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Electric Co-Op Board Puts CEO Brian Sparks On Paid Leave

Employees of the Utilities District of Western Indiana were notified this morning that CEO Brian Sparks is on a paid leave of absence pending an independent control audit of UDWI financial records. The Board of Directors voted unanimously Tuesday to place Sparks on leave.

"Our board of directors as whole, their eyes were wide open to some of the concerns of our members and they wanted to respond to them," says UDWI Manager of HR and Compliance Michael Chapman. "And of course some of those concerns were the handling of our member's money and so they felt like this was a necessary step to put everyone mind's at ease."

Three new board members were elected last month. They ran on a platform of looking into these expenses and increasing transparency.

Chapman and Manager of Operations and Engineering Shane Smith will assume Sparks' responsibilities while he is on leave.

None of the board members voted out of office are involved in the investigation, and no other UDWI employees have been placed on leave.

Chapman says he is not at liberty to say if any outside agencies or law enforcement are involved in the investigation. An unmarked vehicle was parked outside of the UDWI headquarters Thursday morning. We reached out to the FBI and as is standard, they would not confirm or deny whether they are conducting an investigation at the headquarters.

"In order to allow that to be the most objective, transparent process they figured they would take Brian [Sparks] out of the equation so no one could claim he exerted any undue influence on the process and allow it to proceed and find out what they find out," Chapman says.

There is no timeline for completion of the investigation at this time.

"We have no prediction regarding how this will play out so all the board is saying is we are committed to following the process and the results that process will reveal in terms of next steps."

UDWI serves the central and western part of the state including large swaths of Greene, Monroe, Lawrence, Owen and Clay counties - about 19,000 customers.

Sparks has served as the UDWI CEO for about a decade. During his tenure, customer's electricity bills increased to the highest in the state.

Data we collected from the U.S. Energy Administration showed that UDWI was only spending about 53 percent of what it was charging customers on the actual purchase of energy.

The co-op is a not for profit with excess earnings returned to ratepayers. But over the last five years, tax records show that more than $15 million of excess earnings have been reported and the co-op is just now returning excess earnings from 1959 and 1960.

We asked UDWI multiple times where the money was being kept, but the co-op declined to provide details.

The board is presently vetting two firms out of Indiana who they might hire to conduct the audit.

Chapman's message to co-op members is that this investigation is about regaining their trust.

"Messages and narratives can be spread far and wide, true or not true, and so we want to assure our members we are going through an objective process to try and restore the trust that some of those messages which we'll find out  true or untrue perhaps tainted our reputation with our members and did not allow them to have the confidence in us that we would desire them to have," Chapman says.

This post has been updated.

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