Not a single HB 6 ‘yes’ vote lost their election. Some ‘no’ votes did.

By Tyler Buchanan

Davis Besse Nuclear Power Station

The scandal surrounding House Bill 6 took out the speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives. It has dominated the news pages and airwaves for months. It was the subject of countless campaign attack ads. 

In the end, voters didn’t seem to care.

The scandal implicating former Speaker Larry Householder and his effort to get a nuclear bailout enacted into law emerged as a major theme in the 2020 Statehouse elections, but seemingly had little impact on the results. 

In total, there were 46 lawmakers who voted for House Bill 6 and were on the ballot this November for a seat in the Ohio House or Ohio Senate. The unofficial results show that every single one of them won their election: 46-for-46. That includes Householder himself, who won reelection to his 72nd District over a slate of write-in opponents. 

In contrast, there were 35 “no” votes who were up for election. Four of them have been voted out, and a fifth lawmaker’s race is too close to call.

That’s a striking result considering the extent to which the scandal has enveloped Ohio politics since the July arrests of Householder and four political operatives. In recent months, news outlets have extensively covered an 81-page affidavit outlining the years of alleged corruption and bribery that went into HB 6 being enacted to benefit the former FirstEnergy Solutions of Akron. So too did news stories highlight the vote to remove Householder as the House leader; the ensuing trials; and the ongoing effort to get HB 6 repealed.

Voters got one last reminder last week, when two people charged in the alleged scheme pleaded guilty. 

The years-long plot, as alleged by federal investigators, involved FirstEnergy Solutions funneling “dark money” toward a group controlled by Householder. These resources were used to get Householder and a number of other Republican allies elected to the Ohio House of Representatives. These allies joined with more than two-dozen Democrats to elevate Householder as House speaker in 2019.

Within months, Republicans introduced the nuclear bailout bill and quickly pushed it through both chambers. It was signed into law by Gov. Mike DeWine in July 2019.

Rep. Jamie Callender, R-Concord, 
at the Ohio Statehouse

The controversy surrounding the bill did not translate to any electoral trouble for its supporters and top backers. Both HB 6 sponsors were easily reelected: Rep. Shane Wilkin, R-Lynchburg, won another term in the 91st District by an unofficial margin of 77% to 23%, and Lake County Rep. Jamie Callender, R-Concord, won by an unofficial margin of 61% to 39% in the 61st District.

Ten other bill cosponsors were up for election this year. All 10 won their contests. Four were unopposed, and the remaining six won comfortably — by an average margin of 35%.

The remaining rank-and-file members who voted in favor of HB 6 and were up for election all were victorious as well. In the wake of Householder’s arrest, lawmakers sought to distance themselves from the scandal, claiming to be unaware of the alleged behind-the-scenes collusion between Householder and FirstEnergy Solutions to get the bill passed. The law was controversial, several conceded in retrospect, but their “yes” votes were matter of policy, not corruption. 

This election season, both political parties went out of their way to place blame on each other in attacking candidates with dubious connections to the plot. Republicans attacked one opposing Democratic candidate with a reference to “disgraced Larry Householder,” despite the fact the candidate wasn’t even in office last year to have been involved. 

Democrats likewise attacked Republican candidates who, in some cases, didn’t vote for Householder as speaker and did not vote for HB 6. The most suspect example involved an ad against Republican Rep. Dave Greenspan, R-Westlake, which stated: “Greenspan wants Ohio voters to think he is a moderate and had nothing to do with ex-Speaker Householder or (Householder’s) public corruption scandal.”

In fact, the criminal complaint against Householder mentions an unnamed lawmaker who gave incriminating texts from Householder to the FBI. The lawmaker was later identified by Cleveland.com as being Greenspan. He also voted against HB 6.

Nevertheless, the initial vote count has Greenspan being voted out of office. He trails his Democratic opponent by more than 1,000 votes with additional absentee and provisional ballots still yet to be counted. 

Other “no” votes on HB 6 who appear to have lost their reelection bids include Rep. Randi Clites, D-Ravenna; Rep. Gil Blair, D-Weathersfield; and Sen. Sean O’Brien, D-Bazetta. 

Sen. Stephanie Kunze, R-Hilliard, is near-deadlocked with her opponent as the candidates await more votes to get counted. 

