Ohio

see ohio 2

no merri

capt 319 bak

sherrod brown

firstenergy corrpution scandal,

nuke, erie gt lake person

battleground on energy, old vs new gas, solar v coal

seems to have more than its share of dark $,

Kasich only survivor of 4 gov horsemen of alec-koch-a lypse, watch this space: beat by djt 2016 gearing up for 2020, termed out; ENDORSED BIDEN DNC

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NOTE MTA NAT’L CORP CHARTER REVOKE FIRSTENERGY? 6 24

An analysis by OpenSecrets revealed in March that "dark money groups are spending at record levels in their efforts to influence the outcome of the 2024 U.S. elections."

Ohio Republican Governor Mike Dewine, however, was ahead of the times.

According to Cleveland.com, "newly revealed text messages and other documents suggest" the GOP leader "personally solicited" a portion of dark money he received to boost his gubernatorial campaign in 2018 from FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones, who has since been indicted on bribery charges.

"Chuck. Can u call me?" DeWine wrote Jones on Oct. 13, 2018, according to the report, noting "that a teachers’ union gave a million dollars the day before to a group backing his Democratic rival."

After Jones forwarded the message to Mike Dowling, a FirstEnergy senior vice president, Dowling wrote, "Chuck – go ahead and call Mike DeWine on the $500k. It’s going to RGA’s C(4) called State Solutions. All set."

RGA refers the "pro-DeWine Republican Governor’s Association," according to Cleveland.com.

The news outlet reports, "Records show FirstEnergy had already spent millions backing DeWine, including its subsidiary giving $500,000 to" RGA "just two days prior. By Oct. 16, 2018, the FirstEnergy men agreed to a 'dark money' contribution, which are unlimited in size and not publicly disclosed.'"

Cleveland.com reports:

*When DeWine came looking for a boost with his October 2018 text message to Jones, FirstEnergy’s top executives wondered if they had already done enough. The company had done 'more than anyone,' Dowling told Jones in a text message. Dowling, FirstEnergy’s top lobbying agent, texted Jones that DeWine 'already knows about' the $500,000 contribution that FirstEnergy’s subsidiary provided to the RGA that week. The two mulled how to respond but made up their mind to provide another donation by Oct. 16. Jones told Dowling he’d call DeWine that evening to tell him.

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Economist Paul Krugman analyzes the 'bizarre alliance between Bitcoin and MAGA'

[Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas speaking at the 2021 Young Latino Leadership Summit, hosted by Turning Point USA at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, ]

Alex Henderson January 12, 2022

In MAGA World, it isn’t uncommon to find far-right Republicans trumpeting their love of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Sen. Ted Cruz, in October 2021, declared that he wanted to “see Texas become the center of the universe for Bitcoin and crypto” — and former Ohio State Treasurer Josh Mandel tweeted that Ohio “must be a pro-God, pro-family, pro-Bitcoin state.” Liberal economist and New York Times opinion writer Paul Krugman analyzes the MAGA far right’s “bizarre” obsession with Bitcoin in his January 10 column, offering some reasons for the obsession.

Krugman writes, “There has long been a strong connection between support for Bitcoin and right-wing extremism — like the traditional association between conservatism and an obsession with gold, only more so…. It does seem important to understand the cultish aspects of the cryptocurrency movement.”

Krugman’s column isn’t critical of Bitcoin itself, but he finds MAGA Republicans’ obsession with it strange — including Mandel’s goofy willingness to equate Bitcoin with “God and country.”

“I still sometimes encounter people who say that we live in a digital age, so we should be using digital money,” Krugman explains. “But we already do! Like many people, I pay for most things by clicking a mouse, tapping my debit card or pressing a button on my phone. I used to keep singles in my wallet to buy fruit and vegetables from New York’s ubiquitous sidewalk stands, but these days, even they often accept Venmo.”

Krugman continues, “All of these payments, however, depend on trusting a third party: People accept debit cards, Apple Pay, Venmo and so on because they’re linked to a bank account. Bitcoin’s whole purpose, as laid out in its original 2008 white paper, was to remove the need for that kind of trust: It would validate payments using methods related to cryptography — coded communication. The goal was to create a peer-to-peer system of payments independent of financial institutions.”

States that submit to the authority of Almighty God // states that don\u2019t\n\nStates that are pro-family // states that aren\u2019t\n\nStates that invest in #bitcoin infrastructure // states that won\u2019t\n\nOhio must be a pro-God, pro-family, pro-bitcoin state. \n\nI promise we will be.

— Josh Mandel (@Josh Mandel) 1640649612

The economist adds that although Bitcoin has been available since January 2009, it hasn’t caught on with the general public the way its strongest proponents would like.

“The truth is that although Bitcoin has been around a long time by internet standards — 13 years! — it and othercryptocurrencies have made hardly any inroads into the traditional role of money, as a medium of exchange used to purchase goods and services,” Krugman notes. “Hard numbers are scarce, but it looks as if a vast majority of cryptocurrency transactions involve market speculation rather than the ordinary business of life. Yet Bitcoin and its rivals now have a combined market valuation of more than $1 trillion.”

Krugman adds, “What do investors think they’re buying? One answer is protection against theperennial fear that governments will inflate away all your wealth.”

The Times columnist argues that the MAGA movement’s obsession withBitcoin fits in with its conspiracy mindset.

Krugman writes, “What’s with the deepening alliance between Bitcoin and MAGA? The answer, I’d argue, is that Bitcoin was supposed to create a monetary system that functions without trust — and the modern right is all about fostering distrust. COVID is a hoax; the election was stolen; California’s forest fires had nothing to do with climate change, and they were started by Rothschild-controlled space lasers. In this context, it’s perfectly natural for MAGAesque politicians to demand an end to a monetary system that runs through banks — we know who controls them, right? — and rests on a currency that’s managed by government-appointed officials.”

Krugman adds, “There’s no evidence of widespread monetary abuse, but that doesn’t matter on the extreme right. The point, then, is that while there are real economic issues associated with cryptocurrencies, their rise has a lot to do with the broader political madness that has American democracy on the brink.”

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/jim-jordan

ah poster boy on gerry

Among Democrats, liberals, progressives, centrists and Never Trump conservatives, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio is one of the most notorious Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives. And because of gerrymandering — and because his district is so reliably Republican — the 57-year-old Jordan keeps getting reelected year after year. In an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on May 24, Cleveland-based journalist Keith Osmun examines the effect that the 2020 U.S. Census may have on Jordan in 2022.

Jordan, a founding member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, presently represents Ohio's 4th Congressional District — where he was first elected in 2006 after having served in the Ohio State Senate and the Ohio House of Representatives.

Osmun explains, "Since the 1930s, Ohio's 4th Congressional District has been under Republican control…. It is arguably the safest Republican district in the country. The current occupant of its seat in the U.S. House of Representatives is everyone's favorite Trump sycophant: Jim Jordan."

Ohio has 16 congressional U.S. House districts; 12 of them are presently occupied by Republicans, while four are occupied by Democrats.

Democrat Janet Garrett, who ran against Jordan in 2014, 2016 and 2018, told Osmun, "I knew the odds. I ran because I felt that it was imperative that somebody put up a fight. If he ran unopposed, they would tout him around the district as so wonderful no one wants to reproach him."

Garrett said of Jordan, "He's never introduced any legislation other than a monument to someone. He doesn't introduce legislation; he's just a bomb thrower. He didn't go to Washington to legislate."

What Ohio's new congressional map will look like in 2022 remains to be seen.

Collin Marozzi, an ACLU attorney who has been fighting gerrymandering in Ohio, told Osmun, "Gerrymandering allows Jim Jordan to be the most Jim Jordan he can be: the most bombastic, bomb throwing, partisan person in Congress. He hasn't passed a single piece of legislation in ten years. He has no real incentive to compromise because he only has to worry about a primary challenge."

Following the 2020 U.S. Census, Ohio will be losing a seat in the U.S. House — and it will have 15 U.S. House districts instead of 16. Osmun observes, "One of the happy byproducts of Ohio losing a congressional seat as a result of the 2020 Census is that the districts will be redrawn under more bipartisan rules put in place in the years since the 2010 Census…. If the changes work as intended, the ride 'safe seats' provide legislators like Jim Jordan will be a bumpier one in the midterms."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

aLEC Legislator Introduces Bill to Suppress the Vote in Ohio

by Alex Kotch | June 4th, 2020State Rep. Cindy Abrams proposed a bill on Monday that would make vote-by-mail more difficult and add headaches on Election Day.

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/07/02/koch-backed-groups-fight-to-block-ohio-covid-19-bailouts-despite-crushing-pandemic-deficits

In early May, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced $775 million in state budget cuts, including $210 million from Medicaid and $355 million from education programs. The state amassed a large deficit as tax revenues took a nose dive because of the coronavirus’s effects on Ohioans’ economic activity. Ohio’s 2020-21 projected budget shortfall is at $2.4 billion.

Ohio municipalities are also struggling, and mayors say they need federal aid. A Brookings Institution report published on March 31 predicted that, due to reliance on tax revenue, the region hit the hardest economically by the COVID-19 crisis would be the Heartland, and four out of the five hardest-hit cities in the U.S. would be in Ohio—Columbus (hit the worst), Cincinnati, Toledo, and Cleveland.

Columbus is $41.5 million short of its 2020 budget and has cut $26 million worth of expenses. Cincinnati has budget shortfalls of $15 million in 2020 and an estimated $91 million in 2021, one-quarter of the city’s budget that year. The city furloughed 1,700 workers in March. Toledo could face a shortfall of up to $50 million, and it put 300 city employees on temporary emergency leave starting in April. Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, faces a $76 million loss in revenue.

But despite the mounting pandemic-induced fiscal crisis, Koch-funded groups like Americans for Prosperity Ohio and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) are lobbying hard to block any relief from the federal government. Americans for Prosperity wants state and local governments to sort out their huge budget deficits on their own, citing “chronic structural fiscal problems” and claiming that officials have “spent lavishly, borrowed excessively, and ignored looming pension debt.”

The Koch-backed groups appear to be taking advantage of the crisis to advance their ideological goals and further undermine public education and public employee unions.

Collectively, U.S. state budgets will endure budget shortfalls totaling $615 billion over the 2020-22 fiscal years, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and local government deficits will total billions more. States possess only $75 billion in their rainy day funds.

Congress is considering a new relief package, which may include funds to bail out struggling state and local governments. But the Ohio branch of Americans for Prosperity (AFP), not satisfied with the significant state cuts, wants to prevent federal aid from helping the state or its local governments from squaring their budgets.

The Koch-funded advocacy group, which has always fought against government spending, taxes, and regulation, has been campaigning against a provision of the HEROES Act, which passed the House on May 15 and includes nearly $1 trillion to help state and local governments close budget holes. The bill is stalled in the Senate.

The national AFP has run ads on Facebook and Instagram decrying the state and local bailout provisions of the HEROES Act and urging people to sign an anti-bailout letter. AFP Ohio has posted a number of videos of Ohioans opposing the bailouts, is urging people to contact Ohio’s senators to urge them to vote against a bailout, and has also posted a link to an anti-bailout letter.

As of April 29, the mayor of Lancaster, Ohio had laid off 18 firefighters and 15 police officers because of a budget crunch. But a letter written by AFP encourages people to “tell the state governors and local communities to STOP exploiting their firefighters, teachers and other state workers to justify these bailouts.”

Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley said budget cuts will be steep if the city doesn’t get federal help. Basic city services will face “drastic” cuts, she said.

Gov. DeWine’s cuts include a $300 million loss for Ohio’s K-12 public schools, and 20 school districts are losing $304 per pupil. Franklin County, home to Columbus, will lose $32.6 million in school funding, or 4 percent of its budget.

According to AFP, state and local governments have made irresponsible spending decisions in the past, so, during a once-in-a-century economic crisis, taxpayers shouldn’t bail them out.

The group’s “Federal Budget Assistance for State and Local Government” report says that instead of receiving bailouts, state and local governments should use their so-called “rainy day” funds and cut spending.

Americans for Prosperity is largely funded by the Stand Together Chamber of Commerce, a dark-money trade group founded by Charles Koch and his political network. Koch’s enormous wealth—his current net worth is $50.7 billion—comes from Koch Industries, his private, industrial conglomerate. According to its website, Koch Industries employs 860 people in Ohio through its companies Georgia-Pacific, Infor, Koch, and Koch Engineered Solutions.

Over the years, Koch Industries has received $527 million in state and local subsidies, including in Ohio, where pulp and paper product company Georgia-Pacific received over $1 million in 1994, according to Good Jobs First. That’s on top of $9 million in federal grants and tax credits.

AFP isn’t the only Koch-backed group campaigning against a federal bailout of state and local governments.

In May 12 letter, the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a pay-to-play operation that writes model state legislation with the help of corporate lobbyists, urged federal politicians not to bail out the states, claiming that such a bailout “would be harmful to taxpayers, federalism, and ultimately the states themselves.”

Three Ohio legislators—Reps. George Lang (R-West Chester), Thomas Brinkman (R-Cincinnati), and Scott Wiggam (R-Wayne County)—signed the ALEC letter along with AFP Ohio’s director, Micah Derry.

In 2002, the Cincinnati Post dubbed Brinkman, who represents parts of Cincinnati, “Dr. No,” meaning “no taxes for men and no rights for women,” according to a Wikipedia citation. In 2018, Brinkman was the only dissenter in a House vote to end the tax on women’s hygiene products.

Leaders from dozens of right-wing groups, including a number directly funded by the Charles Koch Foundation, signed a May 8 letter from the Conservative Action Project that urged Congress to reject state and local bailouts. The Conservative Action Project is an arm of the secretive, right-wing Council for National Policy, which helped coordinate protests of the coronavirus-caused lockdowns.

Signatories include former Ohio Congressman Bob McEwen, who is executive director of the Council for National Policy; Khadine Ritter, President of the Eagle Forum of Ohio; Jessica Anderson, executive director of Heritage Action for America; Lisa Nelson, CEO of ALEC; James Martin, founder of the 60 Plus Association; Charlie Copeland, president of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute; and Morton Blackwell, president of the Leadership Institute.

Ohio Government Invites Employers to Secretly Report “Work Refusal” Due to Coronavirus

Aída Chávez

Workers who stay home out of concern for unsafe conditions at work may be investigated and potentially stripped of unemployment benefits.

intercept 520

Ohio GOP secretary of state wants Kent State to cancel Jane Fonda’s commemoration speech

It was half a century ago — on May 4,…

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/cnn-exposes-controversial-trump-associates-reportedly-buying-rally-attendance-and-votes-for-cash

no lnx

CNN exposes controversial Trump associates reportedly buying rally attendance and votes for cash

Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story February 16, 2020

On Sunday morning, CNN took a deep dive into reports that groups allied with President Donald Trump are funneling cash to potential voters in the hopes that they will turn out in November in what is expected to be a close presidential election.

The report centers on Darrell Scott, a pastor from Cleveland who is a prominent ally of the president and has been running a possibly illegal program designed to win over black voters for the president that literally involves handing them envelopes stuffed with cash at mini-rallies.

“At the center of the controversy is a new charity called the Urban Revitalization Coalition led by Ohio Pastor Darrell Scott,” the report states which has, “Raised red flags saying the cash events may violate tax laws that bar nonprofits from engaging in political campaign activities and could jeopardize the group’s tax-exempt status. In an interview, Scott said he’s careful to follow the law., but groups like the NAACP accuse him of trying to buy support for President Trump.”

