Utility provider NIPSCO under fire, an historic social media settlement.

And the Secretary of State voter guide proposal.

From the television studios at WFYI Public Media.

It's Indiana Week in Review for the week ending August 28th.

2026.

Indiana Week in Review is produced by WFYI in association with Indiana Public Broadcasting stations.

Additional support is provided by ParrRichey.

Power has been restored for a majority of residents, more than two weeks after a severe storm front hit Northwest Indiana, Barb Anguiano reports many residents are frustrated with the region's utility provider, NIPSCO.

Portage Mayor Austin Bonta says he's heard directly from residents about their concerns with NIPSCO.

He says rates have been.

Going up.

For years, and after the August.

11th.

Storm, he wonders if customers are getting their money's worth.

You know, for the amount of time it's taking, I think that the question really needs to be asked what is the status of NIPSCOs infrastructure and what are they doing to upgrade it, maintain it and make sure it can handle future storms?

NIPSCO currently faces a class action lawsuit alleging the utility failed to manage vegetation, as well as conduct adequate inspections of utility poles and power lines.

Indiana Governor Mike Braun has also.

Tasked Indianas utility watchdog to investigate.

NIPSCO.

So could NIPSCO have done more in the days after the storms?

It's the first question for our Indiana Week in Review panel.

Democrat Ann Delaney, Republican Mike O'Brien.

Jon Schwantes, host of Indiana Lawmakers.

And Niki Kelly, editor in chief at Indiana Capital Chronicle.

I'm Jill Sheridan, managing editor at WFYI.

So and did NIPSCO fail in its response after the storm?

Well, the governor obviously thinks so, since he called it a failure and called for an investigation.

And I think what you do is you look at Illinois's response and you look at Indiana's response, and you've got to make an assumption that they face the same kind of weather.

And their response was so much better.

I mean, you still have people up there two weeks out but don't have power.

It's ridiculous.

And the question you have to ask yourself is, what didn't they do before the storm?

Obviously, you can have a storm that is so tremendous that even healthy trees go down.

But if you have dead trees by power lines that aren't being properly maintained, which apparently is the case here, then then the utility is to blame, or the Utility Regulatory Council, which doesn't put emphasis on those kinds of cleanups.

And I think you also fundamentally have to ask yourself whether we're putting enough of the resources that should be put into Gary, in Gary.

Okay.

I mean, I know it's declining population, but but the more you withhold from that and the more of these kinds of tremendous, terrible, storms do damage, the less likely it is to ever rebuild.

So I think we have to look at all of those things.

And I think an investigation is clearly warranted, both in what was done after the fact and what wasn't done before the fact, to protect them.

And that's what the investigation that's now been filed will be looking at the vegetation management, the tree trimming, as well as, you know, if NIPSCO has spent dollars correctly in recent years, will this give us a lot of insight into what went wrong?

Do you think?

Yeah, I think so.

But I, you know, look, I think it's worth whenever this this was catastrophic.

I was actually up there for.

I'll talk about that.

So again, I was under a bridge.

When it hit.

Right.

but a number of things.

Yeah.

I mean, that one, I'm from there.

And complaint about NIPSCO as a pastime.

It's like a hobby.

and that's been true for a long time.

But but I do think it's important to look at the back end of these events and say, okay, what we get, right?

What would go wrong?

Not just not just utility, you know, turn the lights back on, but the law, the emergency responders, you know, prepared and, and all those things.

But this was also you also have to recognize what an extraordinary event this was.

I mean, this had all the makings of a category two hurricane.

I mean, it was how powerful it was.

I mean, you can trim the tree by the line, but if it get pulled out of the ground, it is flying through the air.

I don't know, I don't know how you're.

I don't know how you're going to know what you're going to do is dead.

right.

Well, it they had just gone through.

So I was up there talking to all the they lost 370,000 customers in one second.

It was the biggest outage in history, that rapidly, and then the roads were impassable.

I was in Hammond.

I was trying to go to Munster.

That's about four miles.

It took me two hours because all the lights were off.

All the side roads were entirely impassable.

Because the roads.

Because the trees were down in all these neighborhoods.

as this thing ripped through and took it.

I mean, it was it was a sort of extraordinary event.

