IURC Heads Out on a Ridiculous Listening Tour

Now let’s talk about this article from the Indiana Capital Chronicle. Next time you want to look up “complete waste of time” or “glorified floor show” in the dictionary, this article might have a picture next to it. By the way, speaking of the Capital Chronicle, Niki Kelly will be with us tomorrow. She’s one of the best reporters in the business. We love the Capital Chronicle and love promoting them because they provide great content for our show. Everybody should bookmark it and check it daily. People ask me all the time what I read each day to prepare for the show. We always try to cite the sources when we talk about stories, but I don’t mind telling you where I look. We read quite a bit from the Indiana Capital Chronicle and the Indy Star. We check the television stations—RTV6, Fox 59, Wish TV. We read the IBJ. We go through all of them. Those are the places we visit to pull stories from. We try to support local media that’s covering important stories and holding government accountable. This one comes from the Indiana Capital Chronicle. According to the article, the IURC is encouraging people to bring copies of their utility bills to an “affordability listening tour” they’re about to start. Let’s remind everyone how this works. Most of you are longtime listeners and already know this, but for the new people joining us, here’s how utility bills work in the state of Indiana. The government—meaning the state Senate, the state House, and the governor—does not directly control your utility bills. Instead, the governor appoints a five-member board called the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, or IURC. Those five people, appointed by the governor, are responsible for setting utility rates. Utilities operate as monopolies. They have total control over the area they’re allowed to serve. You can’t shop around. You can’t price check. You have to use whoever the government assigns to that area. The utilities can ask for rate increases whenever they want, and there’s no punishment for asking. The only thing standing between you and higher utility bills is the IURC. Over the past decade, they haven’t done a good job. Under Holcomb—and thanks to former lieutenant governor Sue Ellspermann, who left and allowed Holcomb to become governor—the IURC has done a terrible job pushing back against utilities and standing up for ratepayers. Braun made three appointments to the commission this past year. Now that new IURC is launching this listening tour, asking people to bring their utility bills. According to the Capital Chronicle, it’s a ten-session tour that will begin this week. Before that, they’re meeting with the five for-profit utilities in Indiana. These are the big investor-owned utilities in the state. Interestingly, many of these same companies were funding the Indiana Economic Development Foundation. That’s the group connected to the trips lawmakers and appointees took to foreign countries through the IEDC. But there’s no conflict of interest there, right? The government is totally on your side. Totally standing up for you. Sure, these utilities gave money to the government. Sure, they received rate increases over the past decade. But it’s all just a coincidence, right? None of those things could possibly be related. So the IURC is going to have a big meeting with these utilities and then go on their listening tour across the state.