A bill to stop rate increases for customers of two financially ailing nuclear power plants in Ohio died after the state legislature failed to act on the emergency legislation before the holidays and it’s unclear if the measure will be revived in the 2021 session of the Ohio General Assembly that begins today.
In the meantime, Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Chris Brown has blocked the rate hikes at the request of Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost (D) and the cities of Columbus and Cincinnati.
In the waning days of the General Assembly’s last session, lawmakers debated but did not pass HB 798, which would have delayed by a year the rate increases enacted by the controversial House Bill 6 — a law at the center of a bribery scandal in which the former Ohio House speaker, state Rep. Larry Householder (R), allegedly accepted payment in exchange for drafting the bill and shepherding it through the legislature.
The scandal also has enmeshed the FirstEnergy Corp., which controlled the struggling nuclear reactors through a former subsidiary. The company dismissed top executives, including CEO Chuck Jones after an internal probe last fall.
Introduced by Ohio Rep Jim Hoops (R), HB 798 also would have required an annual third-party audit conducted by a firm hired by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio to determine whether the struggling reactors really need subsidies to remain financially solvent.
All this traces back to last summer when Householder, three lobbyists, and another political operator were charged in federal court for an alleged scheme to funnel $60 million in political contributions from FirstEnergy to pass HB 6 to prevent planned closures by May 2021 of the financially troubled Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear power plants. The plants were then owned by FirstEnergy subsidiary FirstEnergy Solutions, which after a bankruptcy reorganization became the stand-alone company Energy Harbor.
So far, two of the five people charged have pleaded guilty to the charges. Householder and two others have pleaded not guilty.
