Support for the statewide broadcast of the state of Ohio comes from medical mutuel, providing more than 1.4 million Ohioans peace of mind with a selection of health insurance plans online at med mutual dot com slash Ohio by the law offices of Porter Wright, Morris and Arthur LLP.

Now with eight locations across the country, Porter Wright is a legal partner with a new perspective to the business community.

More at Porter Wright dot com and from the Ohio Education Association representing 124,000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online.

At OHEA.org.

House Bill six is still fueling debates about energy in Ohio, and the law at the center of a corruption scandal is also still powering campaigns and sparking legislation And a Republican lawmaker will try again to pass a bill that seeks to make some changes to gun laws.

All this weekend, the state of Ohio welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Karen Kasler.

Two top executives with Ohio's largest utility company, AP sat down for an in-depth conversation about the future of energy with a move toward electrification, powering the new Intel plant and the proliferation of electric vehicles.

As Statehouse Correspondent Andy Chao reports.

They also discussed how policymaking has been affected by the huge scandal tainted energy law.

House Bill six The bribery scheme connected to HB six is centered around the nuclear power plant bailout portion of the bill with first energy as a key player.

First, Entergy has admitted to bribing Republican former House Speaker Larry Householder and former Public Utilities Commission of Ohio chair Sam Randazzo for passage of the bill and preferential regulatory treatment.

AP has not been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with the federal investigation During a forum with the Columbus Metropolitan Club, outgoing CEO Nick Akins said he wasn't going to talk about first energy, but did say the corruption scandal damages the reputation of the state and energy companies.

It made the whole state look bad and made all the utilities look bad and we suffered from that because we were sort of caught up in the wake of of all of this activity that was occurring.

It was pretty it was pretty distressing for us.

And some of, you know, some of the initial reporting was was not good either.

But there certainly is an opportunity for us.

And the way I see is in correct me, but but we've continue to engage with legislators.

We continue to engage with with the Public Utility Commission of Ohio.

And they've they've certainly been responsive.

The comments were made within days of the disclosure of text messages between now fired first energy executives in 2019.

The former utility bosses said in a chat that Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted was pushing for lawmakers to pass a ten year nuclear bailout even longer than what was on the table at the time.

Husted, who had previously denied playing a role in the passage of HB six, said the policy still had merit which is separate from the bribery allegations.

There were a lot of people of goodwill out around Capitol Square and around the state of Ohio labor unions, Republicans, Democrats, others who thought saving the nuclear power plants was a good policy decision and they were of goodwill trying to solve that problem That's separate from what First Energy and Larry Householder were alleged to do.

And we will find out whether they committed a crime when that trial occurs.

But the two are not the same thing.

While AEP was not impacted by the nuclear bailout portion of HB six, the bill had provisions gutting renewable energy requirements and eliminating utilities energy efficiency programs.

It also included the extension of a subsidy for two coal plants, one in Gallia County, the other in Indiana.

Owned by a utility collective known as the Ohio Valley Electric Corporation.

Ohio's major utilities own a stake in OVEX, and AEP is the largest shareholder Mark Reiter, AP president and CEO, says ratepayers will now see a credit on electric bills as high as $0.27 a month.

Because that controversial coal subsidy allowed the plans to continue producing at a time when other fuel sources became more expensive.

That's a credit now to bills and it's going to continue to be a credit as you see power prices and natural gas prices continue to climb.

You know, the mechanism is set up as a financial hedge.

So there there will be periods and or having periods, there will be a cost to customers.

But it's that hedge in that protection to customers.

In the event you have what's happening right now and you have spikes, natural gas and power prices, that overall is returning money to customers You know, like I said, I think we we feel that based on what we're seeing is could be a dollar a month for the average customer come January.

Environmental and consumer advocates have been vocal critics of the coal subsidies, arguing that ratepayers should not be on the hook for struggling coal plants when the country is trying to reduce carbon emissions.

A statement from J.P. Blackwood, spokesperson for Ohio Consumers Council Bruce Weston, said that their preliminary analysis is that the consumer bill credit is only to remedy past utility overcharges for the coal plants and not that the coal plants became economical.

