2024 marks our 50th year advocating on behalf of Hoosiers regarding energy policy, utility reform, healthcare, pollution prevention, and family farms. We are proud to be Indiana's oldest and largest consumer and environmental advocacy organization. Since our inception in 1974, we've helped to save Hoosiers more than $10 billion in excess utility charges.

The 2024 legislative session is the "short" session during which a wide array of topics, other than the biennial budget, may be considered by the legislature. By statute the session must be completed by March 14 compared to April 29 for the "long" session. Legislative leaders have indicated their desire to end session earlier, but we shall see.

The Legislature kicked off with a bang on Monday, January 8th with the Governor’s State of the State address on Tuesday the 9th, the State of the Judiciary on Wednesday the 10th, and a meeting of both the House Utilities and Senate Utilities Committees. There is no time to waste this year, with only three weeks of committee hearings before legislative deadlines are upon us and bills start dying due to time constraints.

By the end of the week, we were tracking more than forty bills, including several consumer-friendly bills aimed at authorizing third-party community solar; improving consumer outcomes by way of data reporting and disconnection policies; the repeal of sales tax of utility services; and improved oversight of water withdrawals. Also introduced is a dangerous anti-consumer and anti-environment bill designed to make it more difficult for utilities to retire coal-fired power plants. This is a coal bailout bill which closely mirrors the recently passed SB4 in Kentucky.

The House Utilities Committee held an informational meeting regarding electric utility preparedness for off nominal events such as weather and unplanned interruptions in service. Each investor-owned utility made a presentation, along with the electric cooperatives. You can watch the archived videos of House utility committee hearings here. 

The Senate Utilities Committee heard Senate Bill 5, written by Sen. Eric Koch (R-Bedford) an effort aimed at accelerating the replacement of customer owned lead service lines. Our Executive Director, Kerwin Olson testified in favor of the bill, with the caution that SB5 is solely limited to single-family homes—and excludes multi-family dwellings, some of which have resulted in high profile incidents thanks to delinquent landlords. The bill advanced without opposition and is expected to be up for a vote before the full Senate next week. You can watch archived videos of Senate utility committees here. 

Bills are still appearing on the Clerk’s website - you can track them here. We expect them to continue appearing throughout the upcoming days. Please continue to check the CAC website for a list of all the bills that we are currently tracking. A complete list should be available by the end of the week. The legislative deadlines for the 2024 Legislative Session can be found here.

Legislative leaders and the Governor announced their legislative priorities including literacy, childcare, and antisemitism.

Items upcoming this week

• The House Utilities Committee will meeting Tuesday, hearing HB1277 State administration of federal BEAD program, HB1206 Voting by small water and wastewater utilities, HB1163 Certificates of public convenience necessity, and HB1278 IURC and office of energy development matters.
• On Wednesday, the House Environmental Affairs Committee will hear a slew of legislation including a ambiguously titled Wetlands bill, HB1383, authored by Chairman Alan Morrison.
• The Senate Appropriations Committee will hear SB52, which prohibits dedicated lanes for transit projects, specifically IndyGo’s Blue Line Bus Rapid Transit initiative, a transformative transportation initiative funded mostly by an FTA Small Starts grant. We object to enshrining in state statute the preemption of projects designed specifically for public benefit. After all, dedicated lanes are exactly the point of rapid transit—to move passengers quickly while improving traffic and transit headways—all items which contribute to quality of life and place.
• We do not anticipate that a meeting of the Senate Utilities Committee will be held this week.

We will be live-tweeting and updating our social media throughout these committee meetings and all legislative goings on as it relates to consumers and utility ratepayers in Indiana. 

Respectfully submitted,
Kerwin Olson & Lindsay Shipps Haake
Government Affairs