2027 projects through its engagement site at everyvoice.mankatomn.gov.

Source: Mankato Free Press, Oct. 1

ENG  A corridor study would reduce Stoltzman Road in Mankato from four driving lanes to two. Transportation Collaborative & Consultants, the firm hired to study the corridor ahead of repaving planned for next year, presented the concept to the City Council this week. Between Pleasant Street and Riverfront Drive the layout drops a through lane in each direction, adds a center left-turn lane, and runs a trail along the west side past West High School, which has 1,200 students. It also puts a boulevard between the northbound lanes and the east-side sidewalk, which now abuts the curb and leaves nowhere to place plowed snow. Project manager Matt Pacyna said the existing west-side bike path stops short of the school and called the gap significant. He also said the right-of-way carries no excess space, so a driving lane is where the room would come from. The corridor recorded 40 crashes over five years. Council member Jessica Hatanpa called the concept “a terrible idea,” and Mayor Najwa Massad also opposed the lane reduction, both citing congestion at the start and end of the school day. An online survey and conversations with residents going back to May put safer crossings, pedestrian visibility, trail extensions, and separation from traffic at the top of the requests.

Source: Mankato Free Press, Oct. 1

BIZ  The annual rate of construction spending was $2.2 trillion in August. The Census Bureau put the seasonally adjusted annual rate at $2,203.1 billion on Oct. 1. Spending rose 0.9 percent from the revised July, 1.7 percent below August 2025. Private nonresidential construction reached a $773 billion rate, up 1 percent. Public construction rose 0.2 percent, and public highway and street construction rose 0.1 percent to a $150.6 billion rate. In the category detail, office construction rose 3.9 percent on the month and 24.6 percent against August 2025, power rose 8.5 percent on the year, commercial fell 5.4 percent, lodging fell 10 percent, and manufacturing fell 19.2 percent. Associated Builders and Contractors, reading the same release, put data center construction up 7.5 percent on the month and 73 percent against a year earlier, and chief economist Anirban Basu calculated a 149 percent annualized pace over the past five months.

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, release CB26-158, Oct. 1; Engineering News-Record, Oct. 1

WORKFORCE  Architectural and engineering services added 5,800 jobs in September. The Bureau of Labor Statistics published the September employment report on Oct. 2. Total nonfarm payrolls rose 29,000 and the unemployment rate moved to 4.2 percent from 4.1 percent. Revisions took 60,000 off the prior two months. July went from a gain of 21,000 to a loss of 10,000, and August from 162,000 to 133,000. Construction added 11,000 against a 10,000 monthly average over the prior twelve months, and stands 109,000 above September 2025. Within construction, heavy and civil engineering construction added 2,600 and is up 26,300 over the year, and specialty trade contractors added 4,400, with the bureau reporting nonresidential specialty trades up 12,000. Architectural, engineering, and related services now employ 1,778,800, up 45,000 over the year. Professional and business services lost 9,000 on the month, while professional, scientific, and technical services within that supersector added 6,400. Average hourly earnings rose 5 cents to $37.81 and are up 3 percent over twelve months. The labor force participation rate is 61.8 percent.

Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Situation, Oct. 2; Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics

ENG  The Army Reserve opened an energy savings performance contract covering its Minnesota and Wisconsin facilities. The 88th Readiness Division posted a notice of opportunity on Oct. 1 through Defense Logistics Agency Energy, with responses due Nov. 2 at 3pm eastern. The division is looking for energy conservation measures that deliver measurable energy and cost savings at multiple facilities in the two states. The scope the notice lists runs to building envelope and insulation upgrades, window replacement, LED lighting and controls, geothermal heat pumps, photovoltaic arrays, battery energy storage, hydrogen fuel cells and microgrids, retro-commissioning and re-commissioning, building automation and control systems, domestic hot-water replacement, plug-load analysis and reduction, water-leak detection, and other water-efficiency work. The award would run through the Department of Energy’s fourth-generation energy savings performance contract, an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity vehicle under 42 U.S.C. 8287, and the notice cites the energy security and resilience requirements of 10 U.S.C. 2911. The solicitation is classified under NAICS 541330, engineering services.

Source: SAM.gov, solicitation SP060427R0400, Oct. 1

POLICY  FHWA proposed handing the Georgia Department of Transportation its own NEPA decisions on federal-aid highway projects. Two notices published Oct. 2 open comment through Nov. 2 on a pair of memoranda of understanding, one under 23 U.S.C. 327 and one under 23 U.S.C. 326. Georgia applied for the full assignment program on Sept. 2 and for categorical-exclusion assignment on Oct. 24, 2025. Under the 327 agreement the state would make project-level NEPA decisions, including categorical exclusions, environmental assessments, and environmental impact statements, and would carry out the environmental review and consultation required under the Clean Air, Endangered Species, National Historic Preservation, and Clean Water Acts, as well as Section 4(f) and other federal environmental laws. The carve-outs cover Federal Lands Highway projects the state does not design and build, projects crossing state or international boundaries, recreational trails projects, the Project DeRenne work, and projects advanced by direct recipients of federal-aid funds other than the state DOT. FHWA keeps government-to-government consultation with federally recognized Tribes and project-level air-quality conformity determinations, and the state could not find a constructive use of a Section 4(f) property without FHWA’s approval. Arizona, California, Maine, Nebraska, and Utah hold categorical-exclusion assignment today. Minnesota does not.

Sources: 91 FR 62808, Oct. 2; 91 FR 62806, Oct. 2; FHWA, NEPA assignment

ENG  Willmar Municipal Utilities finished removing its two wind turbines and returned the site to the school district. The utility bought two DeWind turbines in 2009 and sited them on land leased from the Willmar Public School District near the senior high school, with a 20-year design life. DeWind was sold and liquidated in 2018, ending the supply of original-equipment parts, and engineering support for the machines ended in 2022. Both turbines took extensive electrical and structural damage in early 2024 and came out of service that September. Facilities and maintenance supervisor Kevin Marti told the utilities commission on Sept. 28 that the formal decommissioning ran through an engineering review, site preparation, demolition, and site restoration, and that all of the concrete foundations were removed and the land restored to pre-project conditions. The utility budgeted $1 million for the work. Recycling the steel and copper offset part of the cost, and engineering and decommissioning came to $480,700. The turbines cost $8.8 million in 2009 and carried $3 million in bond interest, and lifetime maintenance and lease ran $2.36 million.

Source: West Central Tribune, Oct. 1

The (Almost) Daily Brief publishes most weekdays: policy, funding, workforce, and industry news for Minnesota’s engineering firms, in a few minutes of reading. 

Browse past editions or subscribe →