Merrillville, Indiana-Based Spinoff Natural Gas Transmission Company Columbia Pipeline Group's Top-Tier Executives Average Pay Raise Was a Blistering 25.2% Per Year During the Three Years (2013-2015) That It Filed Executive Compensation Information With the SEC From the Time It Separated From Northwest Indiana Utility NiSource to When It Was Sold to TransCanada for $13 Bil. And This 25.2% Excluded Any Golden Parachute Payments. Columbia Pipeline Group's Five Top-Tier Executives Were Projected to Get Potential Change in Control Payments (Golden Parachutes) of $50.571 Mil, Which Was 2.84 TIMES the Total Executive Compensation They Received in Annual 2015 of $17.838 Mil. These Top-Tier Executives Also Cleaned Up From the Huge Amount of Columbia Pipeline Group Stock They Received in the Separation From NiSource Which Also Appreciated Significantly Due To TransCanada Acquiring It.

"Red for Ed Action Day" is where thousands of Indiana public school teachers will be going to the Indianapolis State Capital Building on November 19, 2019 to lobby for better teacher pay and working conditions and also better resources for students.

It's good to see that Unions are now stepping up all over the US in order to obtain a better deal for their union members.  All Democratic Presidential candidates are on the side of unions in their talking points.  But I think the most effective in actually getting excellent outcomes for union members will be the financially-savvy, extremely bright Pete Buttigieg, who with his calm, good listener consideration-for-others demeanor, is also very gifted in the negotiating process.  Further, Mayor Pete's Health Care Plan will not take away union members excellent health care insurance coverage which they have fought hard to get, whereas Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren's Medicare For All Health Care Plan will. 

There have been many US Government laws enacted in the past two decades that have substantially increased income inequality expansion including the year after year after year of annual furtive tax extenders of predominately special interests additional tax loopholes, which both the Democratic and Republican Establishments voted for under the radar screen every year just before calendar year end, but nothing was even close to being more income inequality expanding than the Trump Tax Cuts Act.

On the other hand, the only highly effective US Government law enacted by either party in the past two decades that has substantially reduced income inequality expansion is Obamacare.

My objective is to get a better handle on just why the US and particularly here Indiana has such massive continuing Income Inequality Expansion ..... it appears to be predominantly about the relative long-term annual pay and employee benefits percentage increases for the executives of a Company vs the many non-executive employees of a Company, coupled with the stock price appreciation subsequent to the time the company executives were rewarded in their pay with stock equity compensation.

So far in my research of large US Corps headquartered in many US States all over the country, I have shown that their Top-Tier Executives have been rewarded continually with just enormous annual increases in pay and employee benefits, mostly stock equity compensation, even to the extent that the key issue to US citizens should be the huge and continuing Income Inequality Expansion which is at the core of many critical problems the US faces.

While increasing the US federal minimum wage will help here, there is a much broader and critical problem that needs to be solved.  The annual percentage increase in the pay and employee benefits of Company non-executive employees are minuscule in relation to that of Company executive employees and this has been going on for decades.  When Corporate CEOs and CFOs primarily view non-executive employees as Costs rather than as People, this is what happens.  And neither political party has had the courage to take on US Corps here.

But it's not just in the private sector.  There are also large differences in the annual percentage raises of pay and employee benefits of executives and non-executives in the non-profit sector, including hospitals.

And it's also in state and local government entities.

With its decisions on state education funding with the resultant extremely low total annual percentage pay and employee benefit increases for State public school teachers for decades but especially so since Republicans have taken total control of the Indiana State Government, it's pretty clear to me that the Indiana State Government primarily views public school educators as simply Costs in a State Fiscal Budget, rather than what they are ..... the critical drivers of the future success of the State of Indiana.

Also for decades, but particularly since Republicans have taken complete control of the Indiana State Government, it appears that Indiana Public School Superintendents or their equivalents as well as their direct reports have received annual percentage pay and employee benefits increases which have been substantially higher than what public school teachers have received.

In all fairness, going forward there should be some form of clawbacks for these past excessive pay and employee benefits rewarded to members of these Indiana State Education Administrations which cut into what State public school teachers received.

After all, the clear driver of Indiana’s future are the public education teachers in the classroom, not the Education Administration.

Therefore Indiana State Legislatures should set maximum annual percentage pay and employee benefits increases for every Superintendent and his/her direct reports to correct for this unfairness in pay.  Thus the allocation to State public education teachers would be much higher than they otherwise would have been. 

