Five people decide if CenterPoint gets to raise rates. They each make a lot of money

Sarah Loesch, Evansville Courier & Press

EVANSVILLE — Five people will decide if CenterPoint Energy gets to raise rates for local customers to a price many have said is simply unaffordable.

And each of them make more than $100,000 a year.

The Courier & Press recently reported ahead of a Feb. 29 public hearing who each of the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission members were, how long they'd been on the IURC, and the nature of their previous votes.

That didn't include their salaries, however. Each commissioner makes at least three times Evansville's median household income, according to census data.

Their salaries are:

  • Jim Huston, chairman: $163,424.68

  • Wesley R. Bennett: $152,339.10

  • Sarah Freeman: $152,339.10

  • David Veleta: $152,339.10

  • David Ziegner: $152,339.10

People fill the afternoon session of the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission’s public hearing on CenterPoint’s electric rate increase request at the The Old National Events Plaza in Evansville, Ind., Feb. 29, 2024.
People fill the afternoon session of the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission’s public hearing on CenterPoint’s electric rate increase request at the The Old National Events Plaza in Evansville, Ind., Feb. 29, 2024.

IURC promises 'just and reasonable rates'; public tells them to 'do your job'

During that hearing, and in the more than 2,000 public letters submitted officially by the Office of Utility Consumer Counselor earlier this month, multiple local customers asked the IURC to do its job.

In the mind of customers, that boils down to denying the increase based on the IURC's own mission statement: "An advocate of neither the public nor the utilities, the Commission is required by state statute to make decisions in the public interest to ensure the utilities provide safe and reliable service at just and reasonable rates."

The "just and reasonable rates" are where local residents, and local officials, get stuck.

On Feb. 29, residents pleaded with the IURC to say no to the increase which would take a residential electric bill for 1,000 kilowatt hours from $207.20 to $253.40, according to the OUCC.

Just do the right thing, they said. Letters, now a part of the official record, show customers simply telling the IURC, "do your job."

"(I) would hope you all would do your job and not allow them to keep raking your citizens over the coals," a letter from a Evansville resident stated.

"It is your job to ensure an unchecked and monopolized corporation does not take advantage of the people of Indiana and so far you have failed us," another wrote.

Customers will find out likely in the fall what the IURC decides.

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: 5 people decide if your CenterPoint bill jumps. Here's what they make

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