Ohio Republican Governor Mike DeWine, reversing course, has called on the Ohio legislature to repeal House Bill 6, the bribery-tainted measure that provides a $1.3 billion subsidy to two failing FirstEnergy nuclear power plants. DeWine, who signed the measure a year ago, said he continues to support the goal of the nuclear bailout.
DeWine said, “While the policy in my opinion is good, the process by which it was created stinks. It’s terrible, it’s not acceptable.” Akron-based utility giant FirstEnergy Corp. and several subsidiaries, according to the FBI, bankrolled a group led by Republican House Speaker Larry Householder to pass the measure and then defeat a referendum aimed at overturning it. DeWine benefited directly by FirstEnergy election contributions during his gubernatorial campaign and early days in office.
The bailout of the Perry and Davis-Besse nuclear plants also provides state subsidies in competitive power markets to coal plants in the state and Indiana and guts the state’s green energy mandates.
Four state legislators, cleveland.com reports, are working on bills to repeal the controversial Ohio law. The group includes two Republican state representatives, and two Democrats, all of whom voted against the original legislation, which passed and went into effect in late 2019.
The bribery scam involved Householder and allies in a $60 million scheme using sham organizations and dark money to support the passage of the legislation and defeat the repeal referendum. The alleged conspirators also used the money to enrich themselves with millions of illicit dollars.
According to cleveland.com, “A top aide in Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s office previously led a political non-profit federal agents have called a pass-through used by FirstEnergy to fund a bribery scheme that led to House Speaker Larry Householder’s arrest this week, tax records show.” The records show that in 2017, Dan McCarthy was the principal in Progress for Progress, Inc., a 519 (C) (4) charitable group, named in the FBI’s criminal complaint as “Energy Pass Through,” funded by $5 million from FirstEnergy.
The cleveland.com web site, the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s online presence, said, “McCarthy when he led Partners for Progress was a top lobbyist for the Success Group, an influential Columbus lobbying firm that help push the nuclear bailout. McCarthy resigned his position with the firm to take a job as DeWine’s director of legislative affairs when DeWine became governor in January 2019.”
After banking the $5 million of FirstEnergy funds, the Cleveland newspaper reported, McCarthy’s group then spent $1.2 million “to organizations working to elect Householder as speaker, including Generation Now, an organization federal investigators have said Householder controlled. The group later spent millions funding ads and taking other steps to pass House Bill 6, the nuclear bailout bill that DeWine signed into law late last year.”
The Toledo Blade, a fine Ohio newspaper, detailed how the FBI became aware of the Householder bribery enterprise, now charged by the feds as a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations violator. The key was a former conservative Ohio Republican political operative, Tyler Fehrman, who was operating as a plant inside the group pushing for repeal of the law. Fehrman had worked for the campaign of former Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich.
According to the Toledo Blade, the Householder group paid Fehrman to go to work for the repeal organization with a $15,000 payoff. They then asked him to provide information on how the referendum group was progressing.
Fehrman had misgivings about the arrangement and contacted the FBI. They arranged for him to be wired up and record meetings with the key operatives in Householder’s enterprise, including conversations with his friend and mentor Matt Borges, former chairman of the Ohio Republican Party, and a key figure in the Householder group. Those incriminating conversations were a key to the FBI’s criminal complaint leading the arrest of Householder, Borges, and others.
— Kennedy Maize