“I have never seen so much awareness about a state political issue before,” the Capital Journal quoted Micah Derry as saying prior to Election Day. Derry is the state director for Americans for Prosperty’s Ohio chapter and his organization campaigned door-to-door for candidates who had opposed HB 6 in 2019.

One reason why the anti-corruption message may not have broken through to voters? As Derry said in October, “No one’s blameless in this (scandal). Everyone’s hands are dirty in this whole process.”

Many Democrats had joined with Republicans to elect Householder as House speaker. HB 6 passed with support from eight Democrats in the House and three in the Senate. 

Two of those Senate Democrats are part of the caucus leadership: Minority Leader Kenny Yuko of Richmond Heights and Assistant Minority Whip Sandra Williams of Cleveland. Williams co-sponsored the bill. 

Over the years, money has flowed from FirstEnergy’s political action committee to Ohio politicians of both parties. In total, 32 of the 33 state senators and the majority of state representatives have received campaign contributions from FirstEnergy.

As the chambers return for their lame-duck sessions, the battle over what to do with the tainted law continues. Some believe it should be fully repealed. Others want it replaced through a cleaner, more transparent process. Others still believe it’s good policy, regardless of the alleged corruption it took to get it passed. 

Lawmakers survived their 2020 elections. How they proceed with a response to HB6 the rest of this term and in the next may or may not matter to voters the next time around. 

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This story is provided by Ohio Capital Journal, a part of States Newsroom, a national 501 (c)(3) nonprofit. See the original story here.

Ohio legislature's foot-dragging on HB 6 repeal fuels public concerns, points to 'dark money' influence

What can be done to reduce the influence of dark money on Ohio energy policy?

By Kathiann Kowal

This article provided by Eye on Ohio, the nonprofit, nonpartisan Ohio Center for Journalism in partnership with the nonprofit Energy News Network.

The arrest of former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and others in July revealed how the use of dark money organizations enabled an alleged $60 million conspiracy to sway elections and provide costly bailouts to noncompetitive nuclear and coal plants.

As federal and state court cases move forward, questions remain about what can be done to restore confidence in the legislature and to prevent similar situations in the future.

“Dark money is really how special interests win right now,” said Jay Costa, executive director at Voters’ Right To Know. When corporations use shell groups to hide their political spending, they “gain a level of credibility they wouldn’t otherwise have,” he explained. “I like to think of it as the ‘Wizard of Oz’ effect.”

In other words, voters don’t get to see who’s behind the curtain.

Two months after the federal government’s crimin-al complaint and indictment in July, Ohio Attorney General David Yost has filed a state court lawsuit. The complaint alleges a “pattern of corrupt activity,” and seeks injunctive relief to prevent FirstEnergy, FirstEnergy Solutions, Energy Harbor and others from reaping benefits from the bailouts under House Bill 6. A hearing on a preliminary motion for that relief is currently scheduled for Friday, Oct. 2.

Meanwhile, it’s unclear whether Ohio lawmakers will actually repeal House Bill 6, the bailout law passed as a result of the alleged conspiracy. Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers called for a swift repeal in late July and early August. However, leadership in the Ohio House has so far refused to allow a full House vote on any pending repeal bills.

‘Dragging their feet’

“They’re just dragging their feet,” said Rep. David Leland, D-Columbus. “We have 58 members of the legislature who are willing to repeal HB 6 right now.”

Instead, Speaker Robert Cupp, R-Lima, has referred the bill to a House Select Committee on Energy Policy and Oversight. So far, those hearings have largely been a general review of the pros and cons of HB 6, rather than a focused oversight of the alleged corruption that led to its passage and whether it should be repealed in order to repair any claimed harm to public trust in the legislature’s integrity.

“The only way that we can prove that Ohio is not for sale is by repealing HB 6,” Leland said. “The polling we’ve seen shows that people by an overwhelming margin are going to punish those people who have voted for HB 6 and have done nothing to repeal it.” Early and absentee voting in Ohio begins on Oct. 6.

“Our legislators are supposed to act in the public interest,” said political scientist Leah Stokes at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Corporations’ interests may sometimes conflict. But, she adds, “it’s really politicians’ and regulators’ job not to be listening to those special interests. That basic responsibility of democracy has failed in Ohio with House Bill 6.”

