The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio will hold a hearing on March 13 on Fifth Amendment claims by several witnesses who previously refused to answer questions under oath. Regulatory staff says the witnesses might now agree to answer if ordered by the PUCO. An outstanding question has been whether an Ohio law granting immunity would cover potential federal charges.
Consumer advocates, business groups and others have been pushing for more than four years for rate adjustments, penalties, or other relief in four regulatory cases related to the HB 6 scandal. FirstEnergy’s objections to turning over massive amounts of documents led to delays, and then the cases were stalled for a year and a half after a request by the Department of Justice. Part of one corporate separate case had an evidentiary hearing in the fall, but the rest of the cases remain unresolved.
Collectively, the cases question the legitimacy of hundreds of thousands of dollars in ratepayer charges. FirstEnergy also could face more than $1 billion in civil penalties.
Although document production has continued, stakeholders are still waiting for FirstEnergy to turn over an internal investigation. The PUCO so far has not required it in the regulatory cases, but a federal judge ruled it should be produced in shareholder litigation. FirstEnergy’s challenge to that order is pending in federal court.
For now, the PUCO plans to start an evidentiary hearing for three of the regulatory cases on May 13. One case deals with HB 6–related questions in a corporate separation case, including an alleged side deal between FirstEnergy and Randazzo back in 2015 that is also relevant to a rider in another case.
Audits in that other case found FirstEnergy failed to properly track spending for one of the charges. Customers paid roughly $450,000 before that charge was ultimately held unlawful. Although the court refused to allow a refund, parties in the rider case have asked for FirstEnergy to be charged more than $1 billion in civil penalties.
A third third regulatory case deals with improper spending under another rider, which was supposed to be for capital costs. The fourth case deals more generally with whether FirstEnergy unlawfully used ratepayer money for political or charitable purposes. An evidentiary hearing date has not yet been set there.
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The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio filed charges against former FirstEnergy executives Chuck Jones and Michael Dowling in January. The Jan. 15 indictment marks the first federal criminal charges against individuals who allegedly paid bribes to others in the HB 6 scandal. FirstEnergy, as a company, already paid a $230 million penalty under a deferred prosecution agreement in 2021.
The same day the federal indictment against Jones and Dowling became public, Gov. DeWine announced the appointment of former Lt. Gov. Jon Husted to serve Vice President JD Vance’s unexpired term in the U.S. Senate. The executives dined with DeWine and Husted roughly seven years earlier, on Dec. 18, 2018. Earlier that day, Jones and Dowling met with Randazzo. And later that night, FirstEnergy finalized its plan to pay $4.3 million to a company controlled by Randazzo. Six weeks later DeWine picked Randazzo to chair the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. FirstEnergy later admitted it paid the money with the expectation that Randazzo would help it on HB 6 and other matters. Randazzo also faced criminal charges in federal and state court when he died of an apparent suicide last spring.
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On Jan. 17, American Electric Power announced it had agreed to a $19 million civil penalty to resolve allegations by the Securities and Exchange Commission that it made material misstatements of fact about HB 6–related payments, omitted important information from securities filings, and otherwise failed to maintain proper records on the payments.
To date, no criminal charges have been brought against the company or its executives.
According to the SEC’s cease-and-desist order, the company contributed funds to a nonprofit organization it controlled, which in turn gave approximately $1 million to dark money groups designated by Householder to help pass and protect HB 6 and then to help him stay in office beyond Ohio’s term limits. Among Ohio utilities, AEP owns the largest share of the Ohio Valley Electric Corp., which runs the two HB 6-subsidized coal plants. One is in Ohio, and the other is in Indiana.
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