By John Stang
The full Ohio House had not voted at deadline on a bill to delay ratepayer-funded subsidies to two financially struggling Ohio nuclear plants as of Friday, though a key committee advanced it this week and prepped it for a vote on the House floor.
That puts this bill in the final minutes of the legislature’s 11th hour, especially since the Ohio Senate still needs to act on it. The Ohio General Assembly’s current emergency session was scheduled to end Thursday, but the legislature has reserved Friday and Dec. 22 for any last-minute votes.
The House Energy Policy and Oversight Committee voted 8-7 on Wednesday to send House Bill 798 to the House Rules Committee, which on Thursday was to determine whether to allow a floor vote for the legislation; at deadline, the Rules Committee had not.
HB 798, would delay by a year the rate increases scheduled to go into effect in January under the controversial House Bill 6 — a law at the center of a massive bribery scandal that led to the ouster of the Ohio House speaker, who allegedly accepted payment in exchange for drafting the bill and shepherding it through the legislature, and the president of FirstEnergy Corp., which controlled the struggling nuclear reactors through a former subsidiary.
Introduced by Ohio Rep Jim Hoops (R), HB 798 would delay the HB 6 subsidies for at least a year, beginning in mid-March 2021. During that time, an annual third-party audit conducted by a firm hired by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio would determine whether the reactors really need the subsidies to remain financially solvent.
So, even if the bill does pass at the last minute, ratepayers will still be on the hook for the extra payments for almost three months, starting Jan. 1.
“This has been a very passionate and interesting issue,” Hoops said yesterday during webcast proceedings.
All this traces back to last summer when then-Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder (R), three lobbyists, and another political operator were charged in federal court for an alleged scheme to funnel and launder $60 million 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 owned by a bankrupt FirstEnergy subsidiary FirstEnergy Solutions, which has since become the stand-alone company Energy Harbor.
So far, two of the five charged have pled guilty to the charges. Householder and two others have pled not guilty.
The money was allegedly used to support the elections of roughly 20 candidates in 2018 who became freshmen legislators in the Ohio House, who then successfully supported Householder becoming the House speaker. The FBI said the money was also used to pay bribes to Householder and the other four; to support the campaign in the House for the HB 6 bailout bill; and to finance opposition to a proposed, ultimately failed, ballot initiative to repeal the rate hikes.
Householder allegedly oversaw the writing of House Bill 6 that established a $150 million annual bailout for the Davis-Besse and Perry reactors. Another $74 million of bailout money is to go to subsidizing two FirstEnergy coal-fired power plants. The rate hikes established by the bill range from $0.85 per month for a home up to $2,400 per month for a large industrial business. All Ohio ratepayers must pay the rate hike, regardless of whether they are FirstEnergy Corp. customers. The increase goes into effect in on Jan. 1, 2021.
The Ohio House quickly removed Householder as speaker, though he won reelection to the House in November. FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones was also removed after the scandal broke.
