Sam Randazzo, the chair of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, resigned Friday after his home was raided earlier in the week by the FBI.
His resignation comes a day after FirstEnergy Corp., the energy utility at the center of one of the largest public corruption scandals in Ohio history, expressed concern in a Securities and Exchange Commission 10-Q filing with a $4 million payment made in 2019 to an “individual who subsequently was appointed to a full-time role as an Ohio government official directly involved in regulating the Ohio companies, including with respect to distribution rates.”
That payment, discovered during an internal investigation led by independent members of FirstEnergy’s board of directors, was one factory that led the company to fire its CEO and other executives last month.
“The impression left by an FBI raid on our home, the statement included in FirstEnergy Corp.’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday and the accompanying publicity will, right or wrong, fuel suspicions about and controversy over decisions I may render in my current capacity,” Randazzo wrote in his resignation letter to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine on Friday.
“In present times, when you, good sir, are valiantly battling to save Ohioans from the surging attack of COVID-19, there is no room or time for me to be a distraction,” Randazzo wrote.
Since the indictment of former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, outside entities have criticized the PUCO for going too easy on FirstEnergy in terms of oversight. The Ohio Consumers Council filed a number of interventions into the utility regulator’s initial probe into the company, filed in September.
PUCO Vice Chair Beth Trombold will serve as chair in the interim.
In his letter of resignation, Randazzo outlined support for Ohio State Rep. Mark Romanchuk’s HB6 repeal bill currently pending in the state legislature.
Randazzo said one of the keys to cleaning up many of the problems PUCO has experienced in regard to transparency and functionality is the elimination of an electric security plan (ESP) statute passed during former Gov. Ted Strickland’s administration.
Instead, he wrote, the state should focus on the “use of a proper competitive bidding process to set the generation supply price for retail electric customers not served by a competitive supplier.”
“The elimination of the too-utility-friendly ESP statute will improve outcomes for customers and fairly compensate Ohio’s electric distribution utilities while, hopefully, reducing the number, size and scope of riders that transfer utility business and financial risk to captive customers with little or no recognition in the specification of a just and reasonable return,” he wrote.
He called Romanchuk’s bill a “fine vehicle” to address the ESP statute and rescind both the nuclear bailout and the “unbalanced” decoupling measures outlined in HB6.
Romanchuck’s bill is one of three HB6 repeal laws currently pending in the state legislature.
