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A Republican state lawmaker is facing domestic violence charges.

More than $1,000,000,000 is going to Ohio's nursing homes, but there's a catch.

And the new CEO of First Energy speaks about coming back from scandal and facing consumers shock at high electric bills.

All this weekend, the state of Ohio.

Welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Karen Kasler, a summit county Republican state lawmaker is facing misdemeanor domestic violence and assault charges following a fundraiser.

Representative Bob Young was charged after a pair of incidents on July 7th.

He allegedly slapped his wife in the face and threw her phone into the pool at his home, then fought with his brother at his home a few hours later.

In a statement, young apologized, saying he'd had some drinks and that, quote, My behavior, while not criminal, was inappropriate and out of character, end quote.

Young said he was entering counseling but is ignored.

Speaker Jason Stevens call for him to resign and instead said he would stay in his House seat.

The Republican primary for US Senate is a three man race now, with Secretary of State Frank Lauro surprising virtually no one in announcing on Monday that he's running.

Cleveland Guardians part owner Senator Matt Dolan was first to out of the US Senate race in January.

And fellow multimillionaire and tech entrepreneur Bernie Moreno, who's been endorsed by Trump, endorsed freshman Senator J.D.

Vance, joined the contest in April.

La Rose is running for U.S. Senate even while he campaigns for issue one.

That's the only question on the August 8th ballot.

It's the constitutional amendment that would require all future amendments, including an abortion rights amendment planned for November to get 60% voter approval, and the groups wanting to put amendments before voters get signatures from all 88 counties, not 44 as in law now.

On Tuesday, La Rosa's office should announce whether the Reproductive Rights Amendment got enough valid signatures to make the fall ballot.

Tragedies happen sometimes in nursing homes, and Governor Mike DeWine says they can be caused by systemic problems in those facilities.

He's praised the $1.4 billion in the new state budget for nursing homes to provide incentives for increase in quality of care and for more inspectors.

But the budget also increases penalties for facilities that fail to provide quality care.

I talked with the executive, a lobbying group that represents 1300 skilled nursing facilities, assisted living communities and other providers.

That money goes towards increasing the rates for providers, but a lot of it is targeted in various ways.

Two things that are tied to quality measures.

A significant portion of the dollars are tied to specific measures from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

So they're federally specified.

That has been the case for a while.

But this is a major investment in meeting those measures.

And then they'll be more of the measures that will come into play next year, in the second year of the budget.

There are also several other provisions in the budget that are directed to different, different measures of quality, if you will, or or attempts to try to enhance quality.

For example, there is going to be going forward, assuming that CMS approves this, there will be a additional payment for private rooms.

So or so they'll be an additional payment for private rooms, which is certainly something that we view as being quality or a way of looking at quality.

I know that if I was going into a skilled nursing facility or any kind of congregate setting, I would certainly prefer to have my own room and then to have a roommate.

So that's that's one example.

And, and even within that, there'll be a requirement for you if you're a one star facility or you're on a special focus list, which are the kind of the lower levels, and then you can't get this enhanced payment for private rooms, a similar kind of provision with respect to the ventilator payments providers that are that take people on ventilators, which are obviously really expensive to care for, get an enhanced rate.

But going forward, they won't be able to do that for new admissions, new ventilator admissions if they are, again, a one star building or a special focus facility or on a special focus candidate list.

So those are some examples of some of the things there is.

There's other provisions in there as well.

But really, from the very beginning, even before the administration got involved in the budget for skilled nursing, there was a lot of focus on how can we enhance quality.

Another area just that comes to mind is really ramping up the requirements to acquire a skilled nursing facility.

So currently we have what's called CHOP'S changes of operators and there's not a lot of requirements around that.

And that's that's going to be significantly increased under the budget.

Go When we talk about the budgets going to increase quality of care, does that mean that there's a problem in Ohio's nursing homes?

Well, I guess that's all in the eye of the beholder.

I think I think the governor felt that there was as he as he indicated in his State of the State speech back in January.

But, you know, we can always do better.

For example, when we look at the national numbers, our staffing numbers aren't great in Ohio.

It's just a fact.

So and that's that's tied to reimbursement.

If you don't have the money, you can't hire people.

And there's also, you know, challenges in finding people.

But that's true everywhere.

So the fact that we're we're lower is not great.

So we're very hopeful that the additional funding that that this as you said, it's a significant amount of additional funding that's coming to skilled nursing is going to really help us to be able to hire more staff, pay the staff that we have a better wage and and really improve the workforce and hopefully move up on those on those rankings.

Staffing is also going to become one of those.

I've mentioned that there will be additional quality measures coming in next year and staffing hours per day is going to be one of those one of those added matters measures.