It was these poor people up there, too.

They had from two weeks earlier.

They had a ton of trees go down.

And they.

So you had piles of now brown and now brown trees that had been laying there.

And the city was working.

All those towns up there were working to go clean this up in piles out of people's yards.

They're moving 210 tons of trees a week up there for the last like 2 or 3 weeks.

So it was it was pretty wild.

I mean, being there was just like it was it was pretty extraordinary.

When you have a hundred mile an hour wind you up 120 mile an hour, wind gusts.

I should definitely take a look at it and go, okay, what do we need to do going forward?

Certainly to try to mitigate this, type of because we're going to have more and more of these this this never happened up there before this bad.

Are you saying its climate change?

Going to happen again.

Well, hey, all I know is this isn't the weather I grew up with.

You know, driving through Broad Ripple from the same storm that came and.

Crested the white River.

I am hearing a lot of that, you know, that we can expect more and more of those.

So preparedness will be a key.

You know, the region.

I think people were just really, flabbergasted that it took so long.

And it wasn't just Gary, it was Portage.

It was it was the the whole area.

That's true.

Although if you look at the response and, and the houses that even well into this week, we're still without power.

I think a majority of those were quite a distinct majority were in Gary.

You know, it was a it was a terrible storm.

And there's no way, I suppose, anybody can really prepare for a horrible storm.

But to continue the sort of the storm, concept, it was the perfect storm in terms of PR headaches afterward, too, because you had what arguably could be, well, slow response, certainly slow as defined by the people who wanted their power back on.

You have, not only customers concerned, but members of the faith community, which is a very, vocal element of of the community leadership in that in that area, you had the the National Baptist Conference, which, not just the local, churches, but more broadly said, this is a problem.

NIPSCO needs to do something about this.

We talked about the class action lawsuit dealing with vegetation management, which will we'll be hearing about that more and more and more, as we will with the governor's call for an investigation by the Utility Regulatory Commission.

Lets not forget people hate vegetation management.

Well.

Like it's not like people are like, trim my tree.

The reason I say perfect get out of my beyond all that is it's not as if this utility or many utilities for that matter, are sitting on a reservoir of goodwill like, oh well, we'll cut them some slack on this one because we love our public utilities.

We've already, you know how many times on this show in the past year we talked about people are pissed off at their.

Sorry.

Or very unnerved by this commercial.

Very.

Very angry.

Sorry for your.

Flower like ears.

very angry that the utility costs what they see is unchecked utility costs, whether or not they're justified or not.

I think those people who are on the paying the consumer and are saying somebody is getting rich and it's and I'm help funding it.

So you already had, questionable, atmosphere environment that was already conducive to a PR headache.

You know, you wave this, you fold this in, and it really is the perfect storm.

All these counties, Niki, are now, receiving the major disaster declaration that was approved.

will this help, you know, bring more money to Lake to Porter counties and the recovery effort?

Well, it definitely helps.

you know, I think they approved 21 counties at first.

initially, they asked for 54 more could be added, but, you know, and everyone has to get on there and fill out the application, which I'm told is not all that easy.

so hopefully they're there on that.

Take lots of photos.

And I do think, you know, they will get some help back from state, federal and local because there are some local governments, you know, doing some programs to help to.

It's been wild to watch.

Well, also this week, children will have new restrictions on their social media following a multi-state settlement with social media company Behind Instagram and Facebook and the officials, Indiana officials told the settlement.

As one of the largest consumer protection agreements in state history.

Indiana will receive up to $419 million as part of the settlement with Meta, Attorney General Todd Rokita says the settlement will give parents assistance in managing child social media use.

There is no other settlement like this, in our history, and it could be the model for, future settlements in this technology driven area we find ourselves.

The settlement includes a two hour hard cap on daily limits for children under 18 on both Instagram and Facebook combined.

Those caps also include pauses after 15, 60, and 90 minutes of use to reduce continuous scrolling.

So, Mike, will this settlement have a positive impact for Indiana youth and families?

Certainly can.

We kept the adults off.

All right.

Well, while we're at it, there's no better there.

No better.

Right.

obviously there's a developing mine.

There's so much data around, you know, the harm that prolonged exposure of this can seem due to do to kids.

