Power Should Serve People, Not Private Equity

I will not accept corporate utility contributions while families face rising bills and our climate future is treated as an investment portfolio.

There’s a moment now when the utility bill arrives, and you don’t open it right away.

You already know it won’t be lower.

You look at it sitting on the counter, and you start doing the math in your head before you’ve even broken the seal. Groceries. Gas. Rent or mortgage. Childcare. Something always shifts to make it work.

Utilities weren’t supposed to be the thing that made people anxious. They were supposed to be steady. Boring. Predictable.

Now they’re not.

AES powers more than half a million homes in Central Indiana. It’s a monopoly. You don’t get to shop around. You don’t get leverage. You pay the rate that’s approved, and you adjust your life around it.

And this isn’t just about cost. It’s about direction.

The choices we make about energy shape our climate future. They determine how fast we transition, who bears the cost of that transition, and whether communities already carrying environmental burdens are protected—or sacrificed again.

At the same time, the largest asset managers in the world—firms like BlackRock—are expanding deeper into infrastructure and utilities, even right here in Indiana where they will most likely soon acquire AES. And when Wall Street looks at essential services, it doesn’t see your kitchen table. It recognizes that you can’t cancel your electricity. It sees that you don’t have another option. It sees something steady and dependable—not for you, but for them.

That’s the appeal.

Once utilities stop being treated like public services and start being treated like investments, something changes. The conversation isn’t about what families can afford or how quickly we reduce emissions. It’s about what the market expects.

And when expectations go up, so do bills.

That’s why people feel squeezed—even while the language coming out of press conferences sounds calm and technical. “Investment.” “Capacity.” “Modernization.” The words sound harmless.

The total on your bill doesn’t.

And there’s more cause for concern on the horizon.

Right now, we’re pushing forward a data center in Martindale-Brightwood—a neighborhood that has already lived with more than its fair share of pollution and industrial burden. A data center isn’t a small office building. It pulls massive amounts of electricity, around the clock. That kind of demand doesn’t just sit quietly in the background. It changes how the grid is built out. It changes what utilities ask regulators for. And sooner or later, it shows up in the numbers households are expected to cover.

Communities that have dealt with asthma, truck traffic, and industrial zoning shouldn’t be asked to absorb more risk in the name of “growth.”

Most people will never see the filings.

They’ll just see the bill.

Then there’s the proposal to pull tens of millions of gallons of water a day from Eagle Creek to support development north of the city. Water redirected. Systems expanded. Costs are structured somewhere in paperwork that few residents will ever see.

Climate resilience isn’t abstract. It’s about how we manage water. It’s about heat. It’s about whether infrastructure decisions today make communities stronger tomorrow—or more vulnerable.

People deserve transparency before they feel the consequences.

And during all of this, Congressman André Carson takes money from BlackRock. Congressman Carson takes money from AES.

That matters.

Corporate PAC money isn’t symbolic. It comes with access. It comes with conversations most constituents never hear. It ensures certain voices are in the room early, while families are still trying to understand what’s happening after the fact.

Residents shouldn’t be the last to know.

Representation means the people who sent you to Washington come first—not the companies whose business model depends on what those same people pay every month.

I’m pro-climate. That means we move toward clean energy faster, not slower. It means kids in neighborhoods that already deal with bad air don’t keep paying the price. And it means the shift to cleaner power can’t land hardest on the same families who are already stretched thin.

Power isn’t speculative. Water isn’t an investment strategy.

They are the basics of daily life, and they should serve people.

They should not serve private equity.