Well, we are supposed to be on hiatus to produce the next season, but stuff keeps happening that they just can't leave alone.
I'm Tracy Townson.
We begin to MTV News at noon today with breaking news the arrest of Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder.
That news is sending shockwaves through the political world.
Today, Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder says he will not resign on the same day of his arrest on bribery charges. Federal prosecutors say his arrest is just one piece of a complicated puzzle for.
Today to announce the arrest of Larry Householder, a Speaker of the House the state of Ohio, and four other defendants for racketeering in relation to what is likely the largest bribery money laundering scheme ever perpetrated against the people the state of Ohio.
Last week, the FBI arrested Ohio's Speaker of the House, Larry Householder. He was the architect of a piece of legislation called HB six, which passed last year in July July twenty nineteen. That bill was widely recognized as a terrible piece of energy policy. It essentially gutted Ohio's renewable and energy efficiency laws and incentives and bailed out several
coal and nuclear companies. Today, we have on UC Santa Barbara political science professor Leah Stokes, who wrote about this law in her book on corrupt utilities called short Circuiting Policy. Stokes wrote that this law in Ohio is a multi billion dollar gift to First Energy, a private electric utility that has resisted climate policy for decades. In her recent Vox article about the current scandal, Stokes wrote, it turns out it was a gift paid for with sixty one
million dollars in bribes. This story is nuts, and there's probably no one in the country who knows more about it than Lea Stokes right now. So we're excited to talk to her. We'll have that conversation right after this quick break from today's sponsor.
Lea Stokes. We are so glad you're here. What the heck is happening in Ohio right now?
Well, it goes back way farther in time. I first started working on this in twenty thirteen, and at that time a different legislator who I wonder when his day of reckoning is coming, named Bill Sites. He was working to try to get rid of the renewable energy and energy efficiency laws that had been passed in a bipartisan way in Ohio, and he was actually working with somebody named Sam ren Dazzo, who at the time was a lobbyist for the industrial energy.
Users of Ohio, basically a.
Big industrial company consumer of electricity that includes probably fossil fuel companies and as it does in many states, manufacturers that kind of thing. Well, fast forward if your Sam Rendazzo is now the head regulator at the Ohio Public Utilities Commission, which you're just like really anyway, they were trying to gut the renewables and energy efficiency laws to some degree.
John Kasick was opposed to that, although.
Certainly not enough, and so they only managed to freeze the roll back of the energy efficiency and renewable energy laws, but it still put huge damage in the industry. And at the same time, Keith Faber, who was another part of the legislative leadership at the time, he put in a budget bill a rider, a sort of line item that changed the setback rules for wind turbines, which basically means how far from a property line or a building does a wind project need to be and that completely
gutted the wind energy industry in Ohio. And John Kasik as governor, could have line item vetoed that changed, but he didn't. And so there was all these shady things going on to try to mess up renewables and energy efficiency in Ohio. And who's interest did that serve? It served First Energy and AEP and other utilities interests because they had all these exis existing plants, coal plants, nuclear
plants that they needed to keep operating. And if they were being forced to build new clean energy renewables, then how are they going to keep that stuff working? And at the same time, Ohio was also going through this electricity restructuring and suddenly a lot of the plants that First Energy and AEP had invested in were struggling financially. I mean they literally were losing money in the market
every time they operated. So with all that going on, First Energy started to lobby the Trump administration actually to get a bailout for their coal plants, and they tried that for several years around sort of twenty seventeen. In fact, the Energy and Policy Institute, a wonderful watchdog of utilities, has shown that the First Energy corporate jet has flown to DC over thirty times since the trumpetministration began, and that Rick Perry, the former Secretary of Energy, has probably
met with the CEO of First Energy. So they were lobbying very heavily the Trump administration and as possible that this is where the Firk minimum Offer price rule came from. This is basically a coal plant subsidy that was put into.
The rules a couple of years ago.
Now.
Anyway, so they're doing all these corrupt things and it wasn't quite paying their bills, and so they decided to get a bailout on the agenda at the beginning of twenty nineteen when Larry Householder became the Speaker of the House of Representatives in Ohio, and that's when things really started to pick up.
Okay, so what exactly was HB six, What was this bailout legislation?
Yeah, so in twenty nineteen, when Larry Householder became Speaker, it was actually a really big fight for him to get that role.
People may not know this.