CNN shared clips from the rallies where the envelopes were handed out and, in one, a rally organizer can be seen exhorting attendees to attend the next rally by saying, “Come back in February when we give you $50,000.”

You can watch the video below:

https://www.prwatch.org/news/2019/12/13516/alec-influence-ohio-greases-skids-anti-protest-bill

When anti-protest legislation pushed by oil, gas, and utility interests was introduced in the Ohio state Senate this year, it met a receptive audience and passed easily on a mostly party-line vote. It has since moved to the state House, where almost one-third of legislators are ALEC members, and will likely pass at the beginning of 2020.

The legislation, SB 33, is modeled after an ALEC proposal, and its corporate backers are big contributors to the Republican party and legislators in Ohio.

ALEC is the corporate bill mill where state legislators and corporations meet behind closed doors to write and advocate for legislation on the environment, criminal justice, health care, and most of the other domestic issues that affect us.

The bill, the "Critical Infrastructure Protection Act," being pushed by ALEC around the country makes it a felony for protestors to trespass on energy company property, such as pipelines, refineries, and power plants.

Prompted by the well-publicized stand-off at the Dakota Access crude oil pipeline in 2016, the industry's full-court press is working. Ten states, using ALEC's template bill, have enacted increased criminal penalties through legislation very much like SB 33.

The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has extensively reported on the controversy surrounding this type of legislation, including an article last month on Wisconsin's bill,signed by the new Democratic Governor, Tony Evers.

According to the legislature's Office of Research and Drafting, the Ohio bill "adds a new prohibition under the offense of 'criminal trespass' that expressly prohibits a person, without privilege to do so, from knowingly entering or remaining on a 'critical infrastructure facility.'"

While the offense for an individual protester is a misdemeanor - or a third-degree felony for destroying or tampering with "critical infrastructure" property - the bill would hit any organization found to be "complicit" in the violation with a fine ten times the maximum allowable fine for the protester.

Roxanne Groff, a former county commissioner in Ohio and spokesperson for the Buckeye Environmental Network, testified before the Ohio Senate Judiciary Committee that,

This bill was created to impose fear upon citizens who have become increasingly aware and vocal about the threats to their health, and their wellbeing as a result of the oil and gas industries’ assault on the land and people of this state by extraction of oil and gas, injection of toxic radioactive waste from this extraction and the infrastructure build outs of pipelines and gas compressor stations....

ALEC's Grip on the Ohio Legislature

In the Senate Judiciary Committee, where the anti-protest bill was heard, four of the 10 Senators - including the chair, John Ecklund (R) - are ALEC members.

But ALEC's influence over the bill's prospects doesn't stop there.

SB 33, which passed the Ohio Senate 24-8 in May, was introduced by ALEC member Frank Hoagland (R), chair of the state Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, and all 18 ALEC members in the Senate voted for it.

Indeed, the scope of ALEC's influence in the Ohio Legislature is profound.

Eleven of the 13 state Senate committees are chaired by ALEC members.

And three of the top four state Senate GOP leaders are ALEC members - Senate President Larry Obhof, President Pro Tempore Bob Peterson, and Majority Leader Matt Huffman.

The bill is now pending in the House Public Utilities Committee, where the vice-chair and another five of the committee's 14 GOP members are ALEC members.

When the bill gets voted out of committee in the 2020 legislative session, it will be welcomed by three of the four top House leaders who are also ALEC members - Speaker Pro Tempore, Jim Butler, and the Majority Leader, Bill Seitz, who sits on ALEC's board.

Indeed, 23 of 61 of the Ohio state House members belong to ALEC.

Altogether, 41 of the state's 85 GOP legislative members and five of the top eight Republican House and Senate leaders are ALEC members.

CMD lists the Ohio legislative members at alecexposed.org.

Corporate Interests Backing the Bill

Rob Eshenbaugh, a lobbyist with Capitol Advocates in Columbus, led the charge on the anti-protest bill in committee on behalf of a long list of fossil fuel, utility, chemical, transportation, and water corporations and trade associations.

A number of the SB 33 "supporters" listed in Eshenbaugh's testimony are ALEC members, including Columbia Gas of Ohio, CSX Transportation, Dominion Energy Ohio, Duke Energy, and Marathon Petroleum Company

Eshenbaugh was previously a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, and his lobbying firm represents two other ALEC corporate backers, Caterpillar, Inc. and PhRMA, the drug industry's trade association.

A CMD analysis of Ohio's campaign finance records shows that Marathon Petroleum has donated $24,000 to Senate President Obhoff since 2010. It also gave $25,000 to Republican party committees. Duke Energy has paid almost $10,000 for GOP golf outings and has donated $28,000 to Senate Majority Leader Huffman during his career. Utility giant Exelon, another ALEC member, has given GOP party committees $12,500 since 2010.

For a more detailed analysis of SB 33, please visit PolluterWatch.

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https://theintercept.com/2019/08/29/lake-erie-bill-of-rights-ohio/

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HOW OHIO’S CHAMBER OF COMMERCE KILLED AN ANTI-POLLUTION BILL OF RIGHTS

H. Claire Brown

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/how-ohios-fascist-pro-nuke-attack-on-democracy-threatens-the-referendum-process-across-the-nation/

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How Ohio’s fascist pro-nuke attack on democracy threatens the referendum process across the nation

Written by Harvey Wasserman / Common Dreams October 20, 2019

A terrifying series of gestapo-style assaults, petiton buying, bribery, mass media manipulation and systematic intimidation has smacked into the attempt of Ohio citizens to repeal a billion-dollar bailout for two dangerously failing atomic reactors on Lake Erie.

The unprecedented assault threatens the referendum process in Ohio and across the nation.

It also threatens to keep on line two very old, dangerously decayed reactors where melt-downs and explosions could forever contaminate the Great Lakes region and more. (For a full explanation, hear this one-hour discussion).

The story may end Monday, October 21, when signatures are due to qualify an anti-nuclear referendum for the fall 2020 ballot.

It begins with the July passage by the gerrymandered Ohio Legislature of HB6, a massive bailout scheme designed to subsidize the Perry and Davis-Besse nukes, plus two fifty-year-old coal burners, one of them in Indiana. HB6 does support ten small solar facilities. But it also kills an extremely popular, effective energy efficiency program along with larger subsidies for wind and solar energy in general.

The bailout is vehemently opposed by a large majority of Ohioans, including most of its usually pro-corporate media. Commercial, industrial and environmental groups did mount a massive campaign meant to stop the bill from passing. But with help from Democrats in both houses, the Legislature narrowly approved the bailouts.

Almost immediately, a referendum was filed for repeal. With 265,000 signatures due by October 21, Ohioans Against Corporate Bailouts began hiring canvassers.

Ohio’s GOP Secretary of State delayed the process as long as possible. He waiting a full 20 days before turning down the first petition submission. He then waited another 20 to certify the second.

But as soon as the referendum supporters began gathering signatures, pro-nuke forces attacked with a fascist assault unlike any other in US history.

First they began running an astonishing wave of TV ads claiming the referendum was a plot by Chinese Communists to take over Ohio’s electrical grid. The ads feature (they are still running!) hordes of goose-stepping Chinese soldiers, sinister footage of China’s dictator, shuttered US factories, and more.

Accompanied by high-gloss mass mailings, the pro-nuke forces are also running saturation radio ads warning Ohioans to shun all signature gatherers lest they be tracked by sinister communists out to ruin their lives and credit. A toll-free number is offered to those willing to call in the location of any repeal supporters.

But the pro-nuke gestapo has also leapt from mere media manipulation to physical intimidation. When the referendum-gatherers hit the streets, they were confronted by industry “blockers” to tangibly prevent them from doing their job. In one case (as filmed on a security camera) a blocker smacked the cell phone out of the hands of a signature gatherer as he tried to photograph her. Gatherers have widely reported close-up verbal assaults. In some cases as many as three paid blockers have surrounded a single signature gatherer to prevent anyone from coming near to signing a petition.

Because many of the signature gatherers are hired employees, they’re required to register contact information with the state. The pro-nuke mob has assaulted them with threatening phone calls. In some cases they’ve reportedly offered substantial cash payments and airline tickets if they leave the state. One signature gatherer reported being offered $2500 (!) for the day’s accumulated sign-up sheets, which would presumably then be shredded.

Under the circumstances, many now wonder if the pro-referendum forces have been able to accumulate the required 265,000 signatures, plus the many more needed for a traditional cushion. The Republican Secretary of State is certain to discard as many signatures as he can, especially with the micro-managed scrutiny of the nuclear industry.

The ramifications of such an outcome are staggering. It could signal the death of the popular referendum, a cornerstone of the democratic process.

It could also mean two old, uncompetitive, uninsured, un-inspected crumbling atomic reactors highly likely to explode will continue to threaten the entire Great Lakes region for years to come.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/ohio-to-purge-more-than-200000-voters-using-list-flagged-with-numerous-errors/

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Ohio to purge more than 200,000 voters using list flagged with numerous errors

Written by Igor Derysh / Salon September 9, 2019

Ohio is set to purge nearly a quarter-million people from its voter rolls Friday despite journalists and voting rights groups finding repeated mistakes on the state’s list.

Republican Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose published a list in August targeting 235,000 voters the state says are inactive, meaning voters who have not voted for the past six years that the state was unable to contact.

The list of voters was fraught with errors. The secretary of state’s office announced hundreds of changes to the list almost immediately. Two weeks later, voting rights groups discovered that 4,000 people had been erroneously added to the list, the Columbus Dispatch reported. The paper reported days later that another 1,600 people had been incorrectly added to the list because of an error by a software vendor.

The list also included thousands of people who were apparently unaware they had been targeted for removal, even though the state is required to attempt to contact them. More than 11,800 people included on the list have updated their voter registrations so they won’t be canceled, HuffPost reported.

Ohio removes people from the rolls if the state suspects they have moved or died. The list includes people who have not responded to an address confirmation mailing and people who have not voted or participated in any board of elections activity for six years. But voting rights groups say the purge lists are filled with errors that could disenfranchise thousands of legitimate voters. Ohio has already purged 265,000 voter registrations this year, and at least 17 million people have been purged from voter rolls around the country since the 2016 election, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

The Ohio Democratic Party sued to try to stop the state from carrying out the purge, citing the repeated errors on the list. LaRose’s office argued that the errors had been fixed and that the office was taking additional steps to contact people on the list. A federal judge on Tuesday rejected the Democrats’ lawsuit seeking to halt the purge, despite acknowledging problems with past purges. The Supreme Court last year ruled that Ohio’s “supplemental process” that targets voters it suspects have moved or died was legal despite putting eligible voters at risk.

“As we prepare to finalize this process, we’re confident that there has never been a more intensive review of Ohio’s voting rolls, and we’re satisfied that the proper safeguards are in place to ensure any eligible voter will have the opportunity to have their voice heard,” LaRose spokeswoman Maggie Sheehan said in a statement to HuffPost.

But Democrats say that the dubious process all but guarantees that eligible voters will be removed.

“Someone asked me on a call today, ‘Well, what’s the margin of error that’s acceptable in this purging?’ And I said, this isn’t a poll. This is voting. You should not ever be limiting people from the rolls by government error,” Ohio Democratic Party chairman David Pepper told WOSU.

The party’s executive director, Greg Beswick, told Cleveland.com that it was “disturbing” that LaRose planned to go forward with the purge despite admitting to “errors that resulted in thousands of Ohio voters being improperly … and unlawfully flagged to be removed from the rolls.”

“The specter that any active voters are purged due to government error, and no fault of their own, is unacceptable,” he added.

With no legal recourse left, voting rights groups like All Voting is Local are scrambling to contact as many people as possible to encourage them to update their registrations.

“Thousands of voters at risk of being purged have already alerted the state that they are still very much alive and wish to vote,” Mick Brickner, the group’s Ohio state director, said in a statement. “This shows how deeply broken the purge process is and the need for voter registration modernization now.”

https://theintercept.com/2019/08/29/:{lake-erie-bill-of-rights-ohio/:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:

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HOW OHIO’S CHAMBER OF COMMERCE KILLED AN ANTI-POLLUTION BILL OF RIGHTS

H. Claire Brown

August 29 2019, 5:00 a.m.

In partnership with

EARLIER THIS SUMMER, environmental activists in Ohio were alarmed by the passage of a mysterious state budget amendment that would close a new avenue for residents to sue polluters. The provision invalidated a landmark anti-pollution initiative passed by Toledo voters just a few months before. Now, emails obtained in a public records request reveal that the Ohio Chamber of Commerce secured the cooperation of a key Republican lawmaker in a successful effort to slip the amendment into an appropriations bill at the eleventh hour.

The emails depict the chamber’s environmental policy director requesting a last-minute meeting with state Rep. Jim Hoops to discuss the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, the newly minted ballot initiative allowing citizens to sue polluters on behalf of Lake Erie. A legislative aide responded quickly, scheduling a same-day meeting. Despite the chamber director’s admission that his proposal would need to be submitted after the legislature’s deadline, the aide produced draft amendment language to share with him three weeks later. The chamber’s subsequent revisions made their way into the final bill, effectively nullifying the Lake Erie Bill of Rights.

“This shows the influence of the Chamber of Commerce writing our laws and undermining the democracy of the people of Toledo,” said Bill Lyons, a board member of the Ohio Community Rights Network, an environmental advocacy organization. After the May vote, Lyons filed a series of public records requests to try to figure out which lawmaker introduced the amendment. The emails were provided to The Intercept and The New Food Economy by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, an affiliate of the Ohio Community Rights Network.

FILE - In this Aug. 3, 2014 file photo, a sample glass of Lake Erie water is photographed near the City of Toledo water intake crib on Lake Erie, off the shore of Curtice, Ohio. Scientists are predicting a "significant" algae bloom will form this summer on western Lake Erie, a continuing health hazard in a region where algae toxins forced a temporary tap water shutdown in 2014. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari, File) A glass of water sampled near Toledo’s water intake crib on Lake Erie, off the shore of Curtice, Ohio, on Aug. 3, 2014. Photo: Haraz N. Ghanbari/AP

IN FEBRUARY, MORE than 60 percent of participants in a special election in Toledo voted to establish a Bill of Rights for Lake Erie. It was a unique ballot question that would grant Lake Erie the right to “exist, flourish, and naturally evolve.” The intent was to give Lake Erie and its human allies legal standing to file lawsuits against polluters.

Organizers in Ohio launched their efforts to pass the initiative after a toxic algal bloom — caused by fertilizer and manure runoff from upstream farms — rendered Toledo’s water undrinkable and largely unusable (some residents were advised not to shower) for a few days in 2014. Tish O’Dell, a state organizer for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, said residents spent two years trying to persuade the state government to take action to prevent future issues.

In Ohio, however, the farm runoff largely responsible for polluting Lake Erie is minimally regulated. Farmers in the state also benefit from key legal protections that limit their vulnerability to pollution-related lawsuits. Ohio has a so-called right-to-farm law, which dramatically limits neighbors’ ability to win lawsuits alleging that farm pollution unfairly impacts their quality of life. (Hoops appears to have introduced another amendment that expands the definition of farmland protected under the state’s right-to-farm law; that amendment passed this summer as well, further narrowing the legal pathways advocates might use to limit agricultural runoff.) And at the federal level, the Clean Water Act has long exempted most agricultural operations from robust regulation.