A straight repeal would mostly restore Ohio energy law to before HB 6 became effective, subject to some follow-up regulatory matters before the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. A quick replacement could potentially reenact all or much of the law, which also gutted the state’s clean energy standards.  

Advocates say that rushing to ram through anything more than a simple repeal this year would either just repeat bad policy or create more problems, even aside the alleged conspiracy’s past influence on the current makeup of the Ohio House of Representatives. Even at that, a repeal bill would now need either an emergency clause or an injunction sought by the state attorney general in order to stop the nuclear subsidies slated to start in January. The committee adjourned on Sept. 30 and no additional meetings are currently scheduled.

HB 6 “is so questionable at this moment. The vehicle itself and the way it was sold is all just a pack of lies,” said Rachael Belz, executive director of Ohio Citizen Action. “We need them to repeal it, and then we need to go from there.” And that second step will take time, she said.

“It’s complicated and complex legislation and policy. And we have to get it right,” said Chris Neme, a principal and co-founder of Energy Futures Group. “Passing a bill in less than a couple of months like the way HB 6 was just leads us down the road of unintended consequences.”

Shining a light on dark money

The bigger question is how to prevent similar abuses in the future. Utilities and fossil fuel interests have given heavily to Ohio political campaigns since the state enacted a 1999 law calling for competition in electricity generation. And the level of giving went up dramatically once a competitive market actually began to develop in the state.

Utilities’ political spending has continued during this election season. FirstEnergy spokesperson Jennifer Young said that its political action committee has since canceled campaign donations it had originally reported as going out in July shortly before Householder’s arrest.

Campaign donations shown for August have in fact been sent out, Young said. FirstEnergy has denied any wrongdoing in connection with its political donations or the alleged Householder scandal.

Meanwhile, a 2010 Supreme Court case, Citizens United, “really opened up the floodgates of fossil fuel and electric utility influence over politics,” Stokes said. Utilities’ political spending is “particularly pernicious,” in her view, because customers “have to buy from these companies” to get electricity delivered to their homes.

At the same time, reporting requirements currently apply only to immediate spenders on political issues and campaigns. They don’t reach all the way up the chain to the original source of the money.

“It’s basically this Russian nesting doll scenario, where you have one donor giving to another donor, giving to another donor, to get to the person who finally spends the money to influence the voters,” Costa explained.

In the case of HB 6, money flowed into Generation Now from multiple sources, with a lion’s share allegedly originating with Company A — understood to be FirstEnergy — and its subsidiaries, according to the federal complaint.

Some of the money in turn then went to a political action committee. Or, it went to other organizations that directly funded pro-HB 6 ads. One such ad claimed a debunked Chinese conspiracy was behind last year’s failed effort to put a referendum on the law on the ballot this fall. A for-profit group called Ohioans for Energy Security paid for that ad. When asked last year, lawyers at the firm that set up the corporation, Isaac Wiles, would not answer questions about the source of its funding.  

“The notion that dark money is something some people don’t like is not part of the elements of the crime,” Mark Weaver, an attorney at that firm, said at a Columbus Metropolitan Club forum after news broke about the Householder arrest. He noted that the alleged $60 million in bribes and dark money donations “pales in comparison” to the amount that Americans spend on Halloween candy and costumes every year. And he claimed that the First Amendment guarantees a right to conduct political spending anonymously.

However, the 1995 case that Weaver cited distinguished earlier cases requiring disclosure for corporate spending. And the Supreme Court’s opinion in Citizens United stated that “prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions and supporters.”

“There is no absolute right to anonymous speech,” said attorney Ian Vandewalker at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. Elections are treated differently from general speech, because of the overriding interest in making sure elections function properly, he explained at a panel organized by the League of Women Voters of Ohio.

“That requires informed voters. And it requires policies to not be able to cheat the public,” Vandewalker said. “And so those interests require that there be a level of transparency.”

“No regulation, no law, no set of ethical rules substitutes for American voters paying attention to who’s running for office — pressing them hard on what they stand for, looking closely at the issues, and going into the ballot box having done your homework,” Weaver said.