To date, Ohioans have been charged tens of millions of dollars to subsidize AEP, Duke and A.S. for the coal plants.

The AEP executives said they are consistently working on ways to make the grid more reliable and resilient, while demand for power is expected to ramp up.

From the Intel computer chip making plant to the expected increase in ownership of electric vehicles.

Andy Chao, Statehouse News Bureau.

Democrats have an anchoring on the scandal surrounding House Bill six as they campaign in Ohio and they proposed a group of bills that they say will deal with corruption in state government.

The latest, a bill to ban statewide officeholders from holding down jobs in the private sector or serving in any paid positions.

It's aimed squarely at Republican Lieutenant Governor John Houston, who was elected by his fellow shareholders to the board of directors of Heartland Bank earlier this year.

I spoke with one of the sponsors of the bill who's also an outspoken critic of House Bill six.

Absolutely.

I think it should apply to all statewide elected officials.

I think it goes without saying.

I think this is a commonsense bill.

But in particular, I think it's very disconcerting that Lieutenant Governor Husted, who makes more than I think any statewide elected or legislative person in the state, is now taking a corporate paid board position in addition to his significant salary, which I think is also more than a member of Congress makes it.

And not so far disclosing what he's being paid in that position.

So I think Ohioans deserve to know that their statewide elected officials are fully accountable to them.

This $176,000 is indeed more than the governor which is $100,517, more than any Supreme Court justice, more than state lawmakers, which you would know, of course, Husted said when he was asked about his position on the board of Heartland Bank that he had thought about investing in a community bank and joining its board for many years, and that his work on workforce technology innovation and regulatory issues will be enhanced by what he learns on this board of directors job, and that none of what he will do there will conflict with what he does as lieutenant governor.

How do you see that statement?

I read that and hear that as an overlap and responsibilities between his jobs as a lieutenant governor and his responsibilities as a corporate board officer.

I mean, a significant major bank in Ohio is going to have tentacles into a lot of the business that the state does.

So that's deeply disconcerting.

If he wants to do this and he's so interested in banking, then he should resign as lieutenant governor and go work for a bank.

Right.

But he has taken sworn an oath to Ohioans and should be accountable again, with the highest salary of any state elected official, as we, as you just mentioned, by far should be accountable to Ohioans first.

This is one of several bills that Democrats have proposed in this whole portfolio of dealing with integrity.

You've got the anti-corruption act requiring dark money groups to identify their contributors and disclose their spending Public Corruption Repayment Act requires legislators to reimburse the state for compensation received between the time they were indicted for a felony involving public corruption and their conviction, which is interesting that that is not in state law now.

Also, there's House Bill six, which you've been speaking out about a lot.

You want to look at some of the provisions of House Bill six in fact, I think you want to repeal the whole thing.

I want to repeal the whole thing.

And I think there's a big misconception out there that when we got rid of, you know, when we booted Larry Householder from the house, that House Bill six got unwound.

But it hasn't been.

It wasn't when we got rid of Sam Randazzo, it didn't matter.

The the law is still in place, largely in place.

There were some nuclear subsidies repealed.

But the energy efficiency standards that were so successful by PIMCO's own studies that have saved Ohioans billions of dollars in the cheapest energy there is energy you don't use, our renewable standard got unwound in that process.

And what was also kept was a coal bailout through VAC, which included two coal plants, one of which is yes, in Indiana, Madison, Indiana, where I tracked last year with my colleague Jeff Crossman, about an hour over the border.

We're not getting those jobs.

We're not getting that energy.

It's a 1950s era coal plant that Ohioans are bailing out because of House Bill six.

So, yes, I would very much like to see those subsidies repealed and there are bipartisan efforts right now in the House to do just that.

I just want to see those advanced.

You have noted that it costs Ohioans $12,000 every hour for those bailouts.

But it's also been noted that they're start there's some credits that are starting to go back to AEP customers because of this and that this is slowly unwinding already slowly and unfortunately disproportionately not fully making consumers whole.

And if you take a step back from that whole process, we clearly have a corruption problem, but we're also a state that's moving in the wrong direction.