For all these reasons, advocates came to believe that existing legal frameworks would never sufficiently protect the lake and those who live near it. By 2016, they were ready to try something new. After O’Dell and her colleague Thomas Linzey gave a presentation on so-called rights-of-nature laws at Bowling Green University, Toledo activists approached them about devising a plan for Lake Erie. The group headed to a nearby pub.

“That’s actually how the Lake Erie Bill of Rights hatched,” O’Dell said. “It was on a cocktail napkin at the bar.”

After its passage, the Lake Erie Bill of Rights was immediately challenged in federal court. The next day, the Drewes Farm Partnership had filed a 24-page lawsuit arguing that protections for the lake could mean financial ruin for the farm’s business. That lawsuit is ongoing. Then, in May, the eleventh-hour amendment invalidating the lake’s rights found its way into the House version of the state’s budget.

The Chamber of Commerce asked for the addition of text that would more directly refute the Lake Erie Bill of Rights.

It all started with an email from the Ohio Chamber of Commerce. The chamber’s director of energy and environmental policy, Zack Frymier, wrote to request a meeting with Hoops, the state House representative, on April 11, a few weeks before the vote. (Hoops is chair of the Ohio House Finance Subcommittee on Agriculture, Development, and Natural Resources.)

“I’m hoping to find some time (like everyone else) to run something by Chairman Hoops regarding the Lake Erie Bill of Rights that passed in Toledo in February,” Frymier wrote. “We have some language that we’d request to be considered for the budget. Though obviously it would have to be submitted after tomorrow’s deadline we’d still like to have a conversation.”

A legislative aide replied promptly, arranging a meeting with Hoops for 4:00 p.m. that day. Despite the short notice — it was already nearly 3:00 p.m. — Frymier quickly and enthusiastically responded that he’d be there.

A few weeks later, the aide got back to Frymier with draft text of the amendment, asking if the wording made sense to him. Frymier then asked for the addition of text that would more directly refute the Lake Erie Bill of Rights.

“Language in this amendment stating that [nature and ecosystems] do not have standing is essential to what we’re trying to accomplish,” Frymier wrote on May 2.

The amendment’s final text includes the additional statement Frymier asked for: “Nature or any ecosystem does not have standing to participate in or bring an action in any court of common pleas.”

The amendment was reported by local media on May 8. The next day, the state House passed its version of the bill. Lyons, the Community Rights Network board member, later testified in front of the state Senate, asking legislators to strike the amendment from the final budget. His efforts were unsuccessful and, after a few weeks of negotiation, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine signed the measure into law.

Lyons said he was surprised by the degree of collaboration between the Chamber of Commerce and Hoops’s subcommittee. “The fact that they would run that language specifically by them — I mean, who else gets that opportunity?” he said. (Neither the Ohio Chamber of Commerce nor Hoops’s office responded to requests for comment.)

Business advocates — primarily the fossil fuel giant BP, which has fracking interests in the state — spent more than $300,000 to campaign against the Lake Erie Bill of Rights prior to its passage in Toledo. The coalition advocating in its favor, Toledoans for Safe Water, spent less than $6,000, according to Great Lakes Now.

Municipalities around the nation have been slowly adopting rights-of-nature ordinances for more than a decade. Pittsburgh banned fracking using this legal framework in 2010. More recently, a county in Oregon voted to ban aerial pesticide spraying the same way.

Rights-of-nature laws likely face a long road ahead. If the Lake Erie Bill of Rights is any indication, many may be tied up in lawsuits for years to come.

For O’Dell, the Ohio organizer, the Lake Erie Bill of Rights is already a win regardless of its fate. “The people kept fighting to get it on the ballot. They defeated big corporate money. They won, and they’re still fighting,” she said. “So I don’t care what happens — they have ignited interest all around the world.”

===

https://www.energyandpolicy.org/firstenergy-lobbyists-behind-testimony-supporting-bailout-bill/

A lobbying firm paid by FirstEnergy Solutions appears to have played a role in writing the testimony given this week by multiple supporters of abill to bail out the bankrupt utility’s nuclear power plants that’s now before the Ohio House.

The bill in question, HB 6, would ultimately cost Ohioans $300 million annually, $180 million of which would go to FirstEnergy Solutions’ struggling nuclear power plants.

It would also effectively kill Ohio’s renewable energy and energy efficiency standards, and could result in subsidies for coal and natural gas power plants, all under the auspices of a new Clean Air Program.

EPI downloaded digital copies of the written testimony by bill proponents that was posted on the Ohio House website after a committee hearing on Wednesday, and viewed the “Document Properties” for each of the PDF files. The name “Christopher Curry” – was found in the “Author” field of seven of the testimony files.

[pix/ doc]

Curry is a Washington, D.C.-based employee at the Dewey Square Group, a lobbying firm to which FirstEnergy Solutions disclosed making over $800,000 in payments in a bankruptcy case filing last month.

Carlo LoParo, a spokesperson for the Ohio Clean Energy Jobs Alliance, provided the following statement to the Energy and Policy Institute (EPI) on Thursday, after the hearing on the bill:

As has been reported in the past, the Dewey Square Group works on behalf of FES and the Ohio Clean Energy Jobs Alliance to advocate for keeping the state’s nuclear plants open. The Alliance played a key role in mobilizing strong support for House Bill 6 at yesterday’s hearing before the House Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, including providing a suggested framework and consolidating, converting to PDF’s, and submitting testimony to the committee.

The Ohio Clean Energy Jobs Alliance that LoParo referenced is “powered by FirstEnergy Solutions,” according to the group’s website. Outside lobbying and public relations firms employed by FES helped to launch the Alliance last fall. The group has :{purchased over:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{ $220,000 in Facebook ads:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: since its launch, all paid for by FirstEnergy Solutions.

Larry Householder, the Republican speaker of the Ohio House who is backing HB 6, denies that the bill is a bailout for FirstEnergy Solution. FirstEnergy’s Political Action Committee and employees contributed nearly $1.2 million during the 2018 election cycle in Ohio, with most of that campaign money going to Republicans, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Curry’s name appeared in the metadata of the written testimony by the following bill proponents who testified at Wednesday’s hearing:

Tom Brown, the administrator for Madison Township
Beth Hannan, executive director of the Sandusky Economic Development Corporation
Scott Miller, a Sandusky County commissioner
Andrew Ohrablo, an employee at the Perry nuclear power plant
Phil Rudolph, Jr., the vice president of the Rudolph Libbe Group, which has a $435,000+ claim in FirstEnergy Solutions’ bankruptcy case
Mark Rantala, the executive director of the Lake County Ohio Port and Economic Development Authority
Bryan Tischer, an employee at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant

Curry also conferred with Sitrick & Company, a Los-Angeles based public relations firm representing FirstEnergy Solutions, about “FES messaging and talking points” in March, according to another bankruptcy case filing.

He worked on the launch of the Ohio Clean Energy Jobs Alliance last fall, other documents filed in the FirstEnergy Solutions bankruptcy case reveal.

Curry previously worked on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016. A petition supporting the inclusion of nuclear power in New York’s clean energy standards that summer lists Curry as the organizer.

Curry has also work with the Dewey Square Group as a lobbyist forExelon in New York and Pennsylvania, according to FollowtheMoney.org.

Curry is not currently listed as a lobbyist in Ohio.

Posted in: FirstEnergy, Ohio Clean Energy Jobs Alliance
Tagged in: coal bailout, dewey square group, Facebook political ads, firstenergy solutions, hb 6, Hillary Clinton, larry householder, loparo public relations, nuclear bailout, ohio clean energy jobs alliance, ohio house speaker, Rudolph Libbe Group

Ryan Grim, Akela Lacy

https://theintercept.com/2019/07/26/ohio-billion-dollar-nuclear-bailout-firstenergy/ OHIO REPUBLICANS BALKED AT A NUCLEAR BAILOUT, SO THE INDUSTRY ELECTED NEW REPUBLICANS — AND WALKED AWAY WITH $1.1 BILLION

July 26 2019, 4:00 a.m.

ON TUESDAY, a dark-money effort linked primarily to the Ohio nuclear industry delivered an audacious payoff, as a newly elected state legislature overcame years of opposition to shower a $1.1 billion bailout on two state nuclear plants.

Several dark-money groups spent millions to replace key Republican state legislators in the spring of 2018, followed by a furious lobbying campaign to make sure those new lawmakers elected a new House speaker — one who was amenable to the subsidy. The nuclear industry in Ohio has been on the brink of failure for several years, but previous legislatures had objected to a bailout, reading the writing on the wall: Nuclear power is neither a cost-effective solution for power nor an effective response to climate change, despite hopes for its success.

:{:{

The dark-money effort deployed a}: variety of vehicles }:that went by names like the Conservative Leadership Allianceand the Ohio Clean Energy Jobs Alliance. Murray Energy, a coal company, also gave heavilyto current state House Speaker Larry Householder and his allied candidates, and the bailout from Ohio also includes subsidies to prop up failing coal plants in the state.

In April 2018, two nuclear plants, both owned by the electric utility FirstEnergy, filed for bankruptcy and have been threatening to cease operations if not bailed out. They were under increasing pressure to compete with cheaper alternatives, ranging from natural gas to wind and solar. The bankruptcy filings give a glimpse into the company’s political spending: more than $30 million from 2018-2019 on lobbying and campaigns in Ohio and Pennsylvania (where the company also sought a bailout, so far unsuccessfully).

The payoff is extraordinary in degree — something like $30 million for campaigns in Ohio and Pennsylvania to win $1.1 billion in government subsidy. But it is similar in kind to other nuclear projects across the country. According to the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit devoted to research and advocacy, five cash-strapped states across the country have foisted more than $15 billion in subsidies on failing nuclear power plants since 2016, the latest sign that nuclear is unable to stand in a competitive energy market against lower-cost renewables.

IN OHIO, the state House battle was fought in at least 18 competitive Republican primaries, all proxy battles between Reps. Ryan Smith, the incumbent House speaker, and Larry Householder. Householder was a co-sponsor of the nuclear bailout bill that stalled in the legislature in 2018, making him a key ally to the nuclear industry. Several dark-money vehicles backed the pro-Householder candidates, andwon 15 of the 18 races. Four pro-Householder candidates lost in the general election, but the primary wins put Householder in contention for the speakership.

The industry even targeted one Republican state representative who had rebuffed FirstEnergy’s advances before making a bid for Congress. “I didn’t budge when they came into my office to lobby me,” former state Rep. Christina Hagansaidof FirstEnergy. “I became the target of the company and the members of our leadership team who wanted to get it done but couldn’t because I wasn’t going to be supportive. I’m sure they just wanted to make an example of me in my race for higher office that if you don’t play well, this is what will happen to you.”

On top of the dark money, FirstEnergy’s political action committees directly contributed more than $150,000to the campaigns of Householder and candidates aligned with him, while giving none to Smith last cycle. Of the pro-Householder candidates who won their races, all but one supported the bailout.

Dark money also contributed to ads on Ohio television.Generation Now spent almost $2 million on ads in favor of the bailout, and perhaps much more. The Growth & Opportunity PAC, which got more than$1 million in donations from Generation Now, also blanketed the state House districts with television ads in favor of Republican candidates. Generation Now’s office is listed as the Columbus address of a longtime Householder adviser, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.

The new lawmakers entered office in January, and Householder, who, along with his son, flew to Donald Trump’s inauguration on a FirstEnergy-chartered plane, won with the backing of 26 Republican and 26 Democratic representatives, while Smith got the votes of 34 and 11, respectively. Householder was able to win the support of those Democrats with his opposition to right-to-work legislation, as unions pushed Democrats to back him in the speaker fight with Smith. :{

On July 23, Smith and 14 other House Republicans voted against the bailout, but Householder was able to push it through 51-38, backed by nine Democrats. It was quickly signed by the state’s new governor, Republican Mike DeWine. (FirstEnergy also contributed to the campaign of DeWine, who then tapped a FirstEnergy lobbyistto be his liaison to the legislature.)That month, the legislature also began work on reviving the nuclear bill known as HB 6. At least seven witnesses who spoke to the legislature in support of the bill drew on testimony written by a FirstEnergy lobbying firm, according to a review of metadata by the Energy and Policy Institute, which has closely tracked the fight.

The Ohio legislation reads as if it was designed specifically to undermine the planet’s continued capacity to support a steady human population. Along with propping up the state’s two nuclear plants, it also provides subsidies for failing coal plants in the state, as well as one in Indiana. It cuts and eventually ends any subsidies for new wind or solar, while approving just $20 million annually for large-scale solar projects that have already been approved. It even ends programs aimed at encouraging Ohio residents to reduce power consumption, through upgrades to appliances or heating and cooling systems.

In April, Householder denied that the corporate PAC money had anything to do with the nuclear bill, and said that FirstEnergy should be applauded for its civic engagement.“For them to care about those people who are trying to serve the state of Ohio and make sure they’ve got good quality candidates moving forward I think is important for anybody,” he said.

When asked specifically about ads from the dark money–funded Growth & Opportunity PAC, Householder said, “I’ll tell you who’s paying for these ads: it’s working men and women from Ohio, who want to save their jobs and it’s Ohio corporations, headquartered in Ohio, that want to stay here. That’s who’s paying for it.” He did not respond to a request for comment from The Intercept.

THE ROLE OF the nuclear industry in the shuffling of speakers was not prominent in the news coverage of the politics, but it wasn’t entirely unknown. Gregory Jaczko, who served as chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from 2009 to 2012, said that the industry’s role in the affair was visible to those paying close attention. “FirstEnergy has been trying, really, for years to get this subsidy, and the legislature kept denying it, and nobody really, even the previous governor [John Kasich] was not really supportive of it,” he said. “FirstEnergy put a lot of money into local races and essentially turned the legislature around. So they ran this thing through.”

On a policy level, the legislation is appalling, said Jaczko, who has become an outspoken critic of the industry, and recently published a book, “Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Regulator.” Building new wind and solar capacity would not only be a better climate solution and produce more jobs, he said, it would be far cheaper for the state, and it’s the direction Ohio will have to go eventually anyway. Wind and solar “creates a brand new economy, which is going to be a future-looking economy rather than a dying economy,” said the former NRC chair. “Nuclear is dying. It’s dying in Ohio.”

Winning the speakership is quite the comeback for Householder, whose career appeared to be cut short in the mid-2000s by a federal investigation intokickbacks and a pay-to-play scandal. Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, a Republican, had referred the case to the FBI; it was resolved without charges.Householder won election back to the House in 2016, and during his first cycle, the incumbent speaker resigned amid his own FBI investigation. Smith took over on a temporary basis, leading to the battle between the two.The irony, he noted, is that Ohio had planned to be a testing ground for next-generation smaller nuclear power plants, which purported to solve some of the problems associated with nuclear energy, and won federal subsidies to try to build them.

“As soon as they got that money from the Department of Energy, they decided they weren’t going to pursue these reactors anymore,” Jaczko said. No new nuclear plants are planned for Ohio or anywhere else in the United States, and the closure of the two currently operating facilities is not a matter of if, but when. The billion-dollar subsidy only delays the transition to wind and solar, he said.