“The reason that information is important and transparency is important is so that voters are educated,” said Catherine Turcer, executive director of Common Cause Ohio. “You can’t make the argument that voters need to be better educated but you shouldn’t give them actual education. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Moreover, disclosure needs to be timely, said Heather Taylor-Miesle, executive director for the Ohio Environmental Council. In the case of HB 6, Generation Now didn’t report its 2017 spending to the Internal Revenue Service until late 2019. By then, millions more had been spent to influence the 2018 elections, the passage of HB 6, and the failed referendum effort against it.

Pending bills

Several bills introduced by Democratic and Republican lawmakers could make a strong start toward improved disclosure, including HB 737, HB 739, and SB 347. Those bills should be broadened to include digital media, as well as more traditional campaign spending, Turcer said.

The bills should also call for disclosure not only of the name of an organization, but the identity of the top three original donors of funding, Turcer added in her Sept. 16 testimony in support of SB 347. “Otherwise, wealthy special interests will attempt to avoid disclosure by creating pop-up shell groups,” she said.

And while Ohio voters won’t know who’s behind all the groups funding attack ads or other political spending this election season, information is available about how lawmakers voted on HB 6. The Akron Beacon Journal has also compiled some information on how some funds were used in the 2018 Ohio House campaigns.

“People should contact their legislators about HB 6” if they want to speak out about the issue, Stokes said, noting that the law passed with support from a mix of both Republicans and Democrats.

“When the public is outraged about an issue and really shows up, these issues get reversed,” Stokes added. “There’s a lot of leverage right now.”

• • •• • •

Ohio's PUCO half-steps on investigating FirstEnergy

 Regulator declines to order independent auditor, tells company to investigate itself

By Kathiann M. Kowalski

This article provided by Eye on Ohio, the nonprofit, nonpartisan Ohio Center for Journalism, in partnership with the nonprofit Energy News Network.

Regulators are requiring FirstEnergy to show that its Ohio utility ratepayers didn’t foot the bill, “directly or indirectly,” for political or charitable spending in support of the state’s nuclear and coal bailout bill. Yet that order is much more lenient than the state’s official consumer advocate had sought.

Questions about possible improprieties arose after former House Speaker Larry Householder, R-Glenford, was arrested on July 21. That case involves an alleged criminal conspiracy by him and others to pass House Bill 6 last year and then to defend it against a citizens’ referendum. The federal complaint and indictment allege that the defendants received approximately $60 million from “Company A” — apparently FirstEnergy — and its subsidiaries and affiliates.

Repeal bills are pending in the General Assembly. Meanwhile, on Sept. 8, the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel asked the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio to require an independent audit of FirstEnergy’s political and charitable spending. Before FirstEnergy’s utilities filed any formal response, the PUCO opened a new case and issued its Sept. 15 order.

The PUCO told FirstEnergy’s utilities “to show cause, by September 30, 2020, demonstrating that the costs of any political or charitable spending in support of Am. Sub. H.B. 6, or the subsequent referendum effort, were not included, directly or indirectly, in any rates or charges paid by ratepayers in this state.”

“We are reviewing the PUCO order and will respond by September 30 as required,” said FirstEnergy spokesperson Jennifer Young. She added that the company was “not aware of the criminal allegations, affidavit or subpoenas before July 21,” and that it is cooperating fully in the federal investigation.

A ‘baby step’

Critics aren’t willing to take FirstEnergy’s word for it that the company did nothing wrong. 

“Ohioans deserve an open, transparent investigation and an audit by an independent, third party into the actions taken by FirstEnergy — not just a report from FirstEnergy itself to the PUCO,” said Miranda Leppla, vice president of energy policy for the Ohio Environmental Council Action Fund. “Ohioans have a right to know that state-approved monopolies, like our electric utilities, are not misusing dollars collected from Ohioans’ electric bills, and if they are, that the PUCO acts swiftly to crack down.”

Speaking before an Ohio House committee considering repeal of HB 6, PUCO Chair Sam Randazzo noted that stakeholders could weigh in. However, it’s not clear how much more will be done.

The PUCO’s order is “a baby step towards the direction of what the Consumers’ Counsel is suggesting,” but it’s certainly not the same, said former PUCO member Ashley Brown, who now heads the Harvard Electricity Policy Group. Ohio regulators have wide leeway in investigating utilities’ activities, he noted, and the order doesn’t foreclose additional inquiries beyond whatever FirstEnergy files in response.