When you look at our neighboring states, red and blue, there are massive investments being made in renewable energy, in efficiency that we are no longer doing in Ohio or we're doing our darn best not to allow them to move forward.

So I'd like to see us take a 21st century.

How about a 20th century approach to energy policy in Ohio and take a step in the right direction?

Representative Bill Seitz, a Republican from Cincinnati, has pushed back on that with you on social media, saying that the coal plants are indeed crediting Ohio ratepayers bills and that Germany is rushing to reopen their coal plants.

China never quite building them.

There are those people who would say that what you're saying is not is not the whole story.

Well, Bill Seitz is really the architect of House Bill six.

If you go back, House Bill six is the famous bill, but there have been several Zen or related bills that first energy attempted in multiple successive cars, one on one before I got into the legislature to do this.

And Bill Seitz was very much it's been reported.

Was very much involved in crafting the legislation over that time.

And he's also taken, I think I saw at least $7,000 in direct contributions or in the range of $7,000 in contributions from first Entergy.

So it doesn't surprise me that he is a big backer of the bill.

And, you know, there are some very temporary increases in coal power going on in different parts of the world because of the the war in Ukraine and an energy crunch that that's affecting regionally in Europe.

But if you look at the broad sweep and the the trajectory that we are heading globally and that includes China, it is investment in additional capacity, retiring coal plants, retiring gas plants and moving toward wind and solar power and that's what I'd like to see us do in Ohio.

And there's investment coming from the federal government, of course, in what's known as the Inflation Reduction Act that would deal with some of that.

There is.

But we are shutting at the same time, renewable energy out from huge swaths of Ohio because of a law we passed this past year, giving communities a basically poison pill to prevent any utility scale renewable energy from being in their communities.

So I worry that that investment is going to go to neighboring states and not to Ohio.

And finally, back on the corruption aspect here.

There were these text messages that were released from two now fired first energy executives that appear to implicate Governor Mike DeWine, a state official, one and Lieutenant Governor John Houston, a state official two in First Energy's deferred plea agreement, where they admitted to bribing Sam Randazzo, the former chair of the Public Utilities Commission, and former Speaker Larry Householder Now, DeWine and Husted have said that they had no involvement in House Bill six.

What was in the legislation was what lawmakers put in it, and that the they were always clear that they supported the idea of bailing out the nuclear plants because of their role in Ohio's economic and environmental climate.

So I want to ask you, I mean, you did not vote for House Bill six, but there were several Democrats, 12 Democrats, nine in the House and three in the Senate voted for it, along with all the Republicans who did that.

There were some Republicans who didn't.

So this isn't just a Republican versus Democrat, Bill.

I think some of my colleagues, you know, to be fair, on both sides of the aisle, took what we were told by the chair of the Public Utilities Commission at face value and took what we were being told by the speaker of the House at the time, at face value or by first energy.

We essentially trusted people.

And I think what you've seen is repeated assertions by Governor DeWine, by Lieutenant Governor Husted, that they weren't involved.

And then we see private email exchanges and then we see text message exchanges.

And we also just follow the money rate.

I've learned in my I'm just in my second term.

But you can follow the money and you can see that millions of dollars, both dark and reportable money in some, have been contributed over time to Governor DeWine.

And he took not only money directly, but for his daughter in a race I believe was Greene County prosecutor.

Could be wrong on that, but I believe it was a Greene County local race.

That, to my knowledge, first energy had no direct that it was not really a race that would directly impact their business.

And yet it was a six figure sum directed to her.

This just stinks to me and it just honestly upsets me.

And it's when you talk about integrity and corruption, this goes to the core of Pay-To-Play and what everybody hates about politics, that this is how it how it happens.

So I want the governor to disclose all communications that he's had with first energy to clear the air and let us all be reassured that he had nothing to do behind the scenes with ultimately beyond appointing Sam Randazzo in that position.

Getting this thing passed into law and used to decide what was advocated for, what he had done, advocated for for the power plants to be bailed out and for them to remain part of Ohio's energy portfolio is different than what Larry Householder and Sam Randazzo, who has not been charged, are accused of doing.

