With two weeks until committee report deadline, hearings are getting longer and issues are becoming more complex, as they typically do during a budget year with a large number of sometimes competing priorities. 

This week we saw House Bill 1290 pass the House — unanimously. It’s reassuring when the entire House of Representatives can agree, in today’s supercharged political times, to pass legislation that helps low income families. HB1290 will increase the Earned Income Tax Credit to 12% and recoupled Indiana’s EITC with that of the federal EITC.

We also saw the “advanced recycling” bill we told you about last week, SB472, pass out of the Senate, 44-5. SB472 codifies toxic materials refining processes.

After the House sent HB1421 over to the Senate last week, the House Utilities Committee passed the rest of the anti-consumer trifecta of bills along partisan lines: House Bill 1420 by a vote of 9-4 and House Bill 1417 by a vote of 9-4, as well. The Indianapolis Star discussed these bills in a front-page story, Advocates worry energy bills give more power to utilities, put consumers at risk. 

You might recall, we introduced you to these bills last week. House Bill 1420 would grant utilities what is known as the Right of First Refusal (ROFR) for all transmission projects built in their monopoly service territory. The bill will further undermine competition against monopoly utilities that is essential to controlling electric bills, by effectively blocking competitive bidding on the maintenance, operations, and ownership of highly expensive transmission projects. 

House Bill 1417 is a dangerous piece of legislation that will unquestionably lead to unaffordable utility bills for all utility consumers (including electric, gas, water, and wastewater) by literally making the IURC a rubber stamp with little to no authority. The bill will allow utilities essentially to self-approve and book any expenditures they make and guarantees that they will recover those costs from ratepayers in a future rate case, including financing costs and return on investment (profit margin) for those investments.

We testified in three committees Thursday morning and weighed in on four pieces of legislation by 11am. In the House Financial Services Committee we testified in opposition to House Bill 1547 because it would raise existing rates on large subprime loans from 25% to 36% plus additional fees as high as $200 per loan. Low-to-moderate income families would be targeted for these types of loans. We see a number of Hoosiers turning to these loans as an unfortunate solution to pay for unaffordable utility bills. These loans are not a sustainable solution to lift Hoosiers out of poverty. The bill did not move out of committee but may this coming week. 

We also attended the Senate Utilities Committee where we testified in support of Senate Bill 298, a bill to address the cost recovery of infrastructure improvements by municipal and non-profit water and wastewater utilities. An amendment clarifying that the legislation did not apply to investor-owned utilities was adopted in committee . 

We were also in Senate Appropriations to testify in support of Senator Andy Zay’s (R-Huntington) SB221. It was originally heard and passed in Senate Utilities but was scheduled again in Appropriations due to its perceived fiscal impact. While the bill now recommends, rather than requires, the state to conduct an energy audit of the Indiana Capitol Complex, we were happy to support the bill, with hopes it will be restored to its committee passed version.

We were also in Senate Appropriations to testify on Senate Bill 390, authored by Sen. Mark Messmer (R-Jasper). SB390 is a post cursor to last year’s Senate Bill 411, which set voluntary standards for renewable-friendly siting ordinances at the local level. The legislature chose not to fund the incentive for locals to write the ordinances and that’s what SB390 does.  We were prepared to testify but the chair of the committee, Sen. Ryan Mishler (R-Bremen) chose to table the bill after 45 minutes of testimony. We will update you on any action stemming from this bill.

You might remember we told you the Senate Elections Committee was going to hear SB262 which would place into state law “Big Lie” audit requirements based on flawed processes that have already been debunked. That hearing got tabled and the bill hasn’t been rescheduled. We will continue to monitor. 

Upcoming Next Week

A note about Senate Bill 335, which creates a climate task force: we reported last week that it would receive a hearing soon but the official notice hasn’t posted yet. We will let you know as soon as it posts so keep watch on our social.

The House and Senate Utilities Committees have not announced meetings yet for net week but we are expecting them to announce hearings.

We are coming up soon on the halftime deadline for the Indiana Legislature. Keep track of legislative deadlines here.

To follow these bills in real time, make sure you follow our social media for an up-to-date detailing of our work at the Indiana State Capitol: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and the Indiana General Assembly page of our website. 

Respectfully Submitted,

Kerwin Olson & Lindsay Haake