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COLUMBUS, Ohio – Shortly before a lawyer and lobbyist was appointed in Ohio as the leading regulator of electrical and power generation companies, he received $ 4.3 million from top executives at one of the companies whose fate would soon be in his hands.
In the following months, the company – FirstEnergy Corp. in Akron – a series of legislative and regulatory wins worth more than $ 1 billion over time to the company and its subsidiaries, including a $ 60 bailout for nuclear power plants. million federal bribery. Most of the tab would be paid for by the state’s electricity customers.
What state and federal investigators now want to know is whether Sam Randazzo, the utility lawyer who has since resigned, helped FirstEnergy in exchange for millions.
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The payment to a future official meeting of Randazzo’s description received in January 2019 from the then utilities’ executives is the subject of an ongoing audit by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, chaired by Randazzo from April 2019 until last November, when he resigned. under a cloud.
Corporate filings from November differ in the descriptions the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission gave to the U.S. government about the payment made by fired top officials. FirstEnergy’s board of directors fired CEO Chuck Jones and two other executives weeks earlier for “violating certain FirstEnergy policies and its code of conduct.”
FILE – This undated file photo provided by the Ohio Governor’s Office shows former Ohio State Utility Sam Randazzo. Government officials and federal officials are investigating whether Randazzo, the law firm that has been resi since, used
According to FirstEnergy’s quarterly earnings report, the payment was terminated with a ‘suspected consultation contract’ dating back to 2013. Recent extravagance by the Energy and Policy Institute, a watchdog group for pro-renewable energy, found a disclosure in the loan documents that proposed that Randazzo was paid for future work to create questions about what action he could take as PUCO chairman on behalf of FirstEnergy.
First Young spokeswoman Jennifer Young declined to comment on the differences between the two. Randazzo made the comments through The Associated Press.
CEO Chuck Keiper of NOPEC, Ohio’s largest nonprofit energy compiler, called the revelations in the documentation “shocking.” He said in a statement that they were raising questions at the PUCO as to whether there was “something abhorrent going on”.
NOPEC is fighting FirstEnergy and the PUCO in the Ohio High Court over what they believe is an illegal decision taken under Randazzo in early 2020.
Commissioners have granted a new FirstEnergy subsidiary permission to sell electricity to customers without allowing competitors such as NOPEC and the Ohio Consumers’ Council to intervene and oppose the move. They allege the subsidiary shared senior executives with FirstEnergy in violation of Ohio law.
Randazzo was involved in other actions while chairing FirstEnergy companies. The most important was Bill 6, the $ 1 billion nuclear rescue plan bill.
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The then Ohio Speaker Larry Householder, a Republican and four associates, was arrested in July and charged with charges of federal racketeering, accused of orchestrating an extensive plan secretly funded by FirstEnergy for the power of the Housemate to secure, to elect his allies, and to pass the now-infected pass. account. The legislation was promoted as a plan to secure the future of two aging nuclear power plants which will then be operated by a wholly owned subsidiary of FirstEnergy.
According to documents filed by the FBI, Randazzo played a key role in drafting the lifeline bill.
Calendars obtained by the AP through a public records request further show that in April 2019, Randazzo met with a House and Republican Gov. Mike DeWine for an ‘energy discussion’. It was less than two weeks after Randazzo became PUCO chairman and a day later, the lifeline bill was introduced. He also met with both men’s policy advisers and other administrative officials in 2019.
DeWine’s office said in response to a separate record request that there was no further documentation of the meeting. The AP reported on December 10 that in early 2019, DeWine had shouted out of unrest over Randazzo’s close ties with FirstEnergy before appointing him to the commission. DeWine stood by the decision.
In addition to the nuclear rescue action, HB6 included an income guarantee tailored for FirstEnergy, which is estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars over time.
The Citizens’ Utility Board of Ohio, an advocacy group for residential and small business taxpayers, said Randazzo and PUCO assured that the guaranteed profits would continue in the future when they ruled in November 2019 that FirstEnergy’s Ohio utilities of a can abandon traditional tariff determination process. it would have opened and erased their books.
“Chairman Randazzo was conspicuously silent on the shortcomings of the profit guarantee while it was pending in the legislature, and then he put forward a ruling by the PUCO that could allow it to continue indefinitely,” said Tom Bullock, executive director of the CUB. .
As Randazzo was no longer at the helm of the PUCO, the commission reversed the decision in late December and ordered FirstEnergy’s 2024 rate case to continue.
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FirstEnergy agreed two months later, in a settlement with Republican Attorney General Dave Yost, to drop the $ 100 million guaranteed revenue that would flow to its three electrical utilities this year.
In December, a district court judge in Columbus blocked the collection and distribution of the fee that HB6 had imposed for the nuclear plants. Since then, Energy Harbor, the independent company that took ownership of the two nuclear power plants and other FirstEnergy assets in February 2020, has indicated that it may no longer want the money.
Ohio Legislature Inspector General Tony Bledsoe said Randazzo has never been registered to lobby on behalf of FirstEnergy or Energy Harbor since 2009.
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Gillispie reports from Cleveland.