Are those two things different or are they inexorable?

Tied together?

You know, there's so much dark money that went into this massive cesspool, some of which was deployed against me in 20, 18, as I sat on a couch with my wife watching 60 minutes, which is expensive TV, let me tell you, it's hard to track, it's hard to know.

What is clear is that enormous sums of money over many years were given to dark money groups, unaccountable groups, these 501 see force that is almost untraceable.

All those being unwound in the criminal process and directly that we know about to legislators and to Governor DeWine and again to his family members that I think it's clear influenced the passage of this law, which Ohioans are still on the hook for today.

Weinstein says the bill banning statewide officeholders from holding paid private jobs should not apply to state lawmakers because those are part time positions that the legislature has a long tradition of having members from a wide variety of professions.

Almost three years after he proposed a measure on gun laws after the mass shooting in Dayton, Republican Senator Matt Dolan is back with a five point plan on guns.

This one includes some elements of his previous bill, but it does not include universal background checks or a ban on gun sales to people under 20 12 ideas that polls show are overwhelmingly supported even by gun owners.

Dolan's bill creates a due process safety protection order allowing a judge to order the seizure, a firearm from a person deemed to be a danger to themselves or others because of mental health issues.

It requires a cosigner for buyers who are 18 to 21 years old.

That person could be held civilly liable if the gun is used in a felony.

It brings back a proposal from the previous bill allowing buyers to request background checks from sheriff's offices to show to sellers.

But it does not make it mandatory.

It requires law enforcement to enter enhanced background check information into state and federal databases by the end of the next business day.

And it puts $175 million in federal American rescue plan money and to increasing the number of mental health workers and the expansion of regional mental health centers.

I talked to Senator Dolan about why he's proposing this plan now since his previous plan went nowhere.

When I talked to you about this bill, when you introduced it, we talked about it being a mental health bill rather than a Second Amendment bill.

That's kind of the way that you see it, that this really addresses some of the mental health issues, not just the Second Amendment concerns.

Well, I don't think it violates the Second Amendment at all.

But what is uniform when we have these tragic events?

Everyone agrees that the individual who unfortunately committed suicide or committed homicide had mental health issues.

That's what this bill is trying to do.

If you have mental health issues and you are violent threat to yourself or others, we want to separate you from your guns.

The other universal truth that's that everyone accepts is that in Ohio, we already say if you are mentally ill, we don't want you to buy a gun.

We understand the problems of somebody who's suffering from mental illness and a gun.

29, 23.13 five says no guns if you're mentally ill.

This bill simply says if you've purchased a gun and now have that disability, we want to separate you just like you could.

Just like the law says, you couldn't get it before.

One of the provisions would be a cosigner for buyers of guns who are 18 to 21 years old.

You don't ban the purchases of guns by anyone under 21.

You just require a cosigner.

And perhaps the immaturity level of some people in that 1821 year old area is part of that.

But Buckeye Firearms Association says that they think that provision is unconstitutional and blatant and arbitrary discrimination.

Tell me about why you have that provision in there.

And do you think that it might violate the Constitution?

Well, no, I don't.

I mean, we, we pass laws based on age all the time.

You can't vote into your 18, you can't drink alcohol into your 21.

You can't rent a car to your 25.

You can't run a hotel room.

You can't get your you're you're entitled to your retirement funds until you're certain age.

So no.

The other factor in this is it's not just immaturity.

It's a recognition that maybe it's 18 and 19.

You don't have a record, a criminal record, but you might have some emotional immaturity.

Look at what happened in Texas that young man at 18 on his 18th birthday went and bought a gun and four or five days later he used to kill children.

And you know, I also would remind gun owners that we already say to folks, you can't buy a handgun until you're 21 years old.

So again, Ohio has laws that uniformly accept the concept that between 18 and under 21 we're going to put additional burdens on you.

My bill just simply says, my bill says if you want to buy a handgun you still need a cosigner.

So it may my bill actually expands the ability for an 18 221.

