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The state-authorized surcharge on electric bills to pay for district attorney salaries is now hitting utility bills of We Energies customers.

The Milwaukee utility is the last of the investor-owned utilities in the state to begin collecting the surcharge. The increase took effect with bills processed on Thursday, utility spokesman Brian Manthey said.

For residential customers, the fee amounts to 47 cents a month. The fee will drop to 26 cents a month for the fiscal year that starts in July.

Small businesses will pay $1.07 a month beginning now and 57 cents a month beginning in July. Factories can expect to pay $29.53 a month starting this week, and $15.83 a month beginning in July, the utility said.

Wisconsin legislators included the surcharge among a host of fee increases aimed at helping balance the state budget. Other fee increases include surcharges imposed on cell-phone bills.

Prosecutors are being paid from a fund originally designed to help poor people pay their utility bills and weatherize their homes. The extra fee is the latest in a series of budget maneuvers that have redirected a total of $166 million from electricity ratepayers to non-energy-related state government purposes since 2002.

We Energies will end up collecting about $8 million from its customers across the state over the next 19 months as its portion of the utility tax collection.

For several weeks, We Energies has included a message on its bills announcing that the "low-income assistance fee" it collects on behalf of the state is increasing, Manthey said.

"We are required to collect this fee and pass it directly to the State of Wisconsin," the utility's message to customers says. "We do not earn any profit from this fee."

Some utilities were more blunt in telling customers the exact reason for the fee. Green Bay-based Wisconsin Public Service Corp. told customers about the fee for district attorney salaries in a colorful insert accompanying October bills.

Bob Jones, a community advocate who has criticized the district attorney surcharge, said legislators he's talked to have heard from plenty of constituents about paying state taxes via their utility bill.

"I think people were very genuine that they were upset that the money was taken, and they were genuinely bothered and concerned that they were getting grief for it," Jones said.

Although there's agreement that utility bills should not be used to collect revenue for general state purposes in the future, Jones said the state's structural deficit may prove so big that similar funding raids may take place again in 2011.

"Our experience with this last budget cycle made me very skeptical and cynical about our ability to protect that," he said.