According to FirstEnergy spokesperson Mark Durbin, “there were no expenses for political activity and lobbying for the years 2017-2020 included in customers’ rates at CEI, Toledo Edison, and Ohio Edison.”

However, the PUCO’s Sept. 15 order calls for the company to show that there was neither direct nor indirect funding of political and charitable giving. Indirect funding could happen if the parent corporation got more than the allowable rate of return from its regulated utilities, Brown said.

Even if the rate of return looks OK on paper, one might ask if personnel at the parent and affiliates charged for time related to lobbying efforts, Brown said. Likewise, the utilities’ electric security plans include some cross-subsidies for unregulated activities.

Additionally, from 2017 through mid-2019, FirstEnergy’s utilities collected roughly $440 million from ratepayers for a credit support rider that wasn’t tied to any services for ratepayers. Critics have questioned what the company did with those funds. The Ohio Supreme Court subsequently held the charge unlawful but didn’t require a refund.

“To do this audit correctly, you can’t just look at the accounts” from the utilities, Brown said. “You have to look at what’s behind the reporting. … It really requires a professional auditing firm that has financial skills and management skills and forensics skills.” And, he added, if improprieties show up, the bigger question is how the corporation and its directors and officers might have allowed them to happen.

For its part, the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel hopes the PUCO order is a beginning, rather than a last step for an investigation. 

“The Ohio legislature has granted the PUCO considerable powers to investigate utilities for the protection of the public,” said spokesperson J.P. Blackwood at the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel. “We hope the PUCO will more fully use those powers to broaden its announced ‘review’ of FirstEnergy's alleged conduct in influencing the passage of House Bill 6.”

As it stands, Ohio utilities are “the only entities in the state of Ohio that are guaranteed a profit,” said Rep. David Leland, D-Columbus, who is co-sponsoring one of the HB6 repeal bills. “It’s the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio’s responsibility to get to the bottom of what kind of corruption actually occurred at FirstEnergy.” In his view, the fact that it took nearly two months for the PUCO to act after Householder was arrested was “an abdication of their responsibilities.”

“It’s not timely, and it’s not expansive enough,” Leland said.

Aligned interests?

The PUCO’s Sept. 15 order could matter even more in light of a Cincinnati Enquirer report, showing that FirstEnergy’s Political Action Committee made $158,000 in campaign contributions just days before Householder’s July 21 arrest.

The report’s listing of donations, based on filings with the Ohio Secretary of State, showed $10,000 and $5,000 going to campaigns for HB 6 co-sponsors Jamie Callender and Shane Wilkin, respectively. Campaigns for Ohio Supreme Court justices Judith French and Sharon Kennedy each were shown as getting $7,000. 

Amounts exceeding $3,400 were also shown as going to campaigns for House Majority Floor Leader Bill Seitz, R-Cincinnati; House Majority Whip Jay Edwards, R-Nelsonville; House Minority Whip Paula Hicks-Hudson, D-Toledo; Sen. Matt Dolan, R-Chagrin Falls; Rep. Terrence Upchurch, D-Cleveland; Sen. Kirk Schuring, R-Canton; Bill Reineke, R-Tiffin; Rep. George Lang, R-West Chester; Senate Democratic Caucus Leader Kenny Yuko, D-Richmond Heights; and Ohio Senate candidate Jerry Cirino, R-Lake County.

Several campaigns have said they did not receive the money, raising yet more questions.

“FirstEnergy’s Political Action Committee supports both Republican and Democrat candidates and officeholders whose interests align with those of our customers, employees and shareholders,” Young said. “FirstEnergy’s PAC contributions are legal and reported consistent with established federal, state and legal requirements.”

Cirino had testified in support of HB 6 in his role as a current Lake County Commissioner. Documents uncovered by the Energy & Policy Institute showed that drafts of that testimony had been arranged by a FirstEnergy Solutions consultant who had previously been FirstEnergy’s external affairs director. That person, Murphy Montler, is now deceased.

“The former employee was working as a consultant for FES,” Young said. “I can only speak for FirstEnergy Corp., and I am not familiar with the work referenced in the article.”

