Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
NIPSCO was one of several topics at Friday morning’s Legislative Review Session at the Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce.
Also discussed was Senate Bill 1, the Bears potential stadium, the election and economic development, among others.
Legislators attending the forum, the last one for 2026 and sponsored by NIPSCO, included Indiana Sen. Ryan Mishler, Rep. Craig Snow and Rep. David Abbott, all Republicans.
NIPSCO
Abbott brought up NIPSCO in reference to something he’s been working on with the utility company.
“It started out with a couple calls from the neighbors, and it ended up being the whole northern part of the state,” he said. “We’ve had some public hearings. I’ve gone around with the chairman of the IURC (Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission), former Senator Andy Zay, a good friend of mine and all of ours. He took that position as an appointment by the governor, and he conducted about eight or 10 public meetings for public input ... because of high rates that just had, in some cases, doubled. I won’t say the rate doubled, but the cost of delivery of those services, especially electric was the main one.”
He said he personally turned in 50-60 of his constituents’ NIPSCO bills to the IURC for an investigation, which they’re already underway with. There will be a hearing in June, Abbott stated.
The IURC public meetings were to bring in input to see what the issues are out there.
“I, personally, after the first meeting in Indianapolis, I met with the president of NIPSCO, Vince Parisi, and I got a call back from him after I kind of got in his face a little bit. He says, ‘Hey, I’d like to get together with you, and ... if you set the day and time, I’ll be there,’” Abbott said, thinking initially it was just lip service.
They did end up meeting and talking for about 1-1/2 hours.
“I can’t say I got a good answer from him. He placated and gave me a lot of lip service. The bottom line, I said, ‘So what are you going to do about the rates? Are you going to lower rates or do something to control the rates?’ His answer was, ‘No.’ He says, ‘We’re actually going to go for a rate increase,’ if you can believe that. He can’t answer me what the delivery charges are, but part of this is all because he’s saying they want to do more infrastructure on power generation, renewables, $100 million on a new IT system that would be corporationwide for NIPSCO. It would be more access for transparency so customers can see what their bills is, more of what the transportation delivery charges are,” Abott recalled.
He said he didn’t get anything out of the meeting, other than NIPSCO thinks if they put more money into long-term improvements that they’re far behind on, it’s going to help. That won’t help the rate payer, he said. He said it’ll probably take giving more power to the IURC, who approves the rate hikes, and there’s “got to be more data, and there’s got to be more input, transparency and more decision-making abilities with the IURC before granting a rate increase without real justification.”
Mishler said one thing to keep in mind with the IURC is, “We really don’t have anything to do with the IURC. Those are all gubernatorial appointments on that IURC Board. They decide the rate cases, but one thing I discovered in the last budget, that I took away, was I discovered that any time the IURC gives that increase in a rate, a percentage of that is used, it goes back to them to be used in the budget. I said, ‘Well, that’s like the mouse watching the cheese.’”
He said the optics would be the IURC is giving an incentive for the utility to raise rates because they get more money out of it.
“So in the last budget, we cut that out. Said no more. I can’t believe I never caught that all these years. I never knew they got a percentage of that. So we cut that out and we just appropriate to them now,” Mishler said.
Senate Bill 1
Indiana Gov. Mike Braun has said he wants to make some changes regarding the property taxes, Abbott said, and he’s talked to some legislators who want to change even the way property taxes are collected.
“So I think you’re going to see a big look at that. Braun has also indicated just recently that he wants to look at how assessments are done, and that’s a topic that’s a Constitutionality issue,” he said.
In the early 2000s, Indiana’s assessment was changed to market-based and use value after a court case. “So you’ll see some work there on SB 1 coming up,” Abbott said.
Snow agreed there are other legislators who have “interesting” ideas on what the fix for SB 1 is, some have merit.
“But, needless to say, we’ve got to figure out what property taxes look like going forward, obviously, and giving locals the ability to continue to raise enough funds to do things that our constituents expect, like good schools, roads, police, fire, those types of things,” Snow stated.
He said he’s already working on the budget, at least a couple days a week. The 2027 legislative session will be a long session dedicated to the state’s biennial budget.