So, yeah, the structure of the deals, the structure of the settlement and how it's administered is interesting because Meta agreed to they, they pay this out over ten years.

They'll they'll pay another 5 billion if the same two states require the other platforms to do it.

So TikTok, YouTube.

Because this only applies to Facebook and Instagram.

And so it was interesting how they structured the deal to try to pull attorneys general back in to to target those other companies.

And Meta said we'll put another 5 billion in if you, if you, if you, if you make them live by the same rules because it's all the same, it's the same impact, right on on kids.

So that that part will be interesting.

But yeah, I think this is like it's one I'm not sure I could the likelihood of like my tech savvy kids to figure out a workaround if they wanted to is probably going.

To be pretty, pretty.

Easy for so we'll see.

We'll see.

Though, if nothing else, it's important.

Like cultural change, for young people and everybody.

I think that's exactly what it is.

I think that they have read, and I assume they poll all these companies and they realize that people, particularly the adults and supervising these children, are angry about this.

And so they take this step and it's a step, okay.

It's not a cure all by any means.

I mean, a lot of a lot of bad things can happen in two hours.

You could be soliciting, you could be bullied.

All of those things could happen.

But it is a recognition of the fact that there is starting to be pushback from adults concerned about this.

And so they're reacting.

And that's a positive thing.

I do think, however, that we need to think where this money goes when it comes back to Indiana and it ought to be targeted for kids.

I mean, if that's.

Good for kids, mental health.

Hit kids, mental health would be fine.

having, you know, preschool would be fine.

I think there are, you know, lots of ways we could assist children with $400 million worth of money that we need to think about that, rather than a slush fund that goes into what?

Pay the gas taxes we haven't been getting or something.

That is one of my questions.

I mean, I wanted to ask, I mean, $400 million and a lot of the money that we used for the tobacco settlements did not necessarily go to tobacco prevention, historically throughout most states.

Will this help in the right places?

Yeah, I think the attorney general will have to be creative on how they use it, and it doesn't all come at once.

It's over ten years.

So like, you're not going to be able to cover pre-K or, you know, something like that.

And usually these are these smaller settlements, right.

And it goes into a settlement fund which is part partially, then funds the office to continue to bring more of these cases of others.

This is so large that I do think they need to have more of a plan for how to use it.

And I think the mental health angle is that is the very obvious one that they could they could do.

And there are more parental controls, hopefully easier for parents to try to figure this out because, you know, many parents have failed.

And and myself included, good children in terms of almost guinea pigs, you know, in this experiment.

Speak for myself.

I'm still trying to program the VCR.

So, you know, you have.

I'm sorry.

Right next to my eight track there.

and I'm this close to get my Myspace account, so you stay.

You stay tuned.

Oh, my.

But it's, Yeah, there are these controls.

What I think is interesting here is that you have.

It's not a competition in any traditional sense, but where will the policy changes and the most profound policy changes come from?

Will they come from the legislative process?

And we saw some of that in the last session where it was very emotional.

You had a victim of, tragic crime, involving Indiana and Ohio, and parents coming forth and saying, please do something to help protect our, our kids.

And there was, I think, to the surprise of a lot of people, legislation that was enacted.

And Indiana has been trying to be in the vanguard of those efforts.

But then you have this is one of thousands, literally thousands of lawsuits, that the social media companies are facing.

And at this point, it seems like the the courts have brought about quicker, more profound change than the legislative process, which which is not surprised, I suppose, but now it'll be, I'm sure, what it does set the stage for is in the next session ad perhaps, spotlight, if not fuel to lawmakers who want to go back, revisit the issue, and find out additional things that Indiana can do to appear to be proactive.

Thing would be to just apply the same terms to all the other social media platforms, but do it through legislation in To do that.

Yeah, and maybe you could educate kids on what to look for and what to watch for in this.

In every class, you know.

It's important time now for fewer feedback.

Every week we pause on unscientific online poll question.

This week's question will children be better protected as part of the social media settlement with Meta?

Vote yes or no.

The last question posed to viewers has the state's response to the floods been adequate?

35% saying yes and 65% answering no.

If you would like to take part in the poll, go to wfyi.org/IWIR and look for the poll.