“Energy Harbor does not have any comment at this time,” said spokesperson Jason Copsey. Energy Harbor is the successor to FirstEnergy’s former FirstEnergy Solutions subsidiary following the conclusion of its bankruptcy case in February 2020. The company is no longer considered an affiliate of FirstEnergy.

“I was acting as a county commissioner looking out for the economic health and employment situation in my county,” Cirino said. “At no time did I represent FirstEnergy and FirstEnergy Solutions. … Any implication that there was any financial interest on my part in supporting HB 6 or whatever the solution might have been is absurd.”

Cirino did not deny receiving the July donation from FirstEnergy, and he said that FirstEnergy Solutions had provided “technical” material for his testimony supporting HB 6. 

“When someone like Jerry Cirino has a documented history of simply taking marching orders from a large corporation and its lobbyists, no questions asked, we have to doubt whether he will ever ask the necessary hard questions,” said Besty Rader, his rival in the race for State Senate. 

Even after Householder’s arrest and revelation of the alleged racketeering scheme, “Cirino took the political lead this August to support the flow of money” to companies under the HB 6 subsidies, Rader added. “This sort of pay-to-play in Ohio politics has to end.”

Renewable energy was casualty of alleged corruption scheme

Repeal of HB 6 would address only part of Ohio's recent actions to slow renewable energy advances

A complete repeal is needed as a minimum to undo the bill’s gutting of the clean energy standards, advocates say.

Ohio Statehouse

By Kathiann M. Kowalski

This article provided by Eye on Ohio, the nonprofit, nonpartisan Ohio Center for Journalism.  

Both Republican and Democratic Ohio lawmakers are pushing to repeal the state’s nuclear bailout bill after this week’s release of a federal criminal complaint against House Speaker Larry Householder and others. Clean energy advocates say that would be a start, but more is needed to address eight years of lawmakers’ actions to slow the growth of renewables in the state.

The complaint alleges a $60 million bribery and conspiracy scheme that led to the passage of House Bill 6 last summer, followed by the defeat of a referendum effort to give voters a say on the bill. Amounts involved are about 20 times more than amounts that could be tracked through public documents.

HB 6 is primarily known as a “nuclear bailout” for providing six years of subsidies for the FirstEnergy Solutions/Energy Harbor nuclear power plants in Ohio totaling roughly a billion dollars, but it also gutted the state’s renewable energy and energy efficiency standards, and provided bailouts for two 1950s-era coal plants in Ohio and Indiana.

And while Gov. Mike DeWine has recently shifted his position from defending HB 6 to saying he wants to “repeal and replace” it, legislators from both parties say the whole thing should be thrown out. DeWine has said his office had no involvement in the alleged scheme. Yet he signed the law within hours after Householder secured its passage last summer.

Whether due to actual or perceived corruption, HB 6 “is a corrupt piece of legislation. All of it — not just part of it,” said Rep. Mike Skindell, D-Lakewood. “Therefore, the entire thing needs to be repealed. … That is one step in restoring the confidence of the citizens which was broken because of this corrupt process.”

“Those of us who are free-market conservatives are against the bill. Those of us who care about consumers and predatory pricing are against the bill. And it’s why those of us who want more renewable energy, not less, are against the bill,” said Rep. Laura Lanese, R-Grove City.

“Ohioans deserve an immediate and full repeal of House Bill 6 in order to restore the public’s trust in the legislative process, and also to get Ohio’s clean energy future restarted,” said Miranda Leppla, vice president of energy policy for the Ohio Environmental Council Action Fund. “There is simply no room to consider anything less than a full repeal of this bill, as it is corrupt to the very core. Ohio lawmakers should consider what policies are best for Ohioans, without the corrupt influence of pay-to-play politicians and lobbyists working to influence their decisions.”

“I think this fiasco of HB 6 is just symbolic of the pay-to-play culture that has been in operation for a decade or more,” said Steve Melink, founder and CEO of Melink Corporation in Cincinnati. An analysis of lawful, reported campaign contributions from the utility, nuclear and coal industries in Ohio shows substantial increases in election years after a competitive generation market finally began developing in the state.

