A state panel on Monday called for Illinois gas utility provider Nicor to reduce its requested rate hike by almost $110 million, a number the Citizens Utility Board said could be reduced even further.

“Stop treating your customers like an ATM,” Jim Chilsen, CUB’s communications director, said during a video news conference Wednesday.

In January, Nicor asked the Illinois Commerce Commission for a rate increase – the fifth request since 2017, according to CUB. This year, that rate increase request is for an additional $314.2 million.

The ICC has solicited utility users’ comments on the request via its website, and two public hearings have allowed residents to chime in, both for and against the hike.

CUB, AARP and other advocacy groups have been vocal in their opposition to the rate increase.

“We are doing everything we can to defeat it,” Chilsen said on the media call.

The ICC’s two administrative law judges, tasked with drafting the state’s response, “rejected Nicor’s proposed authorized profit rate of 10.35%, instead recommending a 9.93% profit rate,” according to Illinois PIRG, a public interest research group.

CUB said the cut suggested by the judges is a “step in the right direction,” Chilsen said, adding that the watchdog group believes Nicor’s request could be cut further. “There are tens of millions in additional fat that should be shed from Nicor’s rate hike, at the very least.”

In the past eight years amid previous price increases, Nicor profits are nearing $1 billion, “and for the same period, their corporate parents [have] $25 billion in profits. Enough is enough,” Chilsen said.

According to the Illinois PIRG data provided in a news release, with the lower rate hike suggested by the judges, “Nicor would have annual authorized profits of $471 million.”

The judges’ proposal also recommends increasing the gas delivery charge from $19.48 to $23.41 each month.

“We propose lowering it to $18.51,” Abe Scarr, director of Illinois PIRG, said on the call. “A lower fixed charge incentivizes lower use.”

The panel of judges also suggested that Nicor end its TotalGreen program allowing customers to pay more to offset climate-changing emissions.

“Over three years, only 238 of Nicor’s 2.3 million customers have opted in, and the program has offset only 0.0031% of the company’s total emissions,” Scarr said.

According to Nicor data provided at an Aug. 7 public hearing in Elgin, its proposed new rate come out to a 9.21% increase, or an average of $7.63 a month.

What that increase is for individual users fluctuates, Chilsen said, based on usage.

The ICC’s final decision on the rate increase is expected by Nov. 24.