Ohio’s two senators, both of whose campaigns have taken money from FirstEnergy throughout their careers, were on different pages when asked about the billion-dollar bailout. Republican Sen. Rob Portman, whose campaigns have taken at least $615,000 from FirstEnergy PACs since his first run for Senate in 2009, said he didn’t know enough of the details of the decision and was swamped with other things this week.

Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, though, was indignant.“You don’t bail out utility companies and raise prices for customers,” Brown said. The utility has contributed around $380,000 to Brown’s campaigns since 1997, when he was in the House of Representatives. “And you don’t undermine the efforts our state has made on alternative energy and other energy sources. So it’s just wrong.” Asked about reports of the involvement of dark-money groups in pushing the bailout, Brown said: “Of course there is.”

“I mean, these things happen because these monied interests control the state legislature. There’s no question about it.”

In a statement Brown’s office sent later in the day, the senator added that expending enormous resources to prop up outdated sources of power would only hurt Ohio going forward. “Of course we need to make sure our state has access to reliable power, but we shouldn’t do that by raising the utility bills of hardworking Ohioans,” Brown said. “We need solutions designed for Ohio workers and families, not Wall Street and fat-cat lobbyists. By eliminating the renewable standard, Ohio is going backward when almost every other state is looking to the good-paying jobs of the future. It’s short-sighted and it is going to result in significant lost opportunities in our state—our businesses will be less competitive, energy developers will avoid investing in Ohio, and there will be fewer jobs in this growing sector.”

The cost of the nuclear bailout for Ohio ratepayers is a bargain compared to the bill being given to residents in South Carolina. The cost of a failed program to build a nuclear power plant there topped $9 billion. Two of the companies involved — Dominion Energy and SCANA Corporation — entered into a buyout and settled a large portion of the bill, leaving ratepayers responsible for footing the remaining $2.3 billion, more than twice the Ohio figure. Not a single kilowatt of energy was produced in South Carolina by the project, which consisted largely of a hole in the ground.

The Ohio subsidies for coal and nuclear, which follow bailouts doled out by Illinois, New York, and New Jersey, underscore the futility of pursuing nuclear power.

Nuclear power once offered the tantalizing promise of endless cheap and clean energy, and to this day remains a hope in the minds of some climate activists. But in reality, nuclear hasn’t met the promise. It is far more expensive to produce nuclear power than wind or solar, and the world has not solved the intractable problem of nuclear waste, to say nothing of safety. To truly meet the scale of the climate crisis with nuclear power, Jaczko said, the world would need to start construction on roughly 1,000 plants this year. But because of the safety concerns, waste problem, and astronomical cost, there are just a handful being built. Ohio lawmakers, though, are hanging on to the bitter end — courtesy of Ohio’s residents.... Ohio homeowners and businesses are now stuck paying more to keep old, uneconomical power plants running, and money-saving energy efficiency programs will likely disappear.

icn 719

Ohio Governor Signs a Coal and Nuclear Bailout at Expense of Renewable Energy

BY: DAN GEARINO

Ohio homeowners and businesses are now stuck paying more to keep old, uneconomical power plants running, and money-saving energy efficiency programs will likely disappear.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23072019/ohio-coal-nuclear-bailout-law-signed-cuts-renewable-energy-efficiency-programs-governor-dewine

Opponents fear the law will send the growing wind and solar industry to neighboring states while Ohio homeowners are stuck boosting old, uneconomical power plants.

Dan Gearino

:{BY :(style="box-sizing:inherit"):}:DAN GEARINO

JUL 26, 2019

Updated July 26 with FirstEnergy Solutions announcing that, with the state bailout for its nuclear plants, the utility will now have funding to keep an aging coal plant also running.

In a year when several states have taken big steps to embrace a future that runs on renewable energy, Ohio is taking a leap in the opposite direction.

The Ohio legislature passed a measure Tuesday that cuts renewable energy and energy efficiency programs while adding subsidies for nuclear and coal-fired power plants—a policy cocktail that opponents say is backward-looking and harmful to the economy, consumers and the environment.

Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, signed the bill into law within hours.

Opponents were unable to match the political power of FirstEnergy Solutions, the owner of the state's two nuclear plants, and its allies.

While much of the debate was about nuclear power, the law may end up functioning as more of a coal bailout.

On Friday, FirstEnergy Solutions said it had decided to cancel plans to close the W.H. Sammis coal-fired power plant, an eastern Ohio plant that has been described as a "super-polluter." The plant, previously scheduled to shut down in 2022, is not covered by the bailout law, but the windfall from the bailout money is improving the company's finances enough to make moves unrelated to the nuclear plants.

The new law is in line with Ohio's recent history of hostility to renewable energy, while also making the state an outlier as several other states have increased their support for renewable energy, including plans to move to 100 percent carbon-free or renewable electricity, most recently in Maineand New York.

"This is one of the worst pieces of energy related legislation we've seen," said Dan Sawmiller, Ohio energy policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

His group was one of many across the business and political spectrum that fought the bill, a rare moment in which environmental advocates such as the Sierra Club were on the same side as the American Petroleum Institute.

"We are bailing out a corporation, a failing corporation," while harming the growing wind and solar industries, said Rep. Casey Weinstein, a Democrat.

He said the legislation would steer solar and wind investment away from Ohio and toward neighboring states such as Michigan. Other states, including South Carolinaand Georgia, are being much more forward thinking about renewable energy, he said.

e&e news 719

Strangled Ohio wind industry: 'We don't want to give up'

:{:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}:

Ohio wind developers are facing the possibility of a weakened renewable standard and some of the country's most restrictive turbine-siting rules. Consequence may be far-reaching.

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Federal judge blocks Ohio ‘heartbeat’ bill from taking effect

new

Ohio’s Nuclear Bailout Plan Balloons to Embrace Coal (while Killing Renewables Rules)

a trifecta the Trump administration has pushed for nationally, with businesses and homeowners footing the bill for uneconomical power plants.

Dan:{BY :(style="box-sizing:inherit"):}:DAN GEARINO

MAY 31, 2019

While other states are embracing renewable energy, Ohio is heading in the opposite direction. A bill passed this week by the Ohio House would subsidize nuclear and coal power while cutting state support for renewable energy and energy efficiency, with the utilities' customers footing the bill.

Advocates and analysts are trying to make sense of a plan that seems to defy political and economic logic: It would support uneconomical power plants by increasing costs for businesses and homeowners, both with new charges on their bills and through the cancellation of programs that help them save money on energy.

The measure now heads to the Ohio Senate, and the idea of a nuclear bailout has the support of Republican Gov. Mike DeWine. If it becomes law, it would mean Ohio is decisively turning away from policies that aid the transition to renewable energy, said Kit Kennedy, senior director of the climate and clean energy program for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

"Ohio is moving in an unprecedented and troubling direction with this bill, which is quite dramatically different from how other states are handling similar issues," she said.

The state's renewable energy and energy efficiency standards, already weakened once since becoming law in 2008, have been under continual attack from Republican lawmakers who say they oppose mandates and subsidies. Yet that's what they now want to offer coal and nuclear.

Clean energy advocates are pinning their hopes on the idea that the Ohio Senate, which, like the House, is controlled by Republicans, will change the bill. DeWine indicated that the bill is a "work in progress," telling Gongwer News Service on Thursday that he wants to find a way to support nuclear and allow wind and solar to grow.

Ohio would be the fifth state to subsidize nuclear power plants that otherwise might close for financial reasons, following Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey and New York. The difference is that the other four passed nuclear aid as part of a package that included support for renewable energy, part of a larger strategy to promote carbon-free electricity generation....

Ohio Governor Signs “Fetal Heartbeat” Bill into Law

Bill Banning Most Abortions Becomes Law In Ohio

WOSU 89.7 NPR NEWS

:{April 11, 2019 • :(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}:The ACLU of Ohio and other organizations that advocate for abortion rights will sue to block the law, one of most restrictive in the country. "We're counting on [a lawsuit]," say the law's supporters.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/ohios-republican-attorney-general-is-going-to-war-with-trump-to-try-and-save-obamacare/

Trump is forcing his Justice Department, over the objections of his own attorney general, to support the position of a coalition of right-wing states suing to strike down the Affordable Care Act, aka “Obamacare” in its entirety.

But at least one GOP state attorney general is among those fighting back. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, Ohio’s Dave Yost is advising a federal court to throw out the lawsuit:

Yost said in an interview he agrees that the individual mandate to buy health insurance is unconstitutional but disagrees that the rest of the law is also therefore invalid.

Yost plans to file a friend-of the-court brief in the5th Circuit Court of Appeal. The brief will argue the individual mandate can be removed from the law without eliminating protections for pre-existing conditions, insurance caps and other parts of the law. About 1.9 million non-elderly Ohioans have pre-existing conditions, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The lawsuit is rooted in the GOP tax bill passed at the end of 2017, which among other things eliminated the ACA’s individual mandate, and in the Supreme Court’s 2012 decision in National Federation of Independent Businesses v. Sebelius, which said the mandate was constitutional under Congress’ power to tax. Since the mandate no longer exists, the lawsuit argues, it is no longer a tax, and therefore the entire law — pre-existing conditions, community rating, insurance exchanges, essential benefits, tax credits, Medicaid expansion, Medicare reforms, all of it — must be struck down.

The lawsuit is broadly considered ridiculous even by conservative experts — most of the law’s provisions have nothing to do with the individual mandate, and when Congress eliminated the mandate while keeping everything else, they were clearly establishing the mandate is severable from the rest of the law. Nevertheless, the lawsuit found sympathetic ears in Judge Reed O’Connor, an extremely partisan federal judge in Fort Worth with ties to Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX). O’Connor ruled in favor of the lawsuit, but his ruling is on hold and under review by the Fifth Circuit — and Trump’s DOJ is trying to persuade them to uphold it.
20 GOP state attorneys general, led by Texas AG Ken Paxton, initially brought the lawsuit, but Ohio was never among them. Despite being firmly in Republican control for nearly a decade, the state has benefited hugely from the ACA — it adopted the Medicaid expansion, and relies heavily on ACA programs to keep rural hospitals afloat and combat the opioid crisis. Losing all these programs would be adisaster for Ohio,and Republicans there know it.
In addition to Yost’s brief, over a dozen Democratic state attorneys general led by California’s Xavier Becerra are mounting a defense of the ACA.

Ohio Weighs a Nuclear Bailout. Will It Boost Renewables, Too?

BY: DAN GEARINO

The powerful utility FirstEnergy has been pushing for federal and state nuclear subsidies for years. It spent big in the last Ohio election and won a power shift in the legislature.

https://www.alternet.org/trump-country-turnaround-why-presidents-faux-populism-could-return-rust-belt-its-democratic-roots

Politically, the Rust Belt has been one of the most volatile parts of the United States.While New England and the West Coast lean Democrat and many of the southern states have been reliably Republican, the Rust Belt has generally had a mixture of blue states and swing states (with Indiana being the most GOP state in the Rust Belt). But in 2016, President Donald Trump’s faux-populism not only resulted in a victory in the swing state Ohio—Trump also flipped three states that usually go Democrat in presidential races: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is still fuming over the fact that Hillary Clinton was the first Democrat to lose Wisconsin in a presidential election since Walter Mondale in 1984.

The 2018 midterms, however, found Democrats regaining a lot of ground in parts of the Rust Belt—and between now and 2020, the DNC will no doubt be spending considerable time trying to figure out ways to avoid another Rust Belt debacle like the one two years ago.

In 2019, this is what the political environment will look like in four Rust Belt states that were carried by Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 but by Trump in 2016.

Michigan

Saying that Michigan is a blue state does not mean that Michigan residents vote Democrat exclusively in major races—only that they are, on the whole, more likely to vote Democrat. During the Obama years, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder campaigned as a self-described “pro-life, pro-2nd Amendment, pro-family” Republican and won in both 2010 and 2014. It was under Snyder’s watch that the appalling Flynt water crisis occurred, but even that tragedy didn’t prevent Trump from carrying Michigan in 2016 (making him the first GOP presidential candidate to do so George H.W. Bush in 1988).

In 2018, however, Democrat Gretchen Whitmer defeated Republican Bill Schuette by 10% in Michigan’s gubernatorial race. Incumbent Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow was reelected, defeating Republican John James by 7%—and Michigan Democrats flipped two GOP-held seats in the U.S. House of Representatives when Elissa Slotkin defeated incumbent Rep. Mike Bishop and Haley Stevens defeated Lena Epstein in the 11th Congressional District. Meanwhile,

Democrats didn’t obtain a majority in Michigan’s state legislature in 2018, although they decreased the GOP majority in the Michigan House and the Michigan Senate.

Pennsylvania

Although Pennsylvania and Ohio are both Rust Belt swing states, Pennsylvania has been more favorable to Democrats in presidential elections—especially when there is a heavy voter turnout in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. But in 2016, Trump managed to flip Pennsylvania with a strong turnout in the central part of the state (which Democratic strategist James Carville famously described as “Alabama in between”). Altoona, Johnstown and other areas of Central Pennsylvania that Pennsylvanians jokingly refer to as “Pennsyltucky” or “Pennsissippi” came out for Trump in droves, making him the first Republican to carry Pennsylvania in a presidential race since 1988.

Democrats, however, enjoyed double-digit victories in the 2018 midterms when Gov. Tom Wolf and Sen. Bob Casey, Jr. were reelected. In Pennsylvania, Democrats flipped three GOP-held seats in the U.S. House of Representatives; of the 18 House seats in Pennsylvania, there will be nine held by Democrats in 2019 and nine by Republicans. However, Republicans still control Pennsylvania’s state legislature (110-92 in the Pennsylvania House, 29-21 in the Pennsylvania Senate).

3. Ohio

Some elections were very easy to predict in 2018. Republican Mitt Romney’s chances of losing the Utah Senate race were slim and none, as were House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s changes of not being reelected in the San Francisco Bay Area. And in New York City, Congresswoman-Elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez enjoyed so much support that voters hardly knew anything about her Republican challenger Anthony Pappas. But countless races in the 2018 midterms were major nail biters, from Texas to Florida to Virginia—and Ohio had its share of nail-biters this year.

Ohio is a swing state where Democrats can perform well (Obama carried Ohio in both 2008 and 2012) but have to work extra hard, as Hillary Clinton was reminded when she lost to Trump in the Buckeye State in 2016. And this year, Democrats were disappointed in Ohio once again when Democrat Richard Cordray lost to Republican Mike DeWine by 4% in the state’s gubernatorial race—although Sen. Sherrod Brown was reelected, defeating Republican challenger Jim Renacci by 7%.

Republicans maintained a strong majority in Ohio’s state legislature(both the Ohio House and the Ohio Senate) this year, and 12 of Ohio’s 16 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives will be held by Republicans in 2019. As Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley asserted in a November 23 piece for the New York Times, Ohio has not turned into a red state but is a state where Democrats will need to find their “path out of the wilderness.”