But Larry Householder was Speaker before and he ended up leaving that role because of an FBI investigation in sort of these allegations of corruption, this cloud of corruption surrounding him back in the early two thousands, so he wasn't a popular pick. But what happened was all of the candidates running for the House of Representatives who supported Larry
Householder suddenly had a lot of campaign money. They were doing very well in their elections, and people noticed that it was all of the candidates who had that money, the shadowy support, who ended up voting for Larry Householder. So he won the role of Speaker, and with that power, he began to do the bidding of First Energy. First Energy at that time had spun off its generation assets, its nuclear and coal plants that were these are projects
that weren't really doing very well. They were losing money financially, and they'd put it in this new company called First Energy Solutions. That company has now rebranded into Energy Harbor. It's a way that these utility companies try to avoid scrutiny. They changed their names all the time, but it was
called First Energy Solutions at that time. And what they that was owned by a hedge fund and a bunch of hedge funds, and these investors really wanted to get their money back, and so it started to seem like they were putting money a few million dollars, let's say,
into lobbying and potentially even into campaign ads. So an organization called Generation Now popped up on the scene, and nobody really knew where this organization came from, and they were spending money on mailers to people saying that HB six, this law, which was a bailout for nuclear and coal plants, that this had to be passed, and that you know, it was so in the interests of Ohio wins and if you weren't for it, it was because you you know,
the Chinese government was corrupt and somehow involved in Ohio's energy system, which just completely bonkers. The Chinese government has
absolutely nothing to do with anything. And it passed, and I mean, I'm telling you, the legislative session was done, everybody had gone home, and First Energy just kept saying, we need that money, you know, we got to get that money, and they also kept changing how much money they needed exactly, and the law ended up getting written in a way that First Energy Solutions would never need to open up their books or explain what they were.
Going to do with this money.
So they ended up calling a last minute vote which actually Governor DeWine, a staffer from his office initially was going to get a state taxpayer funded plane to go pick up the legislators to bring them back to the state House so that they could vote on this last minute corporate bailout. That's how crazy it was. And by narrow margins, householder delivered the votes and the bailout went
into effect. Now, even though it passed into law, a bunch of advocates who thought this was a terrible corporate bailout for polluting dirty coal plants, they tried to do a ballot initiative basically in Ohio, if you pass a law, you've got I believe it's sixty or ninety days, I can't remember which one, where you can collect a bunch of signatures for the people of Ohio and that allows you to get it on the ballot so that the people can vote to overturn that law that was passed.
And so a bunch of groups, including in fact some fossil fuel interests, because they didn't like the bill for other reasons, they started to try to collect signatures and these signature collectors suddenly were being literally physically assaulted on the street by people that nobody knew who they were. There were these mailers going out saying that if you signed the petition, the Chinese government would have your personal information. Again,
completely bonkers, you know. In fact, these petition signers were being bribed the people collecting the signatures to get rid of the signatures or to go home early.
I mean literally, they were.
Like, hey, are you collecting signatures? We'll give you some money to stop doing it, or hey, how many signatures do you have? If you tell us how many signatures you have, will give you money because we need to know how close you are to having enough signatures. And people were like, where's all this money coming from? You know, who has all this money to do anti democratic organizing?
And shockingly, in the face of all that opposition, the advocates did not get enough signatures for their ballot initiative. And HB six's a terrible corporate bailout remains in law. And it was kind of an open secret that Larry Householder was involved in all of this. We all knew because somebody was funding his speakership by getting all these
people elected. You know, somebody was funding all this political activity to stop the ballot initiative effort, and well, we discovered this week when the FBI arrested Larry Householder I believe at his farm in Ohio, that it was Larry Householder and First Energy this whole time, and that they had been funneling over sixty million dollars into this organization called Generation Now and a bunch of shady sort of front groups to do all of this corrupt activity.
Okay, So now that Householder has been arrested along with a few of his cohorts, it sounds like what happens to this HB six. Does it automatically get put back on the ballot for a vote or get repealed? What kind of happens there?
Well, a lot of people, for example, Lisa Friedman in the New York Times, A lot of people are asking, how is this a legit gitimate law if it was passed based on corruption.
I mean, let's be.
Clear, Larry Householder got five hundred thousand dollars half a million dollars of personal benefits as part of this sixty million dollar scheme. We're talking about three hundred thousand dollars to pay down a legal conflict that he was having in his legal fees. One hundred thousand dollars towards his vacation home in Florida, which he wasn't keeping up with the taxes on, and another one hundred K ninety seven
thousand specifically for his own re election efforts. So he was personally benefiting, personally enriching himself based on this money. And so how is it legitimate that he passed this law? And he really did, I mean, he got the votes, he worked very diligently for six months to do this. And then how is it legitimate that the public didn't have any say because there was thirty eight million dollars
put into literally physically assaulting, bribing petition signatures collectors. I mean, so a lot of people are saying HB six is not a legitimate law. It was never a legitimate law, quite frankly, because it was a corporate bailout and it was paid for by the same corporation that it was benefiting from the money.