What if the Indiana Secretary of State's office released its own voter guide.

That's the promise of independent Secretary of State candidate Greg Ballard.

On Tuesday, he released a prototype of the voter guide he says his office would make available to all voters.

Ben Thorp has more.

The voter guide prototype shown to reporters includes information on how to vote, including individual voter rights and precinct level races.

Ballard says he believes the voter guide could help promote voter turnout and decrease wait times at the polls.

No Hoosier should ever walk into the voting booth feeling unprepared to cast their ballot, and no one should stay home because they didn't have time to learn who or what would be on that ballot.

According to Ballard staff, the guide would cost roughly $2.5 million every year, something that could require support from the legislature.

So, Niki, does this make sense as a campaign promise?

Look, I mean, at least he's trying to throw out some ideas, right?

That's what I like to see in races.

Everyone's going to have their own opinion on whether $2.5 million is a worthy, you know, price tag for that.

I did find some of the sort of vast, you know, piling on against this idea to be funny, given the amount of money the current officeholder has spent on various items.

And I never saw the same piling on.

So, you know, it's one of his ideas and, you know, if he he'll have to find a way to fund it if he gets elected.

We did hear during the debates this week as well, you know, a lot of quick pushback saying, you know, there's not money for that.

But Niki brings up a good point.

I mean, unlikely spending in the Secretary of State's office has has been happening for a few years now.

Yeah, I'm not sure.

it's easy to jump on the price tag.

there were other things about the philosophical aspects of this.

Should somebody who's seeking an office be involved, presumably standing for reelection, be involved in that?

I would also point out, first of all, I'm for anything that gets voters informed.

If people can be informed about what they will see on the ballot, how they can exercise their right to vote, what candidates, how they might connect with them.

I'm all for it.

The issue is, are already those resources, to a large extent out there.

Indiana Citizen, is one example.

League of Women Voters has been at it for a long period of time.

Capital newspapers have been at it for a long time.

Lots of voter guides, that are very sophisticated and very and some of the things that this would do, you know, put in your address and you can see how those are done.

the other problem, it seems to me, as soon as I say and I may be Pollyanna by saying the more information, the more education, the better, but it's still leading the horse to the water and making a drink.

If Hoosier voters, you could fill this table with all of the information they need, if they don't care enough about the process to actually devour it, or at least open it up and look at it, or peruse it, well, then what do we have to gain?

You're not getting it.

Planning a chip in their brain.

So we still have a largely ignorant electorate, except for the people who watch and listen to the show.

everybody else I would classify is fairly ignorant.

We are, you know, hearing a lot out of the secretary of state race, you know, and a lot that was one of the complaints I heard that, you know, that a lot of the issues that are being discussed really have nothing to do with the office.

Anyway.

is this maybe.

And also Ballard has proposed, you know, a bipartisan recount, commission.

Like, are these issues, like, better focused on what what the office is actually at?

Yeah.

Beats when Diego was railing on transgender sports.

Right.

Last election.

Right.

So, but look what I think.

I think I don't think we've done a bad job on process and things like that where I do think we, Well, I do think there has been a knowledge gap for voters.

And this was going back to my time as, Chairman Andrews County was understanding who is down ballot, who's who are these county sheriff candidates?

Who are the county council candidates?

Who are the, you know, my top my township trustee and, you know, polling, going and finding information on your U.S.

Senate candidate or your state Senate candidate is is is easy.

but this this would incorporate that.

So I think that's a positive I think that's a positive development.

And then if it becomes like a one, you know, one you have to the other guys have to oppose it.

It's their opponents permanent.

So you gotta go black.

Some of them.

but you know, I'm mostly with Jon that, you know, you know, it's duplicative.

It's, you know, all the better.

And you can learn more about candidates you probably wouldn't have other had otherwise had any visibility out.

And that's good too.

The thing is, 32 pages long.

That's a lot for I mean, I'm not really.

Saying in.

Indiana, this is going to be the biggest race in November.

And and he has to talk about something.

So you might as well talk about this.

And it's not going to get enacted because the Republicans don't want more voters.

I mean, nobody's going to come out and say, we want less educated voter.

I just said I was with Jon.

Oh, well, there you go.

Which way does that come anyway?