“I don’t know if it’s a different approach or a new approach, but my approach would be - I’ve been asked to kind of carry it this year in the House, the budget bill - so one of the things I would like to do is think about a zero-based budget or a performance-based budget out of the gate versus agencies just coming and saying, ‘We need x million more this year’ and just adding on to it,” Snow explained.
In all the meetings he has had thus far on SB 1, property taxes and the budget, “Indiana’s biggest problem is self-preservation. I’ll just say it. We’ve got so many units of government in our state that are just so inefficient. And I’m just being as bold as I can because I see it as a huge problem,” Snow stated.
He said there’s about 30,000 people employed in state government; 145,000 people employed in public education; and 275,000 people employed in local units of government.
“That’s 450,000 people that touch the government pie,” Snow stated. “... I’m just at a point where if we don’t change the way we look at how we govern, because it costs so much money to do it, and when you look at 450,000 people, that’s 1 in 15 Hoosiers, if you will, that’s getting a little bit on the payroll.”
Snow said he’s coming at from a business perspective. “In a business, you consolidate. You create efficiencies, cost-saving measures that will save you lots of money.”
He stated there’s got to be some modernization “to the way we govern and how we pay for it.”
Mishler added, “This year’s Senate Bill 1 was actually a Medicaid bill. So, I know I come in here and scream and yell about our increased Medicaid spending, and we finally have that - I’ll just say we slowed the growth. It’s still growing, but we’ve slowed the growth a little bit.
There’s some things in SB 1 that would provide more “checks and balances” for illegals getting healthcare.
“And another thing is, you’ve heard about the rural health. I think that the federal government is going to give to the rural communities. We actually put in there that the budget committee has to review that. So the administration can’t just give money away. There’s a little more transparency, it goes to the next level. The legislature has to approve the spending,” he said.
Referring later to the old SB 1 and property taxes, Mishler said he was pretty agitated this past year.
“I’ve been there 22 years, and every year, I hear about how property taxes are messed up. And, we do tweaks here and there, and nothing changes. I’m telling you, in 22 years, we’re no better off now than we were in 2005, my first session,” he said.
Everything he hears is about the homeowner, and he thought that’s who the legislature was trying to help.
“So now we’ve got - I’m going back, if everybody remembers the Eric Miller days when he proposed this total repeal to property taxes and beat us all up for not supporting it,” Mishler recollected. “So I finally sat him down and I explained to him - because I’m just telling you a total repeal of property taxes kills this county. Wipes this county off the map. And his parents, in-laws, had a business in Syracuse. I said, ‘You want to put your in-laws out of business?’ He said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘Here’s what happens with a total repeal of property taxes.’”
Once Mishler explained it to Miller, Miller said he didn’t realize that, despite the effort Miller had put into selling the state legislature on repealing the property taxes.
“I said the only way it would work is if it’s Homestead only. And then his next bill the next year was do that, and it didn’t have enough legs. I proposed a bill two years ago to do that,” Mishler said. “So, let me tell you. A total repeal of property taxes sounds really good. I’m going to give you one example and make this really simple why it fails.”
If the state wipes out all property taxes - commercial, investment, farms and homes - “Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to buy about 50 rental properties and I’m going to buy three companies in this community. I’m going to move to Florida, and all of my entities are going to be passed through. So let’s just say I’m going to pay $100,000 a year on property taxes for all these businesses - that’s what they’re paying now, let’s say. So I then move to Florida, I pay no property taxes in Indiana. I’m a pass-through entity, so all my income is going to go to Florida and then if they do taxes on services, I’m probably going to buy my services in Florida. So, guess what? I pay Indiana ZERO! And guess what happens to this county because there’s so many second homes? You’re gone. You’re out. Because those people in the county pay their income tax in another county. They get their services in another county, and even if you live here, chances are you go to Fort Wayne for a lot of your services. So that money also leaves this county,” Mishler explained.
He stated Kosciusko County will go bankrupt if the state does a total repeal of property taxes. He then explained the only way it works is if it’s Homestead only.
The Bears
Mishler said a lot of his time has been spent this past year on Senate Bill 27, also referred to as “The Bears Bill.”
