Citizens Energy CEO Earns Nearly $2 Million While Nonprofit Loses More Than $80 Million

It's supposed to operate as a nonprofit, public benefit corporation with a mission of providing public utilities to Indianapolis' citizens at an affordable cost, but Citizens Energy operates no differently than a fat-cat, privately-owned public utility looking to stiff utility consumers at every turn. The IBJ reports that Citizens Energy will report a loss of $81.3 million during its 2013 fiscal year despite seeing its operating revenue jump 15% to $711.5 million, but its CEO Carey Lykins will still earn nearly $2 million, down from the nearly $3 million he earned last year.

At least half of Citizens Energy's losses this year are attributable to a bad investment it made in ProLiance Energy, which it sold off for a huge loss this year. The utility is now seeking authorization from the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission to stick its utility consumers with yet another 13.3% increase in water rates and 21.6% increase in stormwater rates. These increases are, in effect, attributable to the overpayment Citizens Energy made to the City of Indianapolis to purchase the water and sewer utilities so that Mayor Greg Ballard would a have a half billion dollar pot to distribute to the pay-to-play contractors stuffing money in his pockets.

The City of Indianapolis screwed over the public more than a decade ago when it allowed the Indianapolis Water Company to be sold off to NiSource instead of Citizens Energy, which then ran the utility into the ground while selling off its most profitable assets before selling it back to the City of Indianapolis instead of Citizens Energy as required by state law for a premium, which in turn handed control of the utility to the French-owned Veolia (think Beurt SerVaas), costing Indianapolis ratepayers even more. Mayor Ballard then sold off the utility to Citizens Energy, which intentionally overpaid knowing that it could simply shove it up the assess of utility users again with higher rates. This is what happens when you have a totally corrupt state utility regulatory agency that doesn't give a damn about the utility consumers whose interests it's supposed to be protecting.