I think it would be very helpful to see how these extremely low annual percentage pay and employee benefits increases of Indiana State public school teachers compares with the annual percentage pay and employee benefits increases of the Top-Tier Executives of Indiana publicly-held companies.  Publicly-held companies are required to disclose this Top-Tier Executive compensation information in their annual Proxy Statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Thus I will now be doing research and making posts on the annual pay and employee benefits percentage increases that the Top-Tier Executives of the largest Indiana Headquartered Companies were rewarded with in the past five or ten years in order to give a better understanding of the enormous gap between the annual percentage pay and employee benefits increases of the Top-Tier Executives of these Indiana Companies and the Indiana public school teachers.  

I will be doing this research generally by largest stock market capitalization and thus the 11th Indiana-related Company that I am addressing here is Indiana Utility NiSource Spinoff Natural Gas Transmission Company Columbia Pipeline Group, which separated from NiSource, filed three years (2013 to 2015) of Top-Tier Executive Compensation with the SEC and then it was sold to TransCanada for $13 Bil.

From annual compensation information contained in Company Proxy Statement filings with the US SEC, the chart at the very bottom below shows NiSource Spinoff Columbia Pipeline Group's  Top-Tier Executives Annual Total Compensation for each of two consecutive full years of employment for these three years (2013 to 2015).

  
NiSource Spinoff Columbia Pipeline Group's's Top-Tier Executives Average Annual Pay and Employee Benefits Increase was a blistering 25.2% per year during these three years (2013 to 2015) which is the fourth highest of the 11 large Indiana-related companies I have addressed so far and also which is probably more than twenty times what Indiana State public school educators received as an average annual percentage pay and employee benefits raise during the same three-year period.

1. Biomet +120.5% per year for five years
2. Simon Property Group +53.7% per year for the past ten years
3. Elanco Animal Health +30.2% for annual 2018
4. NiSource Spinoff Columbia Pipeline Group +25.2 per year for three years
5. NiSource +19.5% per year for the past five years
6. Cummins +18.1% per year for the past ten years
7. Zimmer Biomet Holdings +15.3% per year for the past five years
8. Duke Realty Corp +13.8% per year for the past five years
9. Anthem Inc +13.5% per year for the past ten years
10. Eli Lilly % Co +13.3% per year for the past five years
11. Allegion plc +11.3% per year for the past six years

But the story here isn't the blistering high 25.2% per year average annual pay raises but rather the substantial Golden Parachute payments these Columbia Pipeline Group (Formerly Indiana NiSource) Top-Tier Executives received. 

Here's a link for a New York Times article relating to these Golden Parachute payments.

https://www.nwitimes.com/business/local/ex-nisource-execs-end-columbia-run-will-collect-golden-parachutes/article_0c2bb429-c073-5e23-8c0b-dd18d34b851d.html

I think the US Government should ban Golden Parachutes, especially for Utility Company executives.

	Potential	FYE		FYE	FYE		FYE	FYE		FYE	FYE		FYE	FYE
	Change	Dec		Dec	Dec		Dec	Dec		Dec	Dec		Dec	Dec
Columbia Priceline Group	in	2015		2015	2014		2014	2013		2013	2012		2012	2011
Top-Tier	Control	Total		Total	Total		Total	Total		Total	Total		Total	Total
Executive	Payments	Comp		Comp	Comp		Comp	Comp		Comp	Comp		Comp	Comp
	$ 000s	$ 000s		$ 000s	$ 000s		$ 000s	$ 000s		$ 000s	$ 000s		$ 000s	$ 000s
Robert Skaggs CEO	23,602	8,711		8,711	8,282		8,282	5,179		5,179	4,682		N/A	N/A
Stephen Smith CFO	9,554	3,440		3,440	3,275		3,275	2,347		2,347	2,227		N/A	N/A
Glen Kettering President	7,269	3,058		3,058	2,792		2,792	1,748		1,748	1,155		N/A	N/A
Stanley Chapman EVPChiefCommercialOfficer	5,379	1,362
Shawn Patterson EVP COO	4,767	1,267
Totals	50,571	17,838		15,209	14,349		14,349	9,274		9,274	8,064		N/A	N/A
Annual % Change vs Prior Year	183.5%			6.0%			54.7%			15.0%			N/A
3 Year Average Per Year % Change					25.2%