Efforts to give preferences to FirstEnergy and utility and fossil fuel interests didn’t start with HB 6. Bailout proposals have been on the table since at least 2014. And efforts to limit or repeal Ohio’s clean energy standards have been underway since at least 2012. A 2014 law imposed a two-year “freeze,” and then former Gov. John Kasich vetoed another bill to erode the standards. Other bills for nuclear and fossil subsidies and for weakening the standards were proposed in 2017 and 2018.

And then Householder was elected.

HB 6 “was much more than a bailout for uneconomic nuclear and coal plants. It was an attack on renewable energy and energy efficiency that First Energy, and its allies in the legislature, had been pushing for years,” said J.R. Tolbert, managing director for Advanced Energy Economy’s national business group. 

What more is needed?

“Ohio has some fundamental changes that need to be made to get back on track in our fight against climate change,” Leppla said. “These include fixing our wind setbacks, prioritizing efficiency as a money- and energy-saving resource, and fixing our power siting board process to ensure renewables have an even playing field.”

Removing a 2014 provision that tripled property line setbacks for wind turbines “is the very first change that has to happen” after a full repeal of HB 6, said Sandy Buchanan, executive director of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

“When the rules changed, it essentially froze the number of wind projects,” said IEEFA data analyst Seth Feaster. That caused communities to miss out on revenues, more financial stability, better credit ratings and indirect job benefits, he and Buchanan noted. Meanwhile, a lot of wind projects moved to other states that were more welcoming.

The constant push to limit or repeal the state’s renewable energy and energy efficiency portfolio standards has also hurt, Melink noted. The portfolio standards act as incentives to attract and develop clean energy and other businesses that want renewable energy by setting enforceable targets, which the market then moves to meet, he said.

“A totally unregulated market is too open to the kinds of things that we’re witness to with HB 6,” Melink said. “Setting standards and rules is a good thing.”

“Businesses need some certainty that before they make investments to grow their businesses, that there are good laws that will be in existence for some period of time — that we’re not going to be going back and forth every year or two years, changing our minds about these things,” Melink continued. “No company is going to make a major investment to grow a clean energy economy with that scenario.”

Other concerns focus on how regulators and the courts have applied the state’s energy laws, including provisions that currently limit or preclude refunds of unlawful charges. 

Even before HB 6 passed, for example, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio allowed a credit support charge. The Supreme Court of Ohio found that the charge was unlawful, but declined to make FirstEnergy refund charges to consumers. A delayed repeal of HB 6 could also let utilities collect charges under the law.

“FirstEnergy and FirstEnergy Solutions should not be allowed to financially gain from the poisoned fruits of a crooked tree,” said Howard Learner, executive director of the Environmental Law & Policy Center. “If the U.S. Department of Justice’s allegations of corruption are proven true, then the mandatory rate increase imposed by House Bill 6 on Ohio consumers should be invalidated, and FirstEnergy and FirstEnergy Solutions/Energy Harbor should be required to disgorge their financial gains and refund those excess charges to consumers.”

Other pending legislation could make matters even more challenging for renewables. House Bill 246, for example, “does little to address the serious issues plaguing the PUCO and [Ohio Power Siting Board]’s opaque and inconsistent processes, especially as it relates to siting renewable energy projects in Ohio,” Leppla said. The bill could also make the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel more subject to political sway.

One or more bills to repeal House Bill 6 are being introduced next week, Skindell and Lanese said. But that repeal of House Bill 6 is not yet assured.

“Given the press of other business, repealing HB 6 is not a good idea because it would result in a rate increase for all Ohio ratepayers,” said House Majority Floor Leader Bill Seitz, R-Cincinnati. Seitz has pushed to limit or repeal Ohio’s renewable energy and energy efficiency standards since at least 2013. He and other House leaders have issued a joint statement saying they are reviewing the federal allegations and do not have knowledge of other representatives’ involvement.

“Repealing HB 6 doesn't solve all of the challenges faced by clean energy companies or corporations trying to meet their sustainability targets in Ohio, but it's a good start,” Tolbert said.

“We need to start from scratch,” said Sen. Stephanie Kunze, R-Hilliard. She added that the whole HB 6 process reminded her of baking a cake, in which supporters said “We’ll say that Ohioans want this cake, but really we want this cake, and you have to bake it for us.”

“We didn’t get a choice,” Kunze said.

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