The NiSource annual report we didn't hear

With NIPSCO parent company NiSource's annual meeting having been held last month in Pittsburgh, it's a good time to discuss some of the things CEO Gary Neale and his rubber-stamp board of directors didn't spend much time talking about.

What a year it's been for top NiSource brass. Though continually ranked by J.D. Power & Associates as one of the very worst electric utilities in the country for customer service and satisfaction, Neale pulled down an eye-popping, wallet-gouging $13.5 million in salary, bonus, stock grants and other benefits last year.

If you're a top exec at NiSource, it doesn't matter that the company didn't hit profit targets in 2004. Neale's cronies on the NiSource board approved bonuses anyway. Even the board has to be nervous that its unanimous recommendations on two shareholder resolutions were voted down this year by shareholders.

Perhaps even shareholders are starting to become angry at being taken for granted, just as employees, customers and communities have been for years.

Though NiSource board members are making $50,000 a year for attending a few board meetings and are each given $250,000 annually in company funds to designate to the charities of their choice, somehow there's little money left to assist low-income customers with heating assistance. What about having the CEO donate back some of his $13.5 million for low-income heating assistance?

The list of outrages continues. Though the NIPSCO coal-fired generating station in Gary was producing some of the lowest-cost energy in the NIPSCO system, Neale is pushing for its permanent closure so he can substitute purchased power from NiSource's unregulated gas turbine plant, Whiting Energy, a white elephant losing $30 million annually. Neale figures why produce energy that only costs $18 per megawatt hour at Mitchell when he can have Whiting -- another NiSource company -- sell it to NIPSCO for $40 to $50 per megawatt hour and simply pass that cost on to his hapless customers.

Neale is talking seriously about outsourcing jobs like billing employees. To enhance "profitability," Neale is looking to move customer service, purchasing, accounting and billing offshore.

Those are hundreds of blue collar and white collar jobs paying a good salary that should stay in Northwest Indiana.

With the highest electric rates in Indiana, those portions of the state in NIPSCO territory find themselves behind the eight-ball in the hunt for new jobs and economic development. A new industrial company on Ind. 39 north of LaPorte found that because it happened to land in AEP territory, it saved 33 percent from NIPSCO's electric rates.

No wonder Gary Neale took his annual meeting to Pittsburgh. He doesn't have the guts to face beleaguered ratepayers in Northwest Indiana who paid him $13.5 million last year for the privilege of being gouged.

Shaw Friedman has represented LaPorte County in its various legal cases against NIPSCO. The opinion expressed in this column is the writer's and not necessarily that of The Times.

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Shaw Friedman has represented LaPorte County in its various legal cases against NIPSCO. The opinion expressed in this column is the writer's and not necessarily that of The Times.