MERRILLVILLE – A NiSource Inc. director is resigning months after he came under scrutiny for inviting Indiana’s top utility regulator to a day of horse racing in Kentucky following a state panel’s approval of a nearly 17 percent electric rate increase for NIPSCO customers.
NiSource company director Dennis Foster said Friday he will retire from the board of directors of NiSource – a utility holding company – effective this May.
He told The Times of Munster that he volunteered not to seek re-election at May’s annual board meeting during deliberations by NiSource’s directors over emails he exchanged last year with former Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission Chairman David Lott Hardy offering him the trip.
“It has been 12 years of good service with one hiccup,” Foster said.
On Friday, NiSource issued a statement listing 10 current board members nominated for re-election but also noting that Foster had decided to retire and was not included in the list.
“On behalf of our team, I would like to thank Dennis for his service and wish him well in his retirement,” said NiSource Board Chairman Ian Rolland of Fort Wayne.
Consumer groups were unimpressed by the move by NiSource, which is the parent company of NIPSCO and has 457,000 electric and 712,000 natural gas customers in Indiana. In emails published by The Times in a Jan. 16 story, Foster on Aug. 26 first offered then-IURC chief Hardy an invitation to Kentucky’s famed Bluegrass country in October.
That offer grew, the emails showed, into a three-way series of emails among Hardy, Foster and then-Duke Energy Indiana President Michael Reed to include a stretch limo, a racetrack suite and dinner at an exclusive Lexington restaurant.
Hardy accepted all the offers but then had to cancel after he was fired in early October by Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels after other emails between him and Reed revealed that he had a too-cozy relationship with Duke Energy Indiana.
On Friday, Foster offered the first public defense of his actions, saying Hardy had told him since the summer that he soon would be retiring as chairman of the IURC.
He also said he never discussed rate case matters with Hardy. But in hindsight he admitted the invitation to the horse farms and racetrack this past fall was a mistake and claimed the idea actually originated with Reed.
“It surprised me Mike Reed did this, and I did a stupid thing by going along and emailing back,” Foster said.
However, emails obtained by The Times show Foster praising the NIPSCO rate order in his first e-mail and extending the original invite to Kentucky, while Hardy in his response suggests a tour of the horse farms and some “100 point bottles.”
A few days later, Reed offers to intervene after Hardy suggests it may not “pass muster” for him to go to the racetrack. In a later email, Hardy overcomes those scruples.
In January, NiSource characterized the emails between Foster and Hardy as entirely appropriate.
But under questioning from a lawyer representing the city of Hammond at a rate case hearing this month, NiSource CEO Robert Skaggs Jr. revealed the board of directors was reviewing the situation.
The FBI and Indiana’s inspector general have mounted investigations of the relationship between Duke Energy officials and the IURC. NiSource and Foster said they had received no inquiries.