Wisconsin

When President George H.W. Bush enjoyed an electoral landslide over Democrat Mike Dukakis in the 1988 presidential election, Wisconsin was one of the states Dukakis managed to win. Wisconsin, all things considered, is still a blue state, but far-right Republicans enjoyed some important victories in Wisconsin during the Obama years. House Speaker Paul Ryan was elected via Wisconsin, and Gov. Scott Walker won two terms. Ryan and Walker became stars of the far-right. But Ryan opted to resign from the House, claiming that he wanted to spend more time with his family (which is nonsense—Ryan was worried about a blue wave). And Republicans suffered a painful loss in Wisconsin when Walker failed to win a third term in 2018 and was defeated by Democrat Tony Evers, who Obama had campaigned for aggressively. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, defeating Republican Leah Vukmir, was reelected by 11%. Those were important wins for Democrats, although Republicans will still control five of Wisconsin’s eight seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2019.

Ohio Republicans move to make childbirth mandatory — and lay bare the deep sexism that motivates the anti-choice movement

In Ohio, Republican Mike DeWine, the state attorney general, defeated Democrat Richard Cordray, a former state attorney general and the first director of the Federal Consumer Protection Bureau. Cordray's loss is a blow to clean energy advocates who had hoped to see a counterweight to a Republican-controlled legislature that has been hostile to renewable energy.

https://www.alternet.org/under-assault-trumps-gop-and-supreme-court-unions-lead-massive-get-out-vote-effort-midterms-we-vote

In the face of a coordinated, corporate-funded assault on their very existence by President Donald Trump, Republicans at the federal and state level, and the right-wing Supreme Court, labor unions nationwide have mobilized massive numbers of struggling workersto turn out for Tuesday's critical midterms with the goal of defeating anti-union candidatesand electing politicians willing to fight for progressive policies that benefit the working class like Medicare for All, a higher minimum wage, and the fundamental right to organize.

"The Culinary Workers Union registered 10,300 voters for the midterms. This union really gets it done. Still impressed by what I saw reporting on them in Vegas."

—David Jamieson, Huffington Post

"We don't know any other way," said Geoconda Arguello-Kline, the Secretary-Treasurer for the Culinary Workers Union in Las Vegas, which has registered over 10,300 new voters ahead of Tuesday's midterm elections to defeat Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.). "For us, it's a very natural way to survive here in Las Vegas: organize, organize."

With the rallying cry, "We vote, we win!" the union has provided resources for workers to learn about the candidates on the ballot, spread the word about the issues at stake in the midterms, and find the closest polling site. The Culinary Union's get-out-the-vote efforts have been replicated throughout the nation, including in so-called "right-to-work states," where Republican legislatures have barred unions from collecting dues from all workers they represent in collective bargaining efforts to raise wages and improve working conditions.

"Things aren't changing for the better like they thought would happen. Real wages are not keeping pace with inflation. We haven't replaced the well-paying manufacturing jobs that we lost."

—Tim Burga, Ohio AFL-CIO

In Southern states like North Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, and Georgia, the Communications Workers of America (CWA)—which represents 700,000 workers nationwide—say it organized canvassing, mail, and phone bank operations that resulted in over four million door knocks."

In the Midwest, where workers have suffered from decades of deindustrialization, corporate outsourcing, and neglect from politicians who so often claim to care about their plight, the AFL-CIO says it has convinced thousands of union workers who backed Donald Trump in 2016 to turn out for progressive Democrats on Tuesday.

"About half of union households that voted for Trump said they are planning to vote for Democrats in two key statewide races," Vox reported on Monday, citing figures from the Ohio AFL-CIO. "That includes 51.4 percent of Trump voters who plan to cast a ballot for progressive Democrat Richard Cordray for governor and 49.9 percent of Trump voters who favor incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown—the only Democrat currently holding statewide office."

Tim Burga, president of the Ohio AFL-CIO, said many union workers who initially backed Trump have realized after two years of plutocratic policies and stagnant wages that the president and his billionaire-filled cabinet are not on their side, and never were.

"Things aren't changing for the better like they thought would happen," Burga said. "Real wages are not keeping pace with inflation. We haven't replaced the well-paying manufacturing jobs that we lost."

With a historic number of House Democratic candidates backing Medicare for All, National Nurses United (NNU)—the largest organization of registered nurses in the U.S.—has also been tirelessly canvassing and phone banking in Maryland, Florida, and the many other states where candidates are standing up to America's disastrous for-profit healthcare industry.

See NNU's full list of all 225 House Democratic candidates running on Medicare for All here.

https://www.propublica.org/article/jobs-alliance-tries-to-block-gas-plants

Three years ago, a group of residents in West Virginia’s northern panhandle formed a new group, the Ohio Valley Jobs Alliance, and declared themselves a “voice for local jobs.”

A few months later, however, the group’s first major action was aimed not at creating jobs, but at blocking them.

In November 2015, the alliance, known as the OVJA, filed a legal appeal to challenge a key permit for construction of the Moundsville Power project, a natural gas-fired plant in Marshall County.

The move was puzzling. Backers of Moundsville Power said the project would be a significant boost for the area, providing 500 jobs annually during a three-year construction period and 30 permanent jobs once it was operational. Supporters said the project was a way for residents to capture more economic gains from West Virginia’s booming natural gas industry.

The legal action, it turns out, was funded by Murray Energy Corp., one of the nation’s largest coal producers, one of the group’s leaders testified in a deposition in the case. Murray Energy’s founder and CEO is Robert E. Murray, who is among the nation’s best-known advocates for reviving the coal industry and cutting regulations related to it.

The OVJA also is seeking to stop two other natural gas power plants proposed for West Virginia, and Murray Energy has acknowledged paying “certain legal fees” for the group. Like the Moundsville plant, the facilities proposed for Harrison and Brooke counties would provide hundreds of construction jobs for several years and then about 30 permanent positions. All told, the three plants would cost more than $2 billion to build.

Power plants need several kinds of government permits, and the jobs alliance has focused its legal attacks on air-pollution permits issued by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection and utility “certificates of need” permits handled by the state Public Service Commission.

Testimony in the power plant cases before both agencies doesn’t reveal details about Murray Energy’s funding for the OVJA lawyers, and current financial records for the alliance aren’t publicly available.

In pursuing their cases, the lawyers paid, at least in part, by Murray Energy have relied on the same kinds of government regulations that Robert Murray has railed against. In the Moundsville plant case, those lawyers challenged a permit partly because it allowed an increase in carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming. Murray global warming is a “hoax.”

Construction has not begun on any of the three projects, at least partly, because of litigation-related delays, developers say.

“It’s been very frustrating,” said Drew Dorn, president of Energy Solutions Consortium, the company that was originally behind the Moundsville plant and continues to promote the Harrison and Brooke projects.

OVJA officials and lawyers did not return calls and emails seeking comment. Robert Murray, through a spokesman, declined a request for an interview. The spokesman would not answer questions, pointing to a prepared statement:

“The Ohio Valley Jobs Alliance is a grassroots organization that seeks to preserve coal jobs in the Ohio Valley,” the statement said. “While we certainly support their mission, we have not provided financial support to the organization, other than assisting them with certain legal fees. OVJA members have the welfare of the people in the Ohio Valley as their first priority, as they work to preserve these jobs and family livelihoods. We are pleased to support their efforts.”

The influence of Murray and his company on the coal industry’s future is far-reaching. He is a funder and confidant of President Donald Trump. Trump has pledged to revive the coal industry, and Murray has praised the administration’s efforts. During an August rally in Charleston, the president — typically a supporter of large energy projects — touted coal as superior to natural gas. He played up the risk of terrorist attacks on gas pipelines and extolled the virtues of coal.

“We love clean, beautiful West Virginia coal,” the president told a crowd sprinkled with miners holding “Trump digs coal” signs. “And you know that it’s indestructible stuff in times of war. You can blow up those pipelines.”

But the OVJA’s approach — fighting against an industry competitor of coal — risks stopping developments that could diversify West Virginia’s economy.

The gas plants the OVJA has been fighting would make up for the closure of numerous coal plants across the region that were old, inefficient and unable to comply with modern air pollution limits.

The OVJA is certainly right about one significant point: The gas-fired power plants would employ far fewer workers than a large coal-fired power plant. Appalachian Power’s Mitchell Plant, a coal-fired facility south of Moundsville, has about 270 full-time employees, according to a company spokeswoman, compared to about 30 when the Moundsville plant is operational.

But Anne Blankenship, executive director of the West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association, argued in a recent newspaper commentary that comparisons with coal ignore the broader economic benefits of the gas industry. It was an unusually direct response from one local fossil fuel industry to another.

...

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/28092018/aep-solar-energy-appalachia-ohio-coal-just-transition-utility-regulatory-battle

Appalachian Ohio, a region hurt by the decline of coal, may become home to one of the largest solar projects east of the Rockies.

American Electric Power submitted a plan Thursday evening to work with two developers to build 400 megawatts of solar in Highland County, Ohio. It would more than triple the state's current solar capacity and be a big step forward for solar energy in a part of the country where renewable energy has been slow to develop.

AEP says the plan would save consumers $218 million over 20 years because solar power from the project would be less expensive than conventional energy sources.

"This is something that Appalachia needs," said Dan Sawmiller, Ohio energy policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "The jobs of this renewable energy economy are going to go somewhere and I think it's important that they go where they're needed."

But the project's structure would break the established regulatory mold in Ohio, a state where utilities don't own power plants and generators compete with each other to supply the cheapest power to the grid.

The savings and the jobs promised are a turnaround from the arguments state officials listened to when they rejected clean energy proposals in recent years. If the new plan is approved by Ohio regulators, it could serve as a template for other new projects in Ohio and in other states.

'Just Transition' in Appalachia

The decision to put the project in Appalachian Ohio, which covers the southern and eastern parts of the state, is part of an attempt to bring economic development to an economically depressed region.

"It's a really hopeful move," said John Quigley, director of the Center for Environment, Energy and Economy at Harrisburg University, who has written about so-called "just transition" for poor communities affected by the shift from fossil fuels to the new green economy.

"It's an eye-opener for policymakers that there's a huge economic development opportunity for solar, especially in communities negatively affected by the energy transition," he said.

Another recent example is Xcel Energy's plan to close its coal-fired power plant in Pueblo, Colorado, and build renewable energy projects there.

Highland County, Ohio, where AEP and its solar developers chose to build, has an unemployment rate higher than the state average, and nearby counties have some of the highest unemployment rates in the state. AEP says its plan would bring 3,900 new jobs, most of them in construction, plus 113 full-time jobs in solar manufacturing. Details on the manufacturing jobs were not immediately disclosed.

The plan is part of a boom in solar development that is happening across the country. Some other big solar projects have also been announced in the region but not yet built, including a 150 megawatt solar farm being developed by Invenergy in Hardin County, Ohio. The AEP project would go into service in 2021 if approved.

Challenging Ohio's Regulatory System

This project is unusual for Ohio because a utility, AEP Ohio, would benefit financially from an electricity generation project. That would be normal in much of the country, but Ohio has a separation between utility companies and the owners of power plants.

AEP's proposal is seeking to make an exception to this rule by having solar developers operate the solar farms on behalf of AEP Ohio. The costs would be passed on to the utility's consumers, which AEP says is justified because of benefits to the environment and the local economy.

Opponents likely will argue that this violates Ohio's open market for electricity generation. In the market, owners of power plants compete to offer the lowest prices and utility companies do not own power plants. More than a dozen states similarly have open markets for electricity generation, including much of New England and the Great Lakes region, and Texas, among others.

Ned Hill, an economist at Ohio State University, says that having a utility pay for certain power plants could stifle investment in competing projects—including other renewable energy projects. He has opposed previous proposals by energy companies and utilities to subsidize coal and nuclear plants, and says this plan is bad for some of the same reasons.

The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio will decide whether to approve the plan in a process that will unfold over the next few months and that likely will focus on the types of questions Hill is raising.

Sawmiller, from NRDC, said he can understand why there are concerns about what this project means for the competitive market, but he thinks the market is structured in a way that has held back renewable energy development.

"If you rely exclusively on the market you lose some of the innovative economic development that's laid out in this filing," he said.

PUBLISHED UNDER:

CLEAN ENERGY

COAL

NERN - MIDWEST

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/29102017/renewable-energy-ohio-rps-law-fossil-fuel-political-donations-coal

part of choke hold series icn

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/29102017/renewable-energy-ohio-rps-law-fossil-fuel-political-donations-coal

COLUMBUS, Ohio—On March 30, Bill Seitz, a charismatic Republican, took to the floor of the Ohio Houseto make a case for gutting a 2008 law designed to speed the adoption of solar and wind as significant sources of electricity in the state. The law, he warned, "is like something out of the 5-Year Plan playbook of Joseph Stalin." Adopting a corny Russian accent, he said, "Vee vill have 25,000 trucks on the Volga by 1944!'"

Nine years before, Seitz and his colleagues, Republicans and Democrats alike, had voted overwhelmingly for the measure he now compared to the work of a Communist dictator. It made Ohio the 25th state to embrace requirements and inducements to lure utilities away from coal, a major contributor of the gases fueling global climate change. Studies suggested the law would help create green energy jobs and boost the Ohio economy—and it has.

Now, Seitz said, it was obsolete. Natural gas, rapidly displacing coal, was the resource Ohio ought to foster, he said. He also argued the law gives an unfair advantage to wind and solar when the state's last nuclear plant is fighting for its life. Most important, Seitz insisted, the government had no business telling anyone what kind of energy to buy. By the time he was done, he had secured a veto-proof majority to undo key parts of the law.

What happened to turn lawmakers so decisively against a statute they'd adopted 93-to-1 less than a decade ago?

The answers begin with the 2008 financial crisis, which hit Ohio hard and greatly depressed energy demand, and they include the shale gas boom, which benefited Ohio producers and made coal uncompetitive.

But there's more to the story, too.

As fossil fuel interests mobilized at the national level to fight proposals to mitigate climate change that would undercut their profits, they made Ohio a priority for fighting clean energy policy at the state level. Beginning in earnest in 2011, a network of coal companies, utilities, think tanks, nonprofit foundations and political action committees coalesced to roll back Ohio's alternative energy initiatives.

Industry-supported think tanks provided highly questionable research purporting to show big job losses. An industry group claiming to represent consumers—and accused of using fraudulent tactics before regulatory agencies—advised Seitz's staff on how to water down the definition of alternative energy. And industry sources donated to the campaigns of state politicians, like Seitz, who've kept the repeal-and-replace bills coming, even after Republican Gov. John Kasich vetoed a similar effort.

This network includes Americans for Prosperity, a foundation funded by the energy magnates Charles and David H. Koch; the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based advocacy group known for its criticism of climate change science; and the American Legislative Exchange Council(ALEC), another conservative nonprofit in Washington with Koch ties that frequently spoon-feeds draft legislation to state politicians.

Seitz is on ALEC's national board of directors, but he bristles at the suggestion that he relies on the council for guidance. "ALEC doesn't drive me," he told InsideClimate News. "If anything I drive ALEC." Either way, in 2012, ALEC adopted an "Electricity Freedom Act" that reads like a declaration of war against the kind of energy rules on the books in Ohio and calls for the effort to reject them that Seitz leads.

The Rise of Clean Energy Scare Studies

Once a major coal producer, Ohio has a lesser-known history with fuel-free electricity. In the winter of 1887-88, Charles F. Brush constructed the world's first electricity-generating wind turbine on a 60-foot iron mast behind his Cleveland mansion. Brush held more than 50 patents, and his company joined with several others to form General Electric. In 1984, physicist Harold McMaster first demonstrated in his Toledo basement the potential for thin, non-silicon-based films to capture the sun's energy. Glasstech, now called First Solar, has led the conversion of Toledo into a solar manufacturing hub. The University of Toledo trains engineers for the many photovoltaic companies in the region, and, in 2007, it added the Wright Center for Photovoltaics Innovation and Commercialization to transfer what's in its labs to nearby factories.

