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Fishers Mayor Scott Fadness is publicly criticizing the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission for its decision to consider a group of utilities’ request for a pandemic-related rate increase.
The group of 10 gas and electric utilities, including Indianapolis Power & Light Co. and Duke Energy Inc., filed a joint petition with the IURC in early May, saying they expected to see “significantly reduced load and revenue” as a result of businesses closing or reducing operations during the health crisis. The utilities asked the commission for permission to collect the lost revenue from customers.
About two weeks later, the IURC ordered an investigation into the impact of the pandemic on utilities and ratepayers. The regulatory body said it would consider the utilities’ request for a rate hike.
Fadness, mayor of the Hamilton County city of more than 96,000 people since 2015, said Wednesday he has supplied the Indiana Office of the Utility Consumer with a statement in opposition to the revenue recovery.
“This is poor public policy at best and greedy at worst,” Fadness said in the statement. “Utilities are regulated in order to ensure that essential services that function as monopolies do not take advantage of the ratepayer, the small business owner, the steel mill operator, the public school system, or your local government. The IURC does not exist to de-risk a sector of industry from any downturn in the economy, regardless of the cause of that downturn. This is undoubtedly a user-funded bailout of utilities.”
Fadness said the utilities should make financial and business adjustments just like nearly everybody else during the pandemic.
“Over the last nine weeks I have witnessed countless businesses, both small and large, make unbelievably difficult decisions as they face the realities of decrease in demand due to COVID-19,” he said. “They have let go of long-term employees. They have burned through their life savings to maintain payroll. They have had to sell their assets. They have been forced to reinvent themselves.”
The mayor said other businesses wouldn’t be able to get away with what the utilities are requesting.
“Comparatively to the regulated utilities asking for their bailout, when a small restaurant in Fishers opens back up and the owner realizes the full measure of his or her financial loss, are they going to raise the cost on the menu to make up for it? No, because the forces of a free market will not allow for that,” Fadness said. “When local governments see significant reductions in revenue due to the downturn in the economy, will they seek to raise taxes without any accountability? No, because the residents have a voice and will hold government leaders accountable through systems in place.”
Fadness signed the letter as a representative of Fishers, but also in his role as chairman of the Central Indiana Council of Elected Officials and chairman of Advancing Indiana Municipalities Legislative Committee.
Fadness isn’t the first person to bash the utilities and the IURC over the matter. Thousands of consumers have written letters and emails protesting the request.
Consumer group Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana called the request “unprecedented utility greed” and said the IURC should have turned it down outright.
The Indiana Energy Association, a trade group that represents utilities, said last month that at least 29 states had seen similar regulatory filings.
Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb has declined to give an opinion on the request, other than to say it is best to let the IURC do its job.
The IURC does not comment on ongoing regulatory matters.
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Hooray for Mayor Fadness who by his actions demonstrates his leadership and concern for the welfare of the many over that of the few. It is refreshing to see a politician with a spine.
Agree
Fadness has perhaps the biggest ego in Central IN politics. His strategy of stealing tax base from Indianapolis to fund the runaway bloat of Fishers leaves us poorer as a region. Had state and local government not mandated the closure of businesses, sheltering of residents, and travel restrictions, regulated utilities would have no standing for this request. The irony is that if people of his ilk had let the “free markets” reign and for people to decide on their own how to best protect themselves, this wouldn’t even be an issue. What a hypocrite.
I would love some clarity on what revenue the utilities are missing out on. It would seem to me that if people are using energy, particularly at home during stay-at-home orders, their bills would inherently be higher. Are there a lot of people not paying their bills? What am I missing here?
Factories that are operating at full tilt use a lot of electricity. Likewise shopping malls and office buildings (lights and HVAC). The loss of energy usage in those places is not made up for by people using a little more electricity at home.
Fadness is right on here. Hitting the customers at this time is unconscionable.
I guess power outages are a better option. Maybe we could sell off the big “civic” buildings in Fishers and Carmel.
Well, I’ll be darned. Fadness peeked out from under his blinders to see the greed and unfairness of the Utility companies. How does the IURC represent the little guy here against the big greedy guys? I will tell you right now IURC
will do nothing.