The gas supplier for more than 800,000 people in Illinois may have withheld information about skyrocketing costs for an improvement program.
An audit of the pipe-replacement program run by Peoples Gas, the gas utility company serving Chicago, says the program’s initial estimated cost of $2.5 billion over twenty years will now cost $8 billion.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan wants the Illinois Commerce Commission to investigate whether Peoples Gas purposely withheld the higher cost from regulators.
The utility may have withheld the higher estimate to gain approval for its $5.7 billion acquisition by Wisconsin Energy Group earlier this year.
Madigan is also asking the commission to restructure the improvement program. She estimates at its current expected cost, each Peoples Gas customer would pay $7,700 to see the project to completion in 2030.
And in other State news, both the House and Senate were back in the Capitol yesterday, but legislators predict any breakthrough in the budget impasse will wait until after a political deadline later this month.
Candidates for the March primary election will file petitions to be on the ballot between November 23 and 30. State Sen. Tom Cullerton thinks the possibility of getting a challenger from within your own party has made some state lawmakers hesitant to break with their leaders and call for greater compromise to get a budget passed. He’s been telling his own constituents not to expect a budget deal until December.
Three political committees with ties to Gov. Bruce Rauner–his own Citizens for Rauner fund, and independent expenditure committees IllinoisGO and Turnaround Illinois– hold more than $31 million combined, and make three of the top five most well-funded political committees in the state.
