“Hello, how are you — If you're interested in speaking, we need to stand over here to sign up.”
Michael Eckert with the Indiana Office of Utility Consumer Counselor (OUCC) welcomes dozens of hearing attendees at the Old National Events Plaza Thursday afternoon.
More than 300 attended the first of two hearings for the CenterPoint Energy Electric Rate Case, where comments are recorded by a court stenographer with at least one judge in on the hearing panel.
CenterPoint Energy has an electric rate case before the Indiana Utility Regulatory Committee (IURC) to raise electric rates over three years, increase set fees and be able to shut power off on consumers remotely.
CEI South — the local CenterPoint Energy — has filed a petition with the IURC that would raise monthly electric rates for a typical residential customer by about $28 dollars by 2026.
The increase in late 2024 would be $10, $6 in 2025 and $12 in 2026.
A decision on the rate case will be made in the fall. The point of the hearing is just to take input from the public, which will be part of the information for the IURC.
The first comment was from Evansville Mayor Stephanie Terry.
“In the two months since taking office, there is no issue I have heard more about than this proposed rate increase,” she said. “People call our office to talk about it. They email us. They came to our traveling City Hall last week to talk about it. They comment on nearly every one of our social media posts. I'm not exaggerating when I say that.”
She outlined how important affordable utility costs are for community development.
Terry did recognize the positive contributions the CenterPoint Energy Foundation has made in the community — and that she really has no control over this decision.
She was followed up by County Commission President Cheryl Musgrave, who also argued against the proposed water rate increases from the Evansville Water and Sewer Utility, which are still pending.
“If you take them and add them to this particular rate increase, the unaffordability becomes extreme,” Musgrave said.
“It is phenomenally difficult for the people of this community to make ends meet, I urge you to look up how much the income is for this area of the state versus other areas of the state, you will find a large difference. We work hard every day to narrow that gap. This will make it impossible.”
The Commission filed a resolution which also acts as an official comment, opposing these increases, and asking the Indiana General Assembly to strip sales tax from utility bills.
Many speakers shared stories of hardship from residents, exacerbated by their current electric bills. Others like Eric Johnson argued against CenterPoint from an economic perspective.
He highlighted how profitable CenterPoint is — more so than other utility companies by at least four percentage points.
This is a complaint the County Commission mentioned in their resolution against the rate increase.
CenterPoint Energy Director of Communications Alyssia Oshodi said they understand how rates affect their customers.
“I would say that we are making necessary investments, and then again, due to timing, from a regulatory perspective, have filed for the recovery of those investments when we have.”
This is the first electric base rate increase in 14 years, but not the first fee increase. The IURC approved two unrelated increases recently, and Oshodi said those increases had to happen based on the time of the year.
She said the overall goal with all increases is to maintain a high level of service, move toward renewable resources and reduce service disruptions.
“We have seen a decrease in not only the number of outages but if outages do occur … the investments we have made to upgrade our meter technology is such that we are able to isolate outages and decrease the amount of customers that might be affected at one time.”
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