So Governor DeWine.
Had called for Larry Householder to resign as Speaker, but he had not called for the bill to be overturned or for the legislature to meet and try to overturn and change HB six. So I called him out on that other advocates have to and today he didn't about face and said, oh, I do think we should revisit this law. And you know what I'm asking is there's another.
Guy named Larry. His name is Larry Abhoff and he's the Senate President.
And Larry Obhoff has called for Larry Householder's resignation, but again as not called HB six to be overturned. And let's be clear, Larry Allpoff also took money from First Energy. Governor Dwine took money from First Energy. Most legislators in the state of Ohio have taken money from First Energy. And I think that we have to ask ourselves why is any politician taking utility money. It is so corrupting it should not be okay.
And we're talking about this First Energy private utility that was, you know, essentially paying off politicians to try to get this legislation passed. What exactly do they get out of it? I know there's been some talk of nuclear plans being kept open maybe longer than they should have been. What all did they get for this investment?
Yeah, it's a return on investment issue.
If you are a hedge fund that has bought First Energy Solutions. You think, look, let's put a few million dollars into this, we'll get a couple billion in return. If you look at the FBIFA David, the people working in this conspiracy literally described the money as unlimited. They said, look, we have as much money as we need because they understood what the benefit would be. The return on investment
is sixty million for a few billion dollars. I mean, there's so much focus on the nuclear bailout, which is about one point three billion dollars, but there's a whole other bailout for several coal plants that were in this bill that's probably more about two times as large as the nuclear bailout. So I estimate that it's something like
three billion dollars that we're talking about here. And keep in mind that a few days after HB six was put into law, a spokesperson for First Energy said, oh, that Samus coal plant that we were planning to shut down, we don't need to shut it down anymore. And their CEO of First Energy Solutions, John Judge, had said that if we get that bailout money, we will have forty to fifty million dollars to put into to the Samus
coal plant. So this is a coal plant bailout that's keeping the Samus plant open and several of OVEK plants open as well. So you know, a lot of focus has been on the nuclear plants, but it's really a coal bailout in my view.
Okay, And then I know you wrote a whole book about corrupt utilities and how they have shaped policy for years. But where does this kind of fit into that? Where does this fit into the larger issue of utilities being influenced by various companies to shape energy policy in their favor.
It's called short circuit policy, and it's about how corrupt the utilities are.
And there's a fascinating.
History of the electric utility sector. Way back in the early twentieth century. There was a person named Samuel Insul and he's actually the guy who came up with the way our utility system works. He invented the idea of a monopoly utility that had a public utility commission that would oversee it at the state level. And you know, there are quotes from that time that say, for you know, a decade, he was the most powerful business operator in the United States. And that really is how it is
state by state. These companies are often the most powerful company in a given state. If you take Arizona Public Service, for example, you know they are extremely corrupt. They have spent over fifty million dollars on elections for their own regulator,
fighting against a clean energy ballot initiative. And you know, it's hard to get clear on how terrible they are because they are funding the campaigns of a lot of politicians in that state, and a lot of community groups, you know, soccer clubs, probably United Way campaigns, you know, social welfare organizations. These groups take money from utilities, and so they end up being a kind of octopus that has its tentacles in all different parts of the state.
And so I think it's hard for people in a given state to get clear on how corrupt and problematic these monopoly utilities are. And then across the whole country, because there's so many different utilities in different states, it's hard for people to get the same sort of big picture as they would for a company like Exon that operates across the whole country and the world, or Chevron.
You know, these companies like Southern Company are in a couple states, or First Energy, right and they're also changing their names all the time, right, Or they have subsidiaries, so you've got Southern Company as the parent corporation, but then they've got Georgia Power, for example, or Alabama Power, and so it's a really complicated area that makes it
hard for people to pay attention. But I'm hopeful that we're in a moment right now where the corruption is just so blatant that maybe we'll start to get more attention on really proper oversight and limits on spending from utilities on political activity.
Okay, that's it for this time.
Check out Lee's book is fantastic, a real deep dive into how electric utilities have been architects of climate denial and have really picked favorites when it comes to energy sources. I thought I knew a lot about utility corruption, and I learned a ton reading this book.
So check that out. We'll stick a link in the show notes. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.