Ohio’s former top utility regulator surrendered Monday in connection with a $60 million bribery scheme related to a legislative bailout for two Ohio nuclear power plants that has already resulted in a 20-year prison sentence for a former state House speaker.
Sam Randazzo, former chair of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, self-surrendered at U.S. District Court in Cincinnati after being charged in an 11-count indictment that was returned on Nov. 29, U.S. Attorney Kenneth L. Parker’s office announced. Randazzo was scheduled for an initial court appearance later in the day.
“Today’s indictment outlines an alleged scheme in which a public regulatory official ignored the Ohio consumers he was responsible for protecting, instead taking a bribe from an energy company seeking favors,” FBI Cincinnati Special Agent in Charge J. William Rivers said in a statement.
Randazzo, 74, resigned in November 2020 after FBI agents searched his Columbus townhome and FirstEnergy revealed in security filings what it said were bribery payments of $4.3 million for his future help at the commission a month before Republican Gov. Mike DeWine nominated him as Ohio’s top utility regulator.
Its even worse that the article covers. The article covers the history of how Ohio HB 6 (the tainted law that the corrupt Republican politicians passed 2019), but it doesn’t cover the fact that the tainted law is still in effect in 2023!
You know how Republicans call foul on subsidizing green energy projects like solar and wind? Well, Ohio HB6 actually subsidizes two particularly dirty coal plants (as well as two old unprofitable nuke plants). Thats right, when it became law electricity consumers even today are still paying the corrupt company (First Energy) extra fees to make the coal plants artificially profitable. source.
“People need electricity, and greener sources don’t appear overnight” I hear some say. You’re right, but the same company First Energy owned hydro and natural gas power plants but sold them from 2011 to 2014 instead putting trying to prop up the old coal and nuke plants. source
If anyone asks who the party of corruption is in the state of Ohio, I point to the Republicans with their, at the time, Republican controlled legislature, Speaker of the House and Governor signing this into law, and then the present day Republican controlled legislature, and the same Republican Governor in office letting this law stand on the books even after the corruption was public knowledge and convictions occurred years ago!