Citizens Energy Seeking More Than 50% Increase In Wastewater Fees

If Citizens Energy gets its way, your wastewater bills you pay along with your water bills will increase by more than 50% over the next two years, increasing average monthly fees from $35 a month to $48 a month. When you add the double-digit increases approved following the purchase of the water and wastewater utilities from the City of Indianapolis, wastewater fees will have tripled since 2011.

Advance Indiana was alone in warning Indianapolis residents that the sale of the water and wastewater utilities to Citizens Energy was nothing more than a massive fraud on the public to flip the utility's ownership for the third time in a period of a decade simply for the purpose of generating multi-million dollar payoffs to the corrupt SOBs who use Indianapolis' consolidated government as their personal profit center to the detriment of the city's residents.

That absurd sale required Citizens Energy, which is allegedly a public benefit corporation, to grossly overpay the City for the utility for the sole purpose of creating a half billion dollar pot of money Mayor Greg Ballard could use to pass out to his campaign contributors to win re-election in 2011. The Attorney General brought civil RICO charges against City of East Chicago officials for conducting similar schemes for electoral victories in a scandal dubbed "Sidewalks for Votes." But the state's Attorney General, our Marion Co. Prosecutor and federal prosecutor all turn a blind eye to all of the corruption taking place in Indianapolis because they are personally beholden to the people stealing from us.

The quid pro quos from that 2011 deal were unmistakable. Two key council members who steered approval of the deal through the council, former CCC President Ryan Vaughn and Councilor Jackie Nytes, were subsequently awarded with big six-figure jobs. Nytes got the CEO job at the Indianapolis/Marion County Public Libary and a paid board position on Citizens Energy. Vaughn was awarded with the job as executive director of the Indiana Sports Corporation after a short stay in a six-figure job as the mayor's chief of staff. Vaughn's law firm employer, Barnes & Thornburg, represented Viola, the private operator of the water utility, which was rewarded with a $29 million break-up fee despite overwhelming evidence it had repeatedly breached its operating agreement with the utility and fraudulently overbilled Indianapolis water customers. Prosecutors refused to investigate allegations Vaughn illegally took actions to benefit Barnes & Thornburg and its clients while serving as the council president.

Other rumors about about payoffs, kickbacks and bribes accompanying the City's approval of the sale of the water and wastewater utilities have been ignored by federal and state prosecutors, and our worthless local media true to form has refused to allocate any resources to investigate the allegations for the benefit of the public. Whistle blowers who've complain to prosecutors are ignored. This traces all the way back to the original sale of the water company to NiSource. At that time, the utility was run by James Morris. Yes, that James Morris who has been at the center of the hundreds of millions of dollars in shakedowns in his role as Pacers Sports & Entertainment CEO to provide subsidies to the Pacers.

By state law, the utility should have been offered to sale to Citizens Energy before any other buyer. That law was ignored not once but twice. The second sale was made to the City of Indianapolis under Mayor Bart Peterson, who conspired with former CCC President Beurt SerVaas to purchase the utility for an inflated price from NiSource after it was stripped of its most valuable, profit-making assets. NiSource paid $288 million for the water utility, sold off assets worth about $100 million, neglected infrastructure needs and then sold the water utility a few years later to the City for $525 million. The City had to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars to begin dealing with the ignored infrastructure needs, in addition to paying a hefty annual fee to a private operator. The City had already privatized wastewater management services to United Water back under the Goldsmith administration, which was supposed to achieve savings that never materialized.

Morris, who had received more than $6 million of the $20 million paid to the utilities' executives as part of their golden parachute packages, was also rewarded with a lucrative seat on NiSource's board of directors. Both Peterson and SerVaas had personal business interests that created a conflict of interest for them, neither of which disclosed those conflicts. The two then agreed to turn over its operation to the French company, Veolia, on one-sided terms in favor of Veolia. The privatization deal was accompanied by more payoffs and kickbacks to the usual suspects.

By the time Citizens Energy had acquired the water and wastewater utilities, there was nearly $1.5 billion in debt. There was no justification for a sale merely assuming the debt, let alone the half billion dollar cash premium Citizens Energy added to the pot, further burdening the nonprofit utility with debt that is now being passed on to consumers, whose water rates have tripled and now the wastewater rates will have tripled. Citizens Energy has created dozens of high-paying jobs for political insiders as favors to the downtown mafia. Additionally, the utility blows an absurd amount of money on advertising and corporate entertaining, including suites and premium seats at Lucas Oil Stadium and Banker's Life Fieldhouse, none of which provide any benefit to consumers.

This is what happens when you live in a City where nothing but crooks who steal our public assets are allowed to hold positions in our local government and when you have a news media that aids and abets the thieves and crooks every step of the way. The little people get stiffed at every turn, and the fat cats keep getting richer and richer as we suffer through it. When will the people of this city finally get fed up enough about always getting the short end of the stick and do something about it? You sure as hell aren't going to get any help from the people you've entrusted to run your government.