Clergy, elected officials, community members advocate for consumer protections after August storms

Going for days and weeks without electricity is not what NIPSCO customers should be paying for. Nor is it in the best interest of customers for NIPSCO to have a blank check to raise rates.

Those were some of the messages at the Thursday, September 24 Town Hall on NIPSCO Accountability hosted by POWER ON NWI organizer Emmett Mosley, held at Gary’s Trinity United Church of Christ.

POWER ON NWI or People Organizing for Well-Being, Energy & Resilience, Oversight Now Northwest Indiana is a collaboration of clergy, elected officials, and community members advocating for consumer protections following the severe storms of August 11 that led to flooding and power outages.

Mosley asked his audience to come with him to Indianapolis for the Tuesday, September 29th meeting of the Interim Study Committee on Energy, Utilities, and Telecommunications chaired by State Senator Ed Soliday, (R-Valparaiso).

Soliday called the meeting to examine the response to the August 11 derecho, hear directly from affected communities and stakeholders, and identify opportunities for improvement.

“We are in a war, so we got to be prepared to do battle,” Mosley said. “We wanted to bring you information, but then we want to challenge you to work with one another, to work with groups, so we can get the total job done for now and in the future.”

“You may have to get some scars, but this is a good fight and we ought to be in it right now,” Mosley added.

“NIPSCO customers already pay the highest electric bills in the state. We must work together to hold NIPSCO accountable to ensure justice is served for communities who spent weeks in the dark, and that communities do not spend so long in the dark again,” said Jonathan Wilson, of POWER ON.

In his recorded remarks, Gary Mayor Eddie Melton said he was informed by the president of NIPSCO that they are working to respond to the city’s recovery action plan, item by item. In August, Melton had issued a set of priorities and proposed actions to NIPSCO to ensure the City of Gary recovers from the August 11th storm and become more resilient moving forward.

The recovery action plan’s 4 pages prioritized customer relief, community recovery, accountability and emergency response, and long-term grid reliability and resilience investment.

Kerwin Olson, Executive Director of the Citizens Action Coalition, a statewide consumer and environmental advocacy organization, was invited to explain how state elected and appointed officials in the Office of the Governor and Indiana General Assembly determine utility prices.

NIPSCO’s gas and electric customers become familiar with the government’s role when NIPSCO sends notices of rate cases – upcoming changes to prices. Customers learn about the role of the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC) which must approve, deny or modify a rate increase.

Customers learn about the Office of Utility Consumer Counselor (OUCC), the state agency legally tasked with representing consumer interests in rate cases.

Since the governor appoints officials to both agencies, Olson says the record shows that decisions favor the utility companies.

“Indiana is one of only four states across the country where those that regulate the investor-owned monopolies are not directly elected by the public or confirmed by one or both chambers of the General Assembly,” Olson said.

“One of our demands as far as statewide change that we need the Indiana General Assembly to enact – we want to directly elect those that regulate our utility,” Olson said. “We elect 153 people statewide to oversee our tax dollars, yet we elect zero to oversee our utility goals, and that’s not okay.”

Gary city councilman Darren Washington said the Gary Common Council had approved a resolution, C.P.R. 2026-08, supporting the repeal of NIPSCO’s tracker mechanisms that allow the utility to adjust costs to customers several times a year. Trackers show up on gas and electric bills as ‘TDSIC’ charges.

Washington said the resolution has been sent to every member of the Interim Study Committee. “I have already started sending this resolution to every school board, to every town council, to every city council, and every county council, asking them to sponsor the same resolution.”

Gary Sanitary District Executive Director Ragen Hatcher was surprised the municipal utility had to go 4 days without power.

“We pay NIPSCO for a backup power generator every month. We pay for that service. What we learned was after the storm the regulator at that location had not been upgraded for over 25 years. So we couldn’t do the switchover,” Hatcher said.

Story Posted:09/28/2026