Not on that.

They don't want more voters, okay.

They don't.

So they're not going to spend the money.

And I have a problem.

Not with the amount of money.

I don't know that.

You're right.

That's chicken feet in the overall scheme of things.

The problem is I'm not comfortable having a Partizan elected official who's going to be on the ballot, determining what's essential information for a voter to know.

It's much better done by these.

Not for profits that are out there already doing the same thing.

And by the way, no cost to the taxpayers.

I do have questions of whether it would actually, you know, help drive more Hoosiers to the polls.

They don't want that.

That's why they make it more difficult to vote.

That's why we're 49th or 50th every year in turnout.

It is.

Frustrating.

It's not.

The former head of Indiana's utility commission sued governor Mike Braun over his firing from the board, and Braun's office announced the two had reached a $625,000 settlement.

Eric Weddle has more.

Former Indiana utility regulator Commissioner Andy Zay alleged that Braun fired him because of a political disagreement.

The five member IURC supervises rate changes, and Zay voted to approve a $71 million rate increase for AES Indiana customers.

Braun denounced the hike, demoted Zay as commission chair.

Then he fired him.

Zay sued, alleging Braun illegally removed him without cause.

Braun countered that Zay misused campaign funds.

The settlement means Zay will not try to regain his commission chair, but the state will pay him $625,000.

So, Jon, what should Hoosiers make of this latest utility commission drama?

well, sort of.

I think what we saw unfolding before, there's a lot of pressure.

And I'll go back to what we said ten minutes ago.

We have building animosity toward the utility sector, toward the, toward the governmental regulators that some Hoosiers think are not being aggressive enough.

Clearly, the governor has bought into this, and in what some could say is performative, made this big splash about removing.

Andy Zay an individual he had put in position just a few months earlier.

and questions about whether, you know, where does the performance start and stop and where do the legalities and the realities of adhering to Indiana statute, come into play.

So to me, this tells me that the fact that Andy Zay the person removed is getting essentially his entire, if I'm not mistaken, the amount is what his salary and compensation would have been had he completed his term.

That tells me.

the governor.

Somebody said, I guess he had a point.

if you if you think you're on solid ground and you're already, have a chance to command the bully pulpit and you think you're doing the right thing, you're probably not going to settle that quickly.

You're going to milk this this, policy cow and political cow a lot more until it's done moving.

Mickey, I. Got to get off that metaphor before, the farmers.

Would itself.

Yeah.

I wanted to ask you about some interesting reporting you were down that, you know, about an assessment, about whether there's valuable and whether there's risk involved.

Now, investing in Indiana's utility because of this, a political involvement?

Absolutely.

Some of, the investment advisors out there starting to warn investors from Indiana's utility own and, you know, companies, because they're becoming very unclear about the profit margins they're going to be allowed to make.

I wanted to note also about this, though.

I think it was getting messy on both sides.

No one was going to come out clean on that.

There were probably going to be depositions.

And the big thing is, if they had gotten some sort of temporary restraining order to stop moving forward on some of those cases, it would have ground the IURC to a halt.

And I think that was probably pushing toward a settlement.

Yeah, I'm not sure that was the entire reason.

I mean, if you had if you had the governor's office through an intermediary trying to pressure someone in a in a decision making.

On both sides.

Well, I know, but I mean that.

And then what they did is they said he can only be fired for cause.

So they trumped up cause his vote is not cause.

And now they're admitting the fact that they they completely screwed up by paying him his entire salary and his attorney's fees.

pretty clear.

There may be some wrongdoing on one side, it clearly is weighted much more on the governor side.

And that is Indiana Week in review for this week.

Our panel has been Democrat Ann Delaney, Republican Mike O'Brien, Jon Schwantes host of Indiana Lawmakers.

And Niki Kelly, editor in chief at Indiana Capital Chronicle.

You can find Indiana Week in Review's podcast and episodes at wfyi.org/IWIR or on the PBS app.

I'm Jill Sheridan, managing editor at WFYI.

Join us next time because a lot can happen in an Indiana week.

The views expressed are solely those of the panelists.

Indiana Week in Review is produced by WFYI in association with Indiana Public Broadcasting stations.

Additional support is provided by ParrRichey.