SB 27 established the Northwest Indiana Stadium Authority for the purpose of acquiring and financing certain facilities. The Bears football team is considering moving to Hammond, Ind., from nearby Chicago. Illinois is also attempting to keep the NFL team in Arlington Heights, Ill.
“When we first started that, everybody was, ‘They’re playing ya, they’re playing ya.’ Well, I can tell you they’re spending a lot of money working on the land. Our last meeting, they showed their plot plan for Hammond. The two things I would say about the Bears - the funny thing is, if it was a business decision, they would have chosen Indiana the day we passed that bill. The thing I respect about them, they’ve never talked about the money, they’ve never talked about Illinois vs. Indiana. They’ve only talked to us about the fans. What’s best for our fans. Fan experience and transportation, which I feel - by building in Hammond - it would cost them less and they would save so much in tax dollars that they could build a better fan experience. And, number two, I think the traffic pattern they could put in Hammond is way better, much better, than the city of Chicago, and I think it’s better than Arlington Heights because we have, we have air, we have freeway and we have rail, all right there in Hammond,” Mishler stated.
When teams have games at the University of Notre Dame, he said they often stay in Chicago and bus them into South Bend. “So there’s already kind of a precedent on how people can stay in Chicago and be bussed over or by train into Indiana for ballgames. So, I think we really put together a good product. The speaker and I worked on the bill. We’ve had ongoing conversations,” Mishler said, reiterating he feels pretty good about what they put together.
Economic Development
Mishler said the state’s new administration doesn’t have much of an economic development plan. While some people think that looks bad, he disagrees.
“Because that’s what brings companies here and that’s what keeps our tax rate so low because it increases our revenue base,” he said. “Now, there might be an argument on the types of companies ... data centers, things like that. That’s fair, to have arguments on the types of companies, but it seems like it’s kind of gone to the legislature now, to work with these.”
Mishler said he knows Snow has worked on some projects here and Snow’s number one goal is to make sure Kosciusko County is going strong.
“Outside of the Bears, I’ve met with a group that came in from San Francisco that have energy generation they want to bring here to Indiana, an $11 billion investment. Need to find some land. So, working with them, I found a guy that’s got 14,000 acres close to a river, which is good, so I’m trying to connect them,” he said.
Another one Mishler and Snow are working on is a sports complex that is looking to be the first of its kind in Indiana.
“It’s a really neat outfit. They came in from Philadelphia last week, we met in Craig’s office. Now that particular one is looking at this community,” Mishler said.
When he asked them why this community, they told him quality of life and a family atmosphere. Mishler also reminded them that Kosciusko County is only an hour away from South Bend and Fort Wayne.
“So, they seem pretty optimistic about (it),” Mishler said, noting Kristi Ormsby set up a tour of Warsaw and they’ve met with them a couple times. “So, we’re constantly trying to find people to move to our community. And I think the thing that sells it is our people and our community, that’s what these big companies like because they’re finding places where their employees will want to go.”
Even if the Bears don’t end up in Indiana, Mishler said it’s caused other companies to consider locating to the Hoosier state.
Election
Abbott brought up this year’s elections briefly.
“It was an interesting election. We saw a lot of big turnovers, a lot of dark money coming in to support the candidates. We lost a couple really good senators and one representative,” he said, mentioning specifically Sen. Travis Holdman and Linda Rogers, both who lost substantially. Liz Brown won by 15 votes.
He said he didn’t want to call it a wake-up call, “but there’s some movement out there to move some of the old out and new in, and that’s got to do with political points of view. Redistricting was a very key point in that, that’s why a lot of the outside forces of money came in - national money - came into these races. You might say that might have been (President) Trump’s payback, but we’ll see where that’s going to go. It’s definitely going to change things.”
The Indiana Senate did not go forward with redistricting in the state in 2025 for 2026 to potentially increase the Republican Party’s hold on Congress, and Trump endorsed candidates who opposed those Republican senators who did not approve the redistricting efforts.
Abbott said the elections are “a really important topic right now” and the division in the country has bled into the state. “So I think you’re going to see our turnouts in the November election are critical. I can’t even emphasize how critical that is. You need to vote, you need to tell everybody you know to vote,” he stated.
He said if the Republicans lose the majority in the fall election, “it’ll be hard to ever gain back our majority if we lose in the midterms.”