What happened was Medicaid reimbursement rates.

You told my Statehouse newspaper, college Angles last year that nursing homes wanted those rates raised based on new cost data and also based on the lowest half of nursing homes, what they're paying, not the lowest quarter of nursing homes.

So what happened with those Medicaid reimbursement rates?

It was a little bit of a mixed bag.

So what we had proposed that you you got that correctly, we were proposing that it be based on the median for both direct care and ancillary support, which are two different components of the rate.

But those both of those components are largely made up of of staff, of employees and the cost for those individuals.

So it went through a lot of permutations through the course of the budget process.

But the result was that the direct care cost center is going to be at the 70th percentile, so well above the median.

But the ancillary support is not being not being rebased at all.

So it'll just stay the same amount that it currently is, which unfortunately doesn't recognize the cost increases.

And that gets that category.

And ancillary support includes people like people that work in the kitchen and serve food to the residents.

That includes the activities, people that include social work and includes laundry and housekeeping, maintenance, all kinds of things that are necessary for quality of life.

But aren't the direct hands on caregivers like the nurses and nursing assistants, that those folks are in direct care?

That's why it's said that the money includes funds to dramatically increase the number of nursing home inspectors in the state.

What does that mean?

Is there a number attached to that dramatically word?

No.

And we actually met with ODIHR last week, and that was one of the topics we we asked about.

And and quite frankly, they're having trouble filling even the existing positions that they have for the same reasons that our members are having difficulty filling their positions.

You know, it's hard to find staff and their wages aren't great at that state.

So they declined to say how many people they might be adding with the additional funding.

There is there is some more funding in the in the budget for hiring the surveyors, also hiring ombudsmen and some other things that are kind of on that, not on the reimbursement side, but more on the regulatory side.

You've said that nursing homes, all of them are still recovering from the pandemic.

There has been a lot of cost recovery.

There are people, though, who have family members in nursing homes who would be surprised at that because of the costs They've seen, the bills, they've seen the cost of nursing homes.

Nursing home industry also gives a lot of campaign contributions, especially to Republicans, $1.4 million in the 2021 2022 cycle.

So is the increased money in the budget a reflection of the need that nursing homes have, or is it a return on campaign donation investments?

Well, obviously, we do play in the political arena.

There's no question we're not we're not ashamed of that.

But we also spent a lot of time going back to last year, really, and into the nursing facility commission that the legislature had in and really educating them because, you know, the reality is that there are lots and lots of folks who play in the political arena and they all have their own needs or requests that that come into play in the budget process.

So in order to make a good case for that, it can't just be okay, we're friends with particular legislators or a group or a large number of them.

We also have to make the case of why this funding is needed.

There's only so much to go around.

We have more this year than usual, but there's only so much to go around and you've got to be able to make your case with with reason and and also with the needs of Ohioans.

So here we're talking about very vulnerable people who and this really goes across the spectrum of long term services and supports that we represent not just skilled nursing, but everybody is experiencing the same kinds of things.

Costs have gone up, whatever business you're in, but particularly if you're serving people and the number of caregivers have gone down there, they're fewer than they were prior to the pandemic.

So we've got a story to tell, and we've got people who really need service.

They're very they're very vulnerable.

So you put those two things together, the increased costs and who we're serving and who ends up kind of paying the price for it all.

And, you know, it's it was a convincing argument, I think.

It was three years ago this week that Republican House Speaker Larry Householder was arrested, along with former Ohio Republican Party chair Matt Borges and three others in connection with a $61 million scheme to pass a sweeping energy law that included $1,000,000,000 bailout for the two nuclear power plants owned by First Energy.

Householder and Burgess are now in jail, sentenced to 20 years and five years, respectively, on racketeering charges.

Two of the others arrested, pleaded guilty and cooperated with the government and are awaiting sentencing.

The other died by suicide a few months after the arrests.

FirstEnergy completed an internal investigation and fired CEO Chuck Jones.

Less than a year later, the utility agreed to a $230 million fine and admitted to bribing householder and former Public Utilities Commission of Ohio Chair Sam Randazzo, who has never been charged.

There have been three CEOs since Jones was fired.

The newest one is Brian Tierney, a former executive with American Electric Power.

And as he leads First energy out of scandal and what he's called corporate trauma.

He's facing other issues critical to ratepayers.

I talked with him about it.

So let's just start off with the issue everybody wants to know about.

First, energy wants to put in the past.

That's the House bill sex scandal, the convictions of Republican former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, former Ohio Republican Party chair Matt Borges for their roles in passing the law to provide subsidies for two nuclear power plants that were owned by a first energy subsidiary.

You were not at first energy then, but as its CEO now.

