Minnesota regulators on Thursday voted unanimously to cap ratepayer-funded salaries for Xcel Energy’s top 10 executives at $150,000 apiece annually for the years 2022 through 2024 — millions of dollars a year less than what the company sought.
The decision by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission is the latest development in a lengthy dispute that stems from a routine electric rate case filed in 2021.
Commissioners voted in that case to cap executive salaries for top Xcel executives, based on criticism from some customers. At the time, Xcel had sought a 21-percent electric rate increase over three years while Minnesota was recovering from the Covid pandemic and dealing with rising inflation.
Regulators decided that Democratic Gov. Tim Walz’s salary at the time — $150,000 a year — was a reasonable proxy for what Xcel customers should have to pay top utility executives. In that same decision, the PUC also disallowed millions of dollars in incentive pay for top executives.
