1. United States
2. Ind.
3. Letter

I'm writing as a constituent in Northwest Indiana about NIPSCO's response to the August 11 derecho and the rate filings that followed it. That storm was the largest outage event in NIPSCO's history, cutting power to roughly 375,000 customers, about 80% of its Indiana base, and it took nearly two weeks to fully restore. While crews were still working, NIPSCO filed three separate rate-tracker applications with the IURC, on August 11, 14, and 20, which would raise the average bill by $7.33 a month, about $88 a year, with parts of it potentially taking effect November 1. That's on top of last year's 16.75% increase, and NIPSCO customers already pay more than any other utility's customers in the state. Gov. Braun has directed the OUCC to petition the IURC for a formal investigation into NIPSCO's vegetation management and whether previously approved infrastructure money was actually spent as promised. A proposed class-action lawsuit makes similar allegations about neglected tree-trimming near power lines. I'm asking you to: 1. Support a hold on approval of NIPSCO's pending rate filings until Gov. Braun's investigation is complete. 2. Push for that investigation to directly examine whether infrastructure and reliability funds NIPSCO already collected were spent as promised. 3. Support commissioning an independent feasibility study on alternative ownership models, cooperative or municipal, for NIPSCO's Northwest Indiana territory. Indiana already runs this successfully through rural electric cooperatives and over 70 municipal utilities statewide, and a study would tell us whether that structure makes sense here too. Northwest Indiana has been hit by repeated major outages this year, and residents deserve to know that the money we're already paying is going toward the reliability we were promised before any new increase is approved. Thank you for your attention to this.