What can you say about that corruption scandal?

Look, I think the company has done a great job putting a period on that scandal and putting it behind us, taking responsibility with the Department of Justice, trying to settle the cases that have been filed against us, trying to deal with people transparently, honestly, openly and admit what we did, put it behind us and focus on the future.

And so now we have 12,000 employees who are focused on and committed to delivering energy to the customers that we serve, to keeping the lights on, to restoring lights when storms take them out, as they have recently.

And we're really steadfastly focused on the future.

And you've had some change in terms of how you're regulated.

You've described it as going from kind of a hybrid utility into a one that's entirely focused on regulated operations.

Very much so.

So that's been over the course of a number of years.

So beginning in 2016, the company started transitioning away from its competitive operations.

Completed that transition in 2018.

And now we focus on mostly wires.

95% of our rate base is wires delivering to customers in our five states that we serve with some generation to serve our customers in West Virginia and Maryland.

So very focused on regulated operations as part of doing that.

We've repaired our balance sheet as well.

So we've raised about seven and a half billion dollars of equity to allow us to make the investments that our customers expect going forward.

Being focused on regulated operations, what does that mean to ratepayers?

It's when you plug in your your appliance, when you turn the TV on.

We're the people that provide that service.

And as I say to our employees and customers, we provide the lifeblood to our communities.

Nothing happens without that electricity coming through when you expect it to.

So in Ohio, for instance, we're the people that deliver that electricity.

We don't generate it, but we transmit it and deliver it to your home.

Others generate that electricity, put it on our wires.

We deliver it to your home.

And we're the regulated part of that transaction.

You were the third person to take the CEO job after Chuck Jones was fired.

There was Steven Strah, who retired abruptly last year, then interim president and CEO John Somerhalder, the second.

I know you've been on the job for a little over a month.

But what can you say about how things are in that corner office?

Are things settled down now?

Are you are you here for the long haul?

I'm here for the long haul that the company hired me to come and be a steadying force.

Right.

I'm a known person in the utility industry.

I worked for AP for 23 years, built a career there, have experienced background and a reputation I built over that time.

And that's what the board of directors wanted me to bring and help move this company forward, focused on the future, focused on providing that great service that we provide reliable service to our customers.

It's starting to get to be an expensive service, though.

Let me ask you about the last couple of weeks, which have been bad for electric ratepayers who found their electric bills increased dramatically.

Some even doubled.

Why is that?

It's because of the process that we have for what we call standard offer service customers.

So if you haven't switched customers, we by law have to have an auction to be able to provide you with that service.

Unfortunately, that auction happened in the autumn of last year when power prices, gas prices were spiking associated with the war in Ukraine, if you can believe it.

So for customers that haven't switched, they're going to pay a higher price.

We'd encourage all of our customers, take your electricity bill, which has your customer identifier on it.

Go to the Puco Public Utility Commission of Ohio website.

Go to the apples to apples.

Switch to a competitive supplier.

If you're on standard offer service and you're going to save 50 to $75 a month by doing that.

Where do you buy anything?

Where someone says, Go save a significant portion just by switching?

It doesn't hurt.

First energy if you switch.

We're happy for you to pay a lower price and you just get a discount, a price with no strings attached.

It's a great deal.

You mentioned that the auction that happened last year related to the war in Ukraine and that's why prices went up.

When is the next auction and since that war still going on?

I mean, I know you can't predict what's going to happen, but do you expect that the same kind of results are going to be there?

So prices have come off significantly from where they were at that time.

Right.

So a lot of the extreme concerns that people had about pricing, about a cold winter last winter, about the ability to deliver natural gas to Europe because of what's happening with the war, those things have eased.

So prices are up significantly and that's why you can actually buy in a competitive offering cheaper electricity than the standard service offer from last time.

We're in a proceeding right now before the Public Utility Commission of Ohio that will allow us to have the next auction, and we anticipate an answer on that soon, and we will take that in due course for that proceeding.

Let's turn to grid modernization, which is upgrading the electrical grid to make it more flexible, reliable, resilient, secure, all that kind of stuff.

It's especially a big deal, I think, for people who remember the blackout in northeast Ohio in 2003.

So how is first energy working toward that?

So we have a number of different proceedings that we're using in Ohio to address it.

And I'll just say the Ohio Commission is extremely supportive and encouraging of investments that improve the customer experience and improve reliability in Ohio.

So they have the electric security plan, which we're now we just filed our fifth version of that to try and make sure that we're improving reliability, making those investments, things like energy efficiency for both residential and customer in and commercial and industrial customers.

And then we also have a grid MA proceeding that's before the commission as well.