We just want a responsible adult to cosign but I have firearms is also concerned about your sellers protection certificates right now in the bill it is voluntary and you've even told me that you think it might potentially close the gun show loophole because it allows for those private transactions to happen.

Is there why isn't it mandatory?

Why is it something that's voluntary?

Because I believe that first of all, you have to have the political what can pass.

And the second is, as you, you know, study this issue, you know what people don't understand?

We already have disabilities in Ohio that say you cannot have a gun if you if you have these seven to eight disability.

So we've already recognized people should not have guns with this says to a seller is, look, if you want protection from this sale and you are concerned about your buyer, then you have the ability to go get a certificate, have the buyer go get a certificate and then say, yes, I did my due diligence.

So if something happens to that person was disabled, you should not have had a gun.

They're protected.

So it is a choice of the seller if they don't and that person ultimately did have disability, then they face liability themselves.

So it is giving the seller of a gun and a nonfederal license the ability to protect themselves.

It also makes it very clear we're not talking about family transfers.

We're not talking about grandson to granddaughter.

We're talking about folks who may go to these gun shows and make a substantial portion of their living selling guns.

$175 million in American rescue plan money is in this for regional mental health centers and the mental health workforce to stand those up and build those up.

That is one time money.

And what happens when that money is done and these centers are in existence, you have this workforce.

This is now.

Isn't that potentially a burden on counties or other entities to try to operate those facilities that the one time money has stood up?

Well, one time money would go towards the brick and mortars.

And I think what you're going to find when you talk to the counties is they're okay with this because they have a great deal of their local dollars going to their local jails in which 20 to 25% of those folks are sitting in jail who are need mental health and are not getting it.

This would allow them to be removed from the local jail to go to a regional crisis center to get the help that they need so they can be functioning adult and of free or forget that they don't commit tragedy.

I mean, we have mental health folks.

We have people who suffer from mental illness who are no way a violent threat.

And if that's the case, my bill doesn't apply them at all.

Zero.

It's only that additional element that there is a there's suicide or homicidal evidence that we want to do that this bill is taking place.

So I think what you're going to see is the additional mental health workers, the the infrastructure to provide them will allow schools, hospitals, clinics to have the ability to have mental health workers available to them.

This is an election year for the entire House, for half the Senate also for the governor and the four other statewide executive office holders.

I know you've traveled the state, you said talking to people when you were running for U.S. Senate and got the sense that these ideas are workable, that people are supportive of them.

But this is a legislature that just passed permit concealed carry and allow teachers to be armed in school.

What's the real hope that this goes anywhere, especially when the legislature is not going back until November?

Well, again, because it's an election year, issues will percolate to the top.

And I believe this will be one of the issues that will percolate.

And so, you know, my peers will be out there deciding, whoa, I'm hearing from constituents that this this is a vote that they're concerned with.

You know, it's going to affect my vote for them.

The other thing I tell my peers all the time is I entered I was the one that help Governor DeWine was strong Ohio.

I stood for reelection and I won overwhelmingly.

So people are people, you know, when they cast their ballot, I think most of all, people want right now is they want to see that their government can have a mature conversation about a very volatile issue and that we can talk about public safety, mental health, and responsible gun ownership and come up with a plan that is workable, that protects people, that we don't violate the Second Amendment, but we actually get something done and I think that's what people are really craving.

Though.

The Buckeye Firearms Association did have a statement not long after the bill was dropped.

There was no response to emails requesting an interview for this show.

And that's it for this week for my colleagues at the Statehouse News Bureau of Ohio Public Radio and Television.

Thanks for watching.

Please check out our Web site at State Newstalk And you can follow us and the show on Facebook and Twitter.

And please join us again next time for the state of Ohio.

Support for the statewide broadcast of the state of Ohio comes from Medical Mutual providing more than 1.4 million Ohioans peace of mind with a selection of health insurance plans online at med mutual dot com slash Ohio by the law offices of Porter Right Morris and Arthur LLP now with eight locations across the country.

Porter Right is a legal partner with a new perspective to the business community.

More at Porter right dot com and from the Ohio Education Association representing 124,000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online at OHEA.org.