...

"Ohio has a legitimate claim to being a leader in renewable energy, which is what makes the effort to stymie renewables here all the more ironic," said Bill Spratley, former executive director of Green Energy Ohio, an advocacy organization in Columbus. He said if the Seitz bill became law, "we might end up supplying everyone else with these wonderful technologies while we don't get to benefit from them ourselves."

Spratley testified against Seitz's bill. He noted that there are roughly 80 companies making parts for wind power systems in Ohio and scores of engineers and sales representatives installing solar, "and those jobs aren't going anywhere," he said. "Those are local jobs."

Ten years ago, more Ohio politicians embraced Spratley's message. In 2007-08, as the "Energy, Jobs and Progress" plan made its way toward law, energy demand was strong, prices were expected to remain high, and awareness of coal's contribution to climate change had peaked. The law committed Ohio to cutting energy consumption by 22 percent by 2025 and diversifying sources so that 12.5 percent of its electricity would come from alternative energy sources—geothermal, biomass, wind, solar.

Demand and prices fell with the recession and the shale gas boom, but the promise of more jobs and less global warming continued to resonate. Or it did until studies started showing up that warned that the law would do more harm than good.

In 2011, the former American Tradition Institute, now the Energy and Environment Legal Institute, commissioned an analysis of the economic impacts of Ohio's energy standards. Based in Washington, the EELI receives funding from Peabody Energy and Arch Coal, the two largest suppliers of coal in the United States. The Beacon Hill Institute, then an affiliate of Boston's Suffolk University and a frequent publisher of papers critical of climate-related policies, undertook the study.

In its report, Beacon Hill forecast that the Ohio energy standards would result in the loss of 9,750 jobs, wipe out $1.1 billion in disposable income every year, and force Ohioans to pay $8.6 billion more for electricity in 2025. The authors, among them BHI's executive director, David G. Tuerck, reached this conclusion based on an economic model that ignored the rapidly declining cost of electricity generated by wind and solar. Beacon Hill later lost its Suffolk University affiliation because, a university spokesman told The Boston Globe, its research lacked rigor and tended to reach conclusions sought by its underwriters.

...

no link

Cost claim and rebuttal.

On April 13, 2011, ALEC sent the Beacon report to all its members in the Ohio legislature, warning that the energy rules were "a blueprint for economic misery."

RPS cost claim and savings rebuttal.

Citing the study, state Sen. Kris Jordan introduced a bill five months later to repeal the alternative energy standards. The measure didn't make it out of committee, but Jordan, Seitz and others kept at it, until, in 2014, they managed to secure a two-year freeze on meeting the annual benchmarks established under the 2008 law.

Cost claim and rebuttal

More scare studies followed. In 2015, the Institute of Political Economy at Utah State University published a paper suggesting Ohio's energy rules would kill off 29,000 jobs. Last spring, the Buckeye Institute, a free-market think tank across the street from the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus, modeled four economic scenarios; the rosiest estimated that the renewable and energy efficiency standards would cost Ohio 6,800 jobs and $806 million in GDP by 2026.

RPS jobs claim and rebuttal.

"Those studies are completely bogus," said Terrence O'Donnell, a lawyer representing renewable energy developers at Dickinson Wright, a Columbus law practice. "The Utah one is the most ridiculous, because it blames everything that happened to the economy during the recession on the renewable portfolio standards. It's laughable. There's not one policy maker I know of who still refers to it." The Buckeye Institute, he added, assesses "a fictitious Ohio law, not the one on the books." For example, the Buckeye economists assume "that the cost containment provisions in the law simply won't kick in if prices for renewable energy rise. But they don't say why." And the price of solar electricity hasn't just fallen a little bit; it's less than half of what it was three years ago.

Several other studies have concluded that Ohio's energy rules have, on the contrary, created jobs and improved the economy. One, published by Ohio State University's Center for Resilience, found that in 2012 alone, the law stimulated a modest .04 percent, or $160 million, in GDP growth statewide. According to the Ohio Environmental Council (OEC), the state added more than 2,300 renewable energy projects and 25,000 clean energy jobs since 2009. Not minus 29,000 jobs, but plus 25,000 jobs, and not based on a model, but on payroll and labor statistics.

Renewable Portfolio Standards, State by State

Trish Demeter, the OEC's managing director of energy, said the 2008 law benefits the state in another way. Its energy efficiency provisions are saving money. For every dollar invested in efficiency, she said, "Ohio ratepayers are saving between $1.10 and $4.20 on their utility bills, depending on what kind of consumer they are." She said this data came from actual receipts, not models, and had been reviewed by the Ohio Consumers Council and the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE).

So whose numbers are right? On behalf of Gov. Kasich's office, Matt Cox, a Ph.D. from MIT and founder of Greenlink, a consulting practice in Atlanta, modeled three scenarios to try to determine if Ohio's energy rules were too aggressive. Overall, Cox found that the rules generated more jobs, more GDP and, in time, lowered electrical bills.

Ohio State Rep. Bill Seitz

Seitz told InsideClimate News that Cox ought not to have factored public health impacts of air pollution into his study. Cox responded, "How can you do a cost-benefit analysis and not factor in a cost that is borne, not by the utility, but by everyone else?"

Dave Anderson is policy and communications manager for the Energy & Policy Institute, a watchdog group headquartered in San Francisco. He and his team note that all three of the organizations behind the Ohio scare studies—Beacon Hill, Utah State and Buckeye—have received donations from the Koch brothers or their affiliates. For example, the Buckeye Institute receives funding from the Koch-backed Donors Capital Fund and Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundations, as well as directly from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation.

Passionate Opposition to Wind Power

The bill that froze Ohio's energy rules in 2014 also created an Energy Mandates Study Committee to determine whose numbers were best and what to do next.

To staff the committee, Seitz turned to Sam Randazzo, general counsel for a consortium of electricity purchasers large and small called the Industrial Energy Users of Ohio. Randazzo has been deeply involved in shaping Ohio's energy policy for five decades and, like Seitz, opposes the 2008 standards.

On Aug. 8, 2016, as the freeze neared expiration and the EMSC was due with its findings, Seitz wrote to 10 utility, gas and coal lobbyists, as well as Randazzo, that "we should be meeting as a small group to figure out what that report is going to say." (The watchdog group EPI obtained this email through a public records request.)

The EMSC counted 12 elected officials, among them Seitz, as members. These 12 collectively received $830,000 in campaign contributions from utilities, oil and gas interests, and coal mining companies, according to an investigation by the National Institute on Money in State Politics. Contributions from electric utilities to Seitz more than tripled after he began trying to dismantle the state's renewable energy standards.

Following the Money

Randazzo disputed any notion that the committee was stacked by the fossil fuel industry. "This was a legislatively appointed body with representation by both Republicans and Democrats," he said. And, it was "absolutely open to all stakeholder positions."

In an interview, Seitz was blunt about whose interests he was looking out for. "Coal is moribund and crowded out by natural gas. If there's anyone I should have an affinity for it's the natural gas guys. ... The old saying is, you dance with who brung you to the dance. In Ohio, natural gas is who brung us to the dance."

Seitz despises wind turbines, and his dedication to rolling back Ohio's energy standards stems in part from his passionate opposition to wind power. In fact, the only reason he voted for the standards back in 2008, he said, was a promise by the Senate president that he could write the language on turbines. Over time, Seitz has been behind restrictions that have wiped out any large new projects. "There will be no wind farms!" he said, with satisfaction.

Turbines, Seitz said, take up too much room, don't work when the wind doesn't blow, and are not a good fit for his district, in the far corner of the state where it borders Indiana and Kentucky. His neighbors love spending time in their yards and don't want any turbines wrecking their "view sheds," or chopping up bats and birds, he said. And it doesn't help matters that "it seems to be a cabal of urban millennials who love wind [power] and want to inflict the damage on rural landscapes—stick it out there in the country where all the bumpkins can't do anything about it. That's not very nice. So I'm not a big fan of wind."

Gov. John Kasich

The final Energy Mandates Study Committee report was a gift to incumbent utilities and gas and coal interests. It recommended an indefinite extension of the freeze on renewable standards and more or less mirrored a bill Kasich vetoed on Dec. 22, 2016, saying the measure could undermine the state's improved business climate and prevent businesses and homeowners from saving money by saving energy.

Undeterred by Kasich's veto, HB 114, the bill that passed on March 30, contains much of the EMSC wishlist.

Seitz's staff also received advice from the Consumer Energy Alliance on expanding the definition of what counts as an alternative form of energy. The CEA is comprised of few consumers, operates out of HBW Resources, a Washington-based lobbying firm, and is backed by major oil and gas companies, such as Chevron, ExxonMobil, Marathon, Shell and Norway's Statoil. It's a lobbying group that has been challenged before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for submitting public comment letters from individuals who later said in sworn statements that they never signed them. The CEA withdrew a petition in Wisconsin after a local reporter found that some people who signed it actually opposed the utility rate changes CEA was pushing.

Seitz laughed at the notion that he is the face of a well-funded industry campaign. "As I've made clear 20 times, I find mandates philosophically obnoxious," he said. "Look, I'm an antitrust lawyer by background and training. Antitrust lawyers tend to favor competition and not be a big fan of monopolies, and tend to believe that government interference ought to be kept to a minimum."

His bill is now in the state Senate, where it may face an uphill fight. John Fortney, spokesman for the Republican majority caucus and Senate President Larry Obhof, said any legislation will have to be a compromise acceptable to both houses and Kasich. Kasich's office did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.

Andrew Kear, an assistant professor of political science and environment and sustainability at Bowling Green State University, said HB 114 can't survive without substantial changes. He said any measure will have to recognize that renewable energy is an economic driver in parts of the state. "They have to get beyond the false dichotomy that it's environment versus economy," he said.

In Ohio, the Environmental Protection Agency has fined Energy Transfer Partners—the company behind the Dakota Access pipeline—$400,000 for spilling millions of gallons of drilling chemicals and fluids onto the land amid construction of another pipeline, the $4.2 billion gas Rover Pipeline, which is slated to stretch from Appalachia to Ontario, Canada. There have been at least 18 spills, including one of up to 5 million gallons of fluids that has contaminated a previously pristine wetland. Ohio EPA Director Craig Butler said this spill will "kill just about everything in that wetland." Officials are currently trying to clean up the chemicals with a vacuum and by hand.

http://www.acluohio.org/blog-posts/blog-titledoj-end-its-use-of-private-prisons-but-what-about-ohio

8/16

week, the Department of Justice announced an end to using private prisons to hold federal prisoners. This decision followed a scathing report which highlighted that private prisons are less safe, provide less services and programs, and do not substantially save on costs. This is a major victory for those who have fought to end prison privatization.

But don’t write off private prisons just yet.

The process will happen gradually over the next five years, as the DOJ advises the Federal Bureau of Prisons to decline contract renewals or substantially reduce the scope of contracts. Plus, this decision only affects federal prisoners.

At its highest capacity, the Federal Bureau of Prisons used private prisons to house approximately 15 percent of its population, just under 30,000 prisoners.

What Does This Mean For Ohio?

08.23.16

The DOJ Is Ending Its Use of Private Prisons: But What About Ohio?

By Jocelyn Rosnick

Last week, the Department of Justice announced an end to using private prisons to hold federal prisoners. This decision followed a scathing report which highlighted that private prisons are less safe, provide less services and programs, and do not substantially save on costs. This is a major victory for those who have fought to end prison privatization.

But don’t write off private prisons just yet.

At its highest capacity, the Federal Bureau of Prisons used private prisons to house approximately 15 percent of its population, just under 30,000 prisoners.

What Does This Mean For Ohio?

While the DOJ’s announcement is a clear warning to all states using private prison operators, it only goes so far. The policy change does not apply to immigration detention centers run by the Department of Homeland Security, or to state prisons with private operators or owners.

In Ohio, the Bureau of Prisons had already declined to renew its contract with the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) for the privately-owned Northeast Ohio Correctional Center in Youngstown, Ohio. This decision wasn’t surprising―the facility had been riddled with problems since it opened in 1997. Within the first 14 months, the facility experienced 13 stabbings, two murders, and six escapes. Youngstown officials even sued CCA for its mismanagement of the facility. As a result, it temporarily shut down, only to later re-open again under CCA control. In 2014, the BOP decided not to renew its contract with CCA after multiple protests at the facility objecting to unsanitary food conditions, inadequate access to programming, and lack of medical care. Unfortunately, the U.S. Marshal Service still pays CCA to hold hundreds of detainees at this prison.

Ohio’s Failed Experiment with Prison Privatization

Ohio was the first, and is still, the only state to sell a prison to a private operator. Privatization was seen as a way to cut costs for our bloated prison system.

Ohio prisons hold over 50,000 people in a system built for less than 38,000.

Simply put – the experiment failed. The first 18 months that Lake Erie Correctional Institution was under CCA control were a failure. Drug use was rampant throughout the facility, contraband was being tossed over the perimeter fence, violence increased, and medical care deteriorated. It’s taken years for the facility to stabilize, and there are still problems.

Privatization is only in the best interest of those who make a profit. It does not benefit the staff, prisoners, local community members, or the state. The DOJ voiced these concerns loud and clear when it announced it will no longer contract with private prison operators.

So why is Ohio on a dangerous path to sell another prison to a for-profit company?

Ending Prison Privatization in Ohio

Ohio now plans to sell a second prison to a private company. Last year, in a legislative sleight of hand, the sale of the North Central Correctional Complex in Marion, Ohio was inserted into an unrelated bill right before summer recess. Concerned citizens were given no opportunity to submit testimony or engage in public discussion, and the bill passed with little media coverage at the time.

**http://www.ecowatch.com/firstenergy-bailout-puco-2043994096.html**

The Ohio Public Utilities Commission (PUCO) approved a scheme Wednesday that will force FirstEnergy's customers to hand over approximately $200 million annually to the company and its shareholders for the next 3-5 years. Customers will receive virtually nothing in return for this massive subsidy, which could ultimately reach $1 billion.

Under Wednesday's order, FirstEnergy will begin to receive hundreds of millions of dollars, with effectively no strings attached. Although characterized as a "distribution modernization rider," nothing in the commission's order requires that these customer dollars be invested in modernizing Ohio's electrical grid or in any way be spent to benefit Ohio customers. Instead, the dollars can be siphoned off from FirstEnergy's Ohio utilities and used to bail FirstEnergy Corp. out of its poor coal investments while boosting the profits of corporate shareholders.

"Today's decision takes hundreds of millions of dollars out of customers' pockets in order to create a massive slush fund for FirstEnergy Corp. and its shareholders," said Shannon Fisk, attorney at the non-profit environmental law firm Earthjustice.

"And the fact that FirstEnergy asked for billions more does not make this decision any less unreasonable. Rather than forcing customers to prop up profits for a corporation that made a bad bet on aging coal plants, the commission should be looking after customers and ensuring investments in job-creating renewable energy, energy efficiency and smart grid initiatives."