That's to improve not just tread water, not just do brake fix, but to improve the customer experience, improve reliability, improve customer choice and energy efficiency and enable those things to happen.

So a lot of what you're seeing today are people saying, we would like to add distributed energy resources to this system, home, tap, renewable, whatever, wind, solar, those things.

Those are things coming in at the top.

And then from the bottom you have load increasing because we are transitioning to a more electrified system than what we had.

Our system, our wires, our transmission and distribution enable all of that to happen.

And that's what we're focused on investing.

I'm glad you brought that up, because I was going to ask you, with more industries moving into electric, how are you preparing to help accommodate those industries and also to prepare for future load responsibilities?

And is this going to cost consumers more money?

Well, that's a that's a great question.

So, yes, we're preparing for it.

We're making the investments in wires.

We're making the investments in reliability, sex, sexualization, other such things that we can do to make sure that reliability is improved, but making sure the capacity's there to allow all that to happen.

We're incredibly focused on that.

And then you had a second part of the question.

Just how are you preparing for future load responsible cities?

Yes, it's the same thing.

Making sure the grid is robust, reliable and able to handle what anyone wants to use it for, whether it's adding new resources, whether it's having new load.

Come on.

And you look at things like the transport, the electrification of the transportation sector, things like that, that's new load that's coming in.

If you're talking electric cars, they need to be charged and they need to be charged by our wires.

And we're going to be ready to to allow that to happen.

You look at things like they're talking about home heating, moving to heat pumps.

It's not going to be natural gas anymore.

It's going to be electricity.

We need to have the system robust, ready and able to to allow customers to make those changes.

And will those cost customers more money?

So that's a good question.

The issue is how much does load go up versus how much do we have to invest to allow that to happen.

So if load goes up enough, you can actually absorb the investments we made to allow your rates to go down.

We haven't seen that in this country since probably the mid seventies.

I see a period where that could be coming again.

I want to ask you about.

Governor Mike DeWine issued a partial veto of a provision in the state budget that would have allowed utilities to charge ratepayers for developing infrastructure in mega sites that could be speculative and not have a company attached necessarily.

The Ohio Consumers Council said that veto protected consumers from more subsidies for utilities, and there was a struggle between utilities that say they want to protect that, they want to get ready for business, provide for business, bring in business to the state, but also groups and consumer organizations who say that ratepayers shouldn't have to pay for that.

So what's the benefit to ratepayers in those kinds of situations?

So I'll say this.

You, you always you not you don't always get what you pay for, but you never get what you don't pay for.

And so we're trying to make investments to allow that electrification, that choice to happen, to be ready for data centers should they come to our our service territory, to be ready for transportation.

You want to plug your your electric vehicle and be ready for that to allow you to switch your home.

And we need to make those investments before you turn around.

Say, I want to buy that car tomorrow.

The grid needs to be robust and able to happen.

And that's what we were trying to do with the legislation and it's unfortunate that that portion was vetoed.

We will find other ways to make that investment to enable that customer choice and transition.

Any possibility that first energy will be sold?

I don't think so.

Like, I have no thought for that happening that if the board wanted to sell first energy, they wouldn't have hired me to come work here.

I don't sell utilities.

I don't have an experience to that.

I don't think I'd be very good at it.

What I do have experience in is helping companies perform better operationally and financially, and that's what they asked me to come here to do, and that's what I'm looking forward to doing with our employees.

What is the utility's relationship like with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio?

Because you'll hear people talk about it's the public utilities cheerleaders of Ohio.

What's your relationship like with that organization that oversees what utilities do and really decides whether you can charge more money?

I'd say it's constructive, right?

The the commissioners need to call balls and strikes between between the company and the utility companies and our our customers.

And they didn't make sure that we're investing in things that the customers want, that it's important in customers not investing in things they don't want, and that we're spending our dollars prudently.

I'd say that over many, many years the Ohio Commission has been constructive in calling those balls and strikes, not giving us everything we want, but getting the customers what they need through the investment that we make.

And finally, what are your priorities as CEO, especially as they relate to consumers?

And also the bottom line is, first, energy, a solid financial company.

It is absolutely a solid financial company.

The company's raised seven, seven and a half billion dollars over the last two years to put into the balance sheet to allow us to invest in things our customers care about, to allow us to invest, to improve customer reliability, the customer experience, the wires enable the energy transition that's that's coming our way.

The load increase, the renewables that are coming in into our system, we're ready, willing and happy to make those investments.

And our employees really want to make that happen.

They want to go from doing things well to planning for the future and making it a positive impact on our customers wherever they are.

The first energy name was removed from Cleveland Browns Stadium in April before Tierney took over as CEO.

And that is 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 News dot org and find us online by searching.

State of Ohio show.

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 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.