Editorial Roundup: Indiana

Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. May 27, 2023.

Editorial: GOP lawmakers transfer $212 million in utilitys costs to ratepayers

This year, lawmakers tried to focus everyones attention on such urgent matters as the dangers of any noun preceded by the letters LGBTQ and the need to divert educational funds to private-school vouchers for upper-middle-class families.

Meanwhile, the electric utilities personal legislative gopher squad was rushing through a last-minute bill to make it possible to force ratepayers to shoulder $212 million in costs the states Court of Appeals and Supreme Court had ruled Duke Energy would have to eat, essentially because the utility spent the money before it asked to be reimbursed for it. Sadly, House Bill 1417 and Senate Bill 9 also set a precedent for future depredations by other electric utilities, including possibly I&M.

Indiana utilities historically disposed of massive amounts of coal ash by dumping them into landfills and ponds that sometimes leach dangerous chemicals into the groundwater. When Duke embarked on a program to remediate some of its coal-ash dumps to meet new state and federal standards in the 2010s, it could have requested approval for the cost of that undertaking under a 2011 law.