Through Wednesday's decision, the commission has aided FirstEnergy's efforts to sidestep a recent order of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) that raised serious questions about FirstEnergy's previous bailout proposal. Under that proposal, customers would have directly assumed all of the financial risk of financially struggling coal and nuclear plants owned by FirstEnergy Corp.'s unrelated competition generation business.

In late April, FERC ruled that FirstEnergy's previous bailout proposal—which PUCO had approved a month earlier—may violate federal safeguards concerning transactions between public utilities and their unregulated affiliates. FERC blocked FirstEnergy's bailout scheme pending a federal review. Rather than submit its proposal for FERC review, FirstEnergy concocted a new scheme intended to bypass the FERC order. Although the bailout ultimately approved by PUCO is structured a bit differently and Wednesday's order mentions grid modernization in passing, the fact remains that this bailout poses the same risk to customers that the FERC order sought to prevent.

"In this long-awaited and complicated decision, PUCO missed a critical opportunity to seriously focus FirstEnergy on the more diversified, cleaner energy future that tens of thousands of customers wrote the commission asking for," said Dan Sawmiller, senior representative for Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign in Ohio.

"A few months ago, FirstEnergy took an important step in moving beyond coal when it announced closure of four units at its Sammis coal plant. With PUCO's decision now issued, we hope to be able to work with FirstEnergy to accelerate its path beyond coal and nuclear and toward new investments in clean energy, energy efficiency and other modern grid initiatives like infrastructure for electric vehicles."

Wednesday's order marks the latest development in a more than two-year effort by FirstEnergy to obtain a customer-funded bailout. Throughout that time consumer groups, industrial customers, independent power producers and environmental non-profits have united in challenging FirstEnergy's efforts as contrary to law and bad for customers. Challenges before the Ohio Supreme Court and FERC to the commission's approval of the bailout are expected.

https://dianeravitch.net/2012/11/24/checker-finn-opposes-the-for-profit-model-in-education/

edison fail ohio

kasich promised fix, but big funders

Columbus Dispatch wrote recently of the academic failures of the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) where the graduation rate of 38% is among the worst of any school in the state. Among Ohio’s 613 traditional public school districts , the lowest graduation rate is 60.9%. In addition, ECOT received all Fs and one D on the state’s most recent report card.

Despite its abysmal performance record, ECOT continues to expand. More than 14,500 children are currently enrolled, making ECOT the equivalent of the 10th largest school district in the state. The Dispatch story noted that ECOT founder William Lager has donated more than $1 million to Ohio politicians in the last five years as his school has grown exponentially.

Failure at What Cost?

Information at KnowYourCharter.com helps clarify the burden that local public schools must bear to cover the costs of students who chose to attend ECOT. Kids in all 88 Ohio counties are impacted. More than 95% of school districts – 586 of 613 districts – have students and money being transferred to ECOT. As one of the state’s 9 statewide e-schools and one of the country’s largest for-profit K-12 schools, ECOT’s poor performance is exacerbated by its extraordinary financial impact on children throughout the state.

According to state data located at KnowYourCharter.com, more than 90% of the districts that had students and funding transferred to ECOT in the 2012-2013 school year[[1]](http://knowyourcharter.com/2015/01/09/ecot-cost-failure/#_ftn1) had more money go to ECOT than the state would have paid the district[[2]](http://knowyourcharter.com/2015/01/09/ecot-cost-failure/#_ftn2). That forces districts throughout the state to subsidize ECOT with local tax revenues to make up those per pupil state funding differences – differences that in two cases topped more than $10,000 per pupil[[3]](http://knowyourcharter.com/2015/01/09/ecot-cost-failure/#_ftn3).

The average difference between what the state would have paid districts for the kids attending ECOT in the 528 districts was $2,897 per pupil less than what was paid to ECOT. That means local taxpayers had to subsidize the difference to make up for the larger payments to ECOT.

For districts that had at least 1 full-time student transfer to ECOT during the 2012-2013 school year, here are the biggest per pupil funding differences between what ECOT was paid and what the state paid the district in the last school year:

Many of these school districts are among the state’s highest performers, and they are losing significant per pupil funding from the state to a school that graduates students at a 20 percent lower rate than the worst traditional public school district. Consider as well that all this money goes to a school that doesn’t have a building, lunch ladies, buses, a gym, or any one of myriad expenses endured by brick and mortar schools.

Here are some more facts from KnowYourCharter.com:

The $6,440 per student that ECOT received during the 2012-2013 school year is more money per pupil than was received by 91% of Ohio’s traditional public school districts this last school year – nearly $1,000 more than Cincinnati and Columbus together received from the state.

Nearly 3 out of 4 dollars sent to ECOT came from money meant for districts outside the state’s major urban centers.

The all Fs and one D that ECOT received on the state report card data that can be found at KnowYourCharter.com was not matched by any Ohio school district. Only 3 of 613 Ohio school districts received all Fs and one C – and ECOT received between $1,100 and $3,600 more per pupil than those districts.

Since ECOT opened in the 2000-2001 school year, Ohio taxpayers have paid ECOT nearly $690 million. But nearly half that total – $328 million – has come in the last four school years.

ECOT received more than $570,000 from the 25 highest performing school districts on the state’s performance index score. These districts all had scores that were more than 1/3 higher than ECOT’s.

http://www.prwatch.org/comment/36416#comment-36416

Ohio state education officials are now admitting that Ohio has almost ten times as many failing charter schools as the state initially claimed.

This revelation comes as Ohio tries to hang onto a $71 million federal charter school grant in the wake of scandals over misleading the grant application reviewers and breaking state law by altering charter school performance statistics. That was the largest grant award by the U.S. Department of Education last year.

Ohio newspapers and the Center for Media and Democracy reported last October that the Ohio Department of Education's claims about the excellence of the state's charter-school system were intentionally misleading.

In the state's July 2015 grant application, education officials reported that in the 2012-13 school year Ohio had no "poor performing" charters, even though about a third of the schools didn't meet any of the standards on state report cards and 60 percent earned D's or F's on a measure of how students perform on state tests.

The grant application also said an automatic-closure law would shut down any failing charter schools without disclosing that the law will not be in effect for several years.

Meanwhile, it turns out that then-Ohio charter school chief David Hansen, who drafted the grant application, also rigged charter school sponsor evaluations to improve their ratings. Hansen resigned July 18, two days after submitting the grant request to the feds and several days after admitting he broke the law by excluding failing grades for some charter schools in the evaluations.

Hansen's wife, Beth Hansen, is Ohio Governor John Kasich's former chief of staff and the manager of Kasich's newly surging presidential campaign. She left her government post for the campaign in the midst of the scandal as the pre-primary season was beginning. Kasich has not been asked about the charter school failures in the national debates.

In the latest news, Ohio's Department of Education now says there were actually 57 poor-performing charter schools in the state in the 2013-14 school year, not six.

Its July grant application claimed there were only six.

Conversely, the state said there were 93 "high-performing charter schools" in July and now it says there are just 59.

These performance statistics are for 290 brick-and-mortar charter schools and still do not include online charters (which Hansen omitted). 

These numbers were included in a January 29 letter to the federal regulators who put a hold on Ohio's charter-school grant amid the concerns. The 20-page letter is signed by interim state superintendent Lonny J. Rivera, and was the state's third response to questions from federal regulators since the review was opened.

Part of the reason Ohio won the grant in the first place was a glowing endorsement from the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA)—an organization that had previously referred to the charter system in Ohio as "broken."

But NACSA rethought that assessment as it signed a $40,000-a-year agreement with the Ohio Department of Education to lend assistance to the state's charter school authorizers. The deal was brokered by former NACSA senior executive and lobbyist Hansen before he resigned as head of the Ohio Office of Quality School Choice.

During his time as NACSA's top lobbyist, Hansen represented the organization at meetings of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), touting "high quality" charters. That's the post he took after he left the "Buckeye Institute" and before Kasich put him in charge of charters for the state of Ohio.

Hansen previously led the Buckeye Institute, an Ohio "think tank" that is part of the controversial "State Policy Network" (SPN). SPN special interest groups amplify ALEC's lobbying agenda, which includes numerous bills to siphon money from traditional public schools to charters and for-profit enterprises. It should be no surprise that a virtual school corporation, K12, sits on ALEC's corporate board and has co-chaired its education task force where corporate lobbyists and special interest groups vote as equals with state legislators on bills, behind closed doors at posh resorts with fancy private parties. Before Hansen became Kasich's point person on charters, NACSA sent Hansen to ALEC to advance its charter school agenda there.

Cleveland's Plain Dealer reported last June that Hansen intentionally left F grades for online charter schools out of academic evaluations of charter school oversight agencies. Those F grades for schools run by major Republican donors would have dragged down the rating of the oversight agencies.

One of the largest such agencies in the state is the Ohio Council of Community Schools, which collects about $1.5 million in sponsor fees a year from students attending Ohio Virtual Academy and the Ohio Distance and Electronic Learning Academy (OHDLA), an online school run by a company owned by David Brennan, a big Republican campaign donor in Ohio.

Ohio has hoped to use the $71 million in federal aid to give grants of up to $700,000 to applicants seeking to open new charter schools. That's nearly a million dollar giveaway per charter to experiments, which have often failed, while traditional public schools are facing budget cuts that hurt school children and their learning environment.

But, as CMD revealed in its "Charter School Black Hole" report last October, out of the 88 Ohio charter schools created by planning and implementation grants under the Charter School Program between 2008 and 2013, at least 15 closed within a few years and another seven never opened at all. These charters received more than $4 million in federal taxpayer money.

Despite this track record and despite the false and deceptive claims the state made in its application for more federal tax dollars for charters , Ohio landed the biggest one-year grant in the 2015 competition for federal funding, $32.6 million, with more planned in the coming years.

Since 2004, Ohio has been granted more than $195 million in American tax dollars by the U.S. Department of Education under the Charter School Program for State Educational Agencies (CSP-SEA). That's part of the more than $3.7 billion CMD has documented that the federal government has spent fueling the charter school industry over the past few decades.

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cincinnati-built-a-subway-system-100-years-ago-but-never-used-it

Another ALEC dream item is the repeal of renewable energy standards. Their dreams came true in Ohio this past July when Governor John Kasich signed SB 310, making Ohio the first state in the country to walk backwards on clean, sustainable energy. Meanwhile utility companies are appealing to the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) to let them stick Ohio energy consumers with the cost of upgrading and keeping in service obsolete coal-fueled plants, probably not a coincidence. Ohio was the first successful attempt to sabotage the rapid growth of the wind and solar sectors and shore up the fading coal industry. The bill has been cropping up other state legislatures so activists across the country should keep an eye out for it.

Prominent ALEC leaders are climate deniers. Its incoming national chair, state rep. Phil King (R-TX) has said,”I think the global warming theory is bad science” and has accused President Obama and the Environmental Protection Agency of pushing “unproven” technologies intended not for the “stated objective of combating climate change” but to crush the coal industry. Its current chair, state rep. John Piscopo (R-CT), claims, “There are ice ages and periods of warming throughout Earth’s history. We could be in a period between ice ages. It’s not human-induced, not catastrophic. It’s nothing to panic over. I think it’s a move by government to take over and tax our energy system.” And Ohio state senator Bill Seitz, an ALEC board member, was the prime mover behind Ohio’s recent move to freeze its renewable energy standards, the first state in the U.S. to do so. He has referred to the standards as “some Stalinist government mandating” and is pushing for permanent total repeal.

ALEC has a long history of denying climate science, including a 2005 report called “Top 1o Myths about Global Warming,” which appeared on its website for many years. Among the “myths” it purported to debunk: that human activity causes global warming, that extreme weather events are caused by global warming, that there’s been any significant warming at all in the last century and that what it calls “carbon reduction schemes” will be relatively inexpensive.

Ultimately, it’s not about whether ALEC really believes that climate change is happening or that it’s human-caused. It’s about promoting legislation embodying “free market principles” that benefit its members, which include many major polluters such as Peabody Energy, ExxonMobile, Chevron and TransCanada, impacts be damned.

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Ohio Utilities Take Renewable Energy Fight to State Supreme Court

Both camps in the net metering dispute see the other side gaining an unfair advantage if...

http://ecowatch.com/2014/08/04/ohio-utilities-renewable-energy-state-supreme-court/

he done it:

6/14

Ohio Gov. John Kasich Signs Nation’s First Renewable Energy Freeze

It took two weeks, but now it's official—Ohio is the nation’s first state to roll back renewable energy standards ...

2010 funders, sports

Big donors fuel campaign fundraising surge -

There's the guy who became a billionaire selling dog food, a couple of sports-team owners and the developer of an international spy museum.

That's not to mention the convicted felon, the business leader who was the main financier of Bob Ney'sdefense fund before the former Heath congressman went to federal prison, or the cowboy-hat-wearing industrialist who supports a mysterious out-of-state entity now delinquent in paying a record $5.2 million election fine in Ohio.

They are among an esoteric baker's dozen of individuals and families who have led the way in bankrolling Ohio political campaigns during the past decade. Together, those 13 deep-pocketed donors poured more than $25 million into state races since 2000.

Despite limits placed on campaign contributions in the mid-1990s, Ohioans just witnessed the most expensive gubernatorial campaign in state history. In fact, every statewide nonjudicial race this year broke spending records, some of which had stood for 20 years.

When he signed legislation capping donations to candidates, parties and political-action committees in May 1995, Gov. George V. Voinovich said, "I'm confident there'll be a substantial reduction in the amount of money spent on campaigns." Others readily agreed.

Instead, the price tag for statewide campaigns in the past decade leaped almost 73 percent from the total for the 1990s, most of which had no limits on political contributions, according to a Dispatchcomputer analysis of more than 4.3 million state campaign-finance records involving more than $1.7 billion in transactions.

(For purposes of this comparison, an 11-year period, 1990-2000, was used for the "1990s" so that three statewide election years were included, the same as in the 10-year period 2001-10. The Dispatchresearch did not take into account money from outside groups that have poured millions of independent expenditures into state campaigns, and it does not include the multiple millions more provide to federal campaigns from Ohio.)

Voinovich, who is retiring after 12 years in the U.S. Senate following his two terms as governor, confirmed this year the suspicions of many critics that such extravagantly funded campaigns have created an atmosphere in which big donors receive special access to elected officials.

"Truthfully, it has an impact on you," he said. "Somebody who has a big fundraiser in Ohio and says they want to come in to see you, and, you know, you see those individuals. There's no question that they've got an advantage as a result of doing it."

Outgoing Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, whose office enforces Ohio campaign-finance laws, said, "No matter how well-intentioned a candidate is, if they're taking large amounts from donors who are not giving for ideological purposes, there will be tacitly that pressure that they need to give access to those donors, if not actively work to please them."

The quest for cash was virtually unending in this year's record-breaking race for governor. Together, Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland and successful GOP challenger John Kasich staged 276 fundraisers in the 300 days leading up to this year's Nov. 2 election, their campaign-finance filings show.

Strickland held 166 campaign fundraisers in the first 10 months of 2010, generating more than $5.2million. That's an average of more than one fundraiser every other day, seven days a week, in locations across Ohio and from Los Angeles to New York.

"It's not a pleasant task, but it's a necessary task if you are serious about winning an election," Strickland said. "You can put your name on a ballot, not raise money, and you're not to going to win."

In the same period,Kasich had 110 fundraisers - more than one every three days - generating nearly $4.2 million.

"Until the media agree to begin working for free and start giving away free advertising, there will always be a need for campaigns to raise money," Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols said.

Strickland garnered more than $450,000 on Oct. 17 when President Barack Obama hosted a fundraiser at the Renaissance Hotel in Columbus. While Kasich's money events were fewer in number, they were more lucrative because of a series of "headliners."

An appearance by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in Cincinnati brought in about $680,000; former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in Columbus, $630,000; talk-show host Sean Hannity in Cleveland, $600,000; and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in Columbus, $453,000.

"They know that fundraising in terms of their job as a candidate is their primary responsibility, because no one raises money like a candidate," said Brian K. Hicks, chief of staff for Gov. Bob Taft. "They have to be focused on it virtually every minute of every day."

The Taft campaign still holds the Ohio record by far for a single fundraiser, generating almost $2million in May 2002 at a Columbus Hyatt Regency event featuring President George W. Bush. That was more than his challenger, Democrat Tim Hagan, raised during his entire campaign.

But what motivates people to fork over large amounts of cash to a political candidate?

David Brennan and William Lager operate scores of charter schools whose funding - not to mention their very existence - depends on the legislature and governor. The Wayne Boich family, primary bankrollers of Ney's defense fund, operates coal mines that are subject to government regulation on several levels.

The family of Cincinnati's Carl Lindner - listed by Forbes magazine as the world's 582nd-richest man - gives almost exclusively to Republicans and GOP causes, not only in Ohio but elsewhere, such as supporting the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which helped sink Democrat John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. With about $5.6million in contributions, the Lindner family is easily the decade's top contributor to Ohio state races.

Robert T. Bennett, former longtime chairman of the Ohio Republican Party, often benefited from Carl Lindner's largess.

"He used to say 'only in America could a guy start out with a UDF store and grow it into the American Financial (Group),'" Bennett recalled. "They're looking for leadership, so they put their money there, because they have the money to give."

At the other end of the state, David Maltz and his father, Milton Maltz, of Cleveland, a former media magnate who developed the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., finance not only Ohio Democrats but also such causes as supporting gay marriage on the California ballot.

The families of Larry Dolan, owner of the Cleveland Indians, and Clay Mathile of the Dayton area, who made his fortune when he sold dog-food maker Iams to Procter & Gamble, both are faithful GOP supporters.

Central Ohio has the uniquely bipartisan family of Abigail and Leslie H. Wexner, chairman and CEO of Limited Brands. He gives primarily to Republicans, she to Democrats - sometimes in the same race. For example, on July 3, Mrs. Wexner gave $2,500 to David Pepper, Democratic candidate for state auditor. Six days later, Mr. Wexner also gave $2,500, but to Pepper's GOP opponent, Dave Yost, who won.

None of these big contributors want to talk about why they give. But a few others were willing to share via e-mail or through a spokesperson their reasons for plowing so much money into Ohio campaigns.

"This is really the only way we have in our current system to support good candidates who we feel will serve well. I'd like less emphasis on campaign dollars and the fundraising aspect, but that's not likely going to change," said John P. McConnell, chairman and CEO of Worthington Industries andowner of the Columbus Blue Jackets hockey team.

"I was probably more engaged than ever in the process this year because I believe the stakes were so high, particularly for our state."

McConnell and his late father, John H., were the seventh-largest contributors to state campaigns during the past decade.

Ward J. "Tim" Timken Jr., chairman of the board at Canton's Timken Co., maker of ball and roller bearings, said there's more to participating in the democratic process than funding campaigns.

"For the Timken family, it has always been about making a difference in the world," he said in a statement. "That covers not just engagement in public affairs, but also extends to supporting a wide range of community needs (and even the products our company makes). If you want to promote progress in society, it's not enough to just contribute politically without also contributing professionally and philanthropically."

Similarly, Tom Needles, head of a consulting firm hired by Brennan, said the charter-school magnate's multimillion-dollar campaign donationsare "only part of the story. He's long believed that it's our duty to be involved in civic affairs at some level. His political contributions are merely a part of that involvement."

Needles also said Brennan campaign cash can lead to influence: "We believe that contributions to an individual's campaign certainly provide an opportunity to educate a candidate about issues we care about, but candidate contributions are no guarantee that we'll be granted access or favorable treatment."

Sometimes, those contributors hit rough patches.

Brennan gave $200,000 to a little-known Virginia group called All Children Matter that illegally funneled money to GOP candidates in Ohio in an attempt to avoid state contribution limits. So far, the group, which has changed its name and remains active in Ohio campaigns, has not paid a $5.2million fine levied by the Ohio Elections Commission. The bill has been turned over to the attorney general's office for collection.

John J. Cafaro, who retired as vice president of Youngstown mall developer Cafaro Co. last December, admitted this year violating federal law by making a false statement about a secret $10,000 loan to daughter Capri S. Cafaro's unsuccessful 2004 congressional campaign. He was fined $250,000 and given 150 hours of community service. The younger Cafaro, who said she didn't know about the loan, is the Ohio Senate's Democratic leader.

Even the staunchest advocates for reform concede that such chicanery is the exception.

"I don't think money is evil, and I don't fault candidates for looking for as much support as they possibly can," said Catherine Turcer, director of Ohio Citizen Action's money in politics project. "They're as caught in the system as much as we are. They need that money to buy those 30-second spots, to go on television."

Like Voinovich and Brunner, Turcer says the problem comes when candidates feel beholden to people who support them.

"I'm not talking about direct bribery, exactly, but undue influence is pretty easy: I'm gonna dance with the guy who brung me.

"The other thing is, these top families would not continue to give, decade after decade, unless they had really specific reasons. The economy has been in this downward spiral, and yet campaign spending is off the charts. There was no recession for campaign spending

"Clearly, major donors consider it a major investment in their futures."

drowland@dispatch.com

see kasich

A Pushback on Green Power

May 29, 2014

Source:

(New York Times)

As renewable energy production has surged in recent years, opponents of government policies that have helped spur its growth have pushed to roll back those incentives and mandates in state after state.

On Wednesday, they claimed their first victory, when Ohio lawmakers voted to freeze the phasing-in of power that utilities must buy from renewable energy sources.

Read original story

CPI also reports Reynolds American’s other contributions last year to 501(c)(4) groups include $100,000 to the Partnership for Ohio’s Future, an organization run by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce that spent several million dollars in a failed 2012 ballot initiative campaign to uphold a law limiting public workers’ collective bargaining rights. It also gave $12,500 to the National Taxpayers Union, a 501(c)(4) group that backed Republican candidates last year with modest expenditures.

WASHINGTON -- Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) has forced out the head of a key division of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency in response to pressure from the coal industry, according to an email obtained by The Huffington Post.

George Elmaraghy, the chief of the division of surface water at OEPA, told staff in the email that the governor’s office and the director of the agency had asked him to resign, effective Sept. 13, 2013. In the letter, Elmaraghy cited "considerable pressure from the coal companies over the last year" demanding that his staff "accommodate the industry’s needs by issuing permits that may have a negative impact on Ohio's streams and wetlands and violate state and federal laws."

Elmaraghy has worked at the Ohio EPA for more than 30 years. He took over as head of the surface water office, which oversees many of the permits coal companies need to mine and dispose of waste, in 2005.

The coal industry has targeted both Ohio's environmental regulators and the federal government over enforcement of clean water standards. Robert Murray, the president of Ohio-based Murray Energy -- the largest privately owned coal company in America -- railed against the Ohio EPA in a hearing before a committee in the state legislature last week. Murray also criticized what he called a "coordinated effort to accomplish the total destruction of the United States coal industry" in a speech at Ohio University on Aug. 12.

"George wouldn’t say he was asked to resign because of their history with the coal companies unless that was absolutely the case," said Jed Thorp, who worked at the OEPA from 2007 to 2012. Thorp, who is now the manager of the Sierra Club's Ohio chapter, described Elmaraghy as a "by the book" kind of guy with more than three decades of experience at the agency. “He wasn’t doing anything radical,” Thorp said.

An aide to Kasich referred questions to the Ohio EPA.

”Ohio EPA will not discuss personnel matters, but we will defend the integrity of the permitting process,” an OEPA spokesman said in an email. “There are several checks and balances built into the regulatory process. Permits we issue must withstand scrutiny not only from U.S. EPA, but must stand up on appeal to the Environmental Review Appeals Commission and other courts. Those third parties ultimately determine if any action under appeal was issued lawfully and reasonably.”

Elmaraghy's full email is below.

From: Elmaraghy, George

Sent: Monday, August 19, 2013 8:08 AM

To: EPA All

Subject: Thank you

As you know, there has been considerable pressure from the coal companies over the last year for the division staff to accommodate the industry’s needs by issuing permits that may have a negative impact on Ohio’s streams and wetlands and violate state and federal laws. The division staff acted appropriately in trying to implement the law and made every reasonable effort to accommodate the industry’s needs. In doing so, we always acted under the direction of the Governor’s Office, Ohio EPA Director and Chief Counsel.

Because of the industry’s interpretation of the federal Clean Water Act and state water pollution control laws, DSW staff worked under difficult conditions but you have done your jobs honorably. Now, due to this situation, the Governor’s Office and the Director have asked me to resign my position as Chief of the DSW at the Ohio EPA, effective September 13, 2013.

Our division went through similar situations in the past and the division staff was able to overcome these difficulties and accomplish our water quality goals in the end. For example, in the last several years, we have:

initiated new programs such as near shore monitoring for Lake Erie,

initiated the inland lakes monitoring program,

created the Surface Water Improvement Fund grant program,

instituted the eDMR (electronic discharge monitoring reports),

started dredging the Ashtabula River with the intent to delist it soon,

removed several dams and restored riverbanks along several major rivers,

reached agreement with the majority of communities with combined

sewer overflow to control the discharge of raw sewage into Ohio’s

lakes and rivers.

improved compliance rates and eliminated permit backlog.

As a result, we have been able to bring the majority of Ohio’s large rivers into attainment with water quality standards. You can take pride in knowing that Ohio’s Surface Water program is the envy of other states. I know you will continue our mission to provide clean water for Ohio’s communities and businesses and protect & improve the state’s greatest resource, our water.

I will always greatly appreciate your help and support while I was division chief, and I urge all of you to maintain the high standards of integrity that have always marked our Division.

bbb; 2004 OH warren cty last to rept b/c it declared a terrorist emergency lockdown, kicked out press and trucked the balllots off to warehouse controlled by gop guy until b2 got 14k more votes than 2000; scam planned 9 days before (fbi and paper)

Ohio: Ohio’s fourteen Dirty Air Villains include Senator Rob Portman (R-OH), Speaker of the

House John Boehner (R-OH8) and Reps. Steve Chabot (R-OH1) (whose district includes the

Cincinnati-Middletown-Wilmington, OH-KY-IN MSA which ranks 21st in the nation for Ozone

pollution and eighth for year-round particulate pollution), Jean Schmidt (R-OH2) (whose district

includes the Cincinnati-Middletown-Wilmington, OH-KY-IN MSA which ranks 21st worst for

Ozone pollution and 8th for year-round particulate pollution), Michael Turner (R-OH3), Jim

Jordan (R-OH4), Robert Latta (R-OH5), Bill Johnson (R-OH6), Steve Austria (R-OH7), Patrick

Tiberi (R-OH12), Steven LaTourette (R-OH14) and Jim Renacci (R-OH16) (both of whose

districts overlap part of the Cleveland-Akron, OH MSA which is the nation’s 14th most polluted

for year round soot), Steve Stivers (R-OH15) and Bob Gibbs (R-OH18.) Ohio’s three Clean Air

Heroes include Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Reps. Betty Sutton (D-OH13) and Dennis

Kucinich (D-OH10).

dominionism?

For many, President Obama and the Democratic Party are among these "demonic forces." This has real world consequences.

In 2006 former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris told thousands of cheering Christian Right activists that beating the Democrats in the upcoming elections was a battle against "principalities and powers," which many in the audience would hear as a Biblical reference to the struggle with the demonic agents of Satan. Harris (who played "ballot bowling" in Florida to elect George W. Bush in 2000) told the audience at the annual Values Voter Summit in Washington DC that she had studied religion in Switzerland with the godfather of the Christian Right, theologian Francis A. Schaeffer. Her speech there, which I witnessed and wrote about, qualifies her as a Dominionist.

In 2004 Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, another Dominionist, oversaw the election apparatus giving his favored candidate George W. Bush a boost into the Oval Office.

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/9/4/8954/17253

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cuts off water for fracking

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/08/muskingum-watershed-conservancy-fracking_n_1580976.html?ref=topbar

all reps http://www.thepoliticalguide.com/Representatives/Ohio/

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Ohio Voters Reject Kasich Anti-Union Bill

Submitted by Mary Bottari on November 9, 2011 - 9:57am

Ohio voters dealt a severe blow to the agenda of Governor John Kasich and other anti-union governors by voting to overturn Senate Bill 5 (SB5) by a 61 to 32 percent margin. SB5 was a law championed by Kasich that would severely limit collective bargaining rights for public employees and targets public employee wages and benefits as a means to balance the state's budget.

Ohio Governor John KasichAfter the bill passed the legislature in March, unions and their supporters swung into action and submitted 915,246 certified signatures required to place the issue on the ballot for a statewide referendum. Ohio law allows for this type of "veto referendum," but does not allow for the recall of governors. Over 3,497,000 ballots were cast in the referendum vote -- and it appears to have passed with substantial Republican support.

The months that led up to the election garnered national attention as a fight against right-wing governors who were not only anti-union, but were fundamentally anti-government -- using the economic downturn to shrink and transform state governments.

A chastened Kasich struck a conciliatory note on election night: "It requires me to take a deep breath and to spend some time reflecting on what happened here."

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/11/11118/ohio-voters-reject-kasich-anti-union-bill

http://governor.ohio.gov/

omb watch

Perhaps the most controversial nominee to the EPA, Donald Schregardus was nominated to serve as Assistant Administrator for the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. Though not confirmed, Schregardus has still found a place in the administration. As Director of Ohio EPA from 1991 to 1998, Schregardus worked under former Ohio governor and current Sen. George Voinovich (R). Under Schregardus, the state of Ohio had one of the country's worst environmental records. For instance, from 1996 to 1997, 72 percent of Ohio plants and refineries surveyed had violations of the Clean Water Act, and 33 percent were in violation of the Clean Air Act, according to EPA's inspector general. Yet during this time, Ohio reported only four serious violations of environmental laws from over 1,700 major industrial plants. Accordingly, a number of environmental groups have asked EPA to revoke Ohio's authority to enforce federal environmental laws, and to bring in federal enforcers instead.

In a Federal Court Decision, an administrative law judge found that Schregardus had suppressed information about school children exposed to cancer-causing chemicals in Marion, Ohio, and that he had fabricated charges against the government environmental specialist in charge of the investigation.

Several senators, including Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Charles Schumer (D-NY), blocked Schregardus' nomination in early September. He was accused of disregarding a federal mandate as the head of Ohio EPA that called for reduction in emissions of nitrogen oxides from power plants, and he has opposed the federal government's filing of new source review clean air lawsuits against Midwestern power plants.

Region V EPA recently released a review of Ohio EPA for an alleged failure to implement several key environmental and public health laws during Schregardus' tenure at Ohio EPA. EPA's lengthy investigation concluded that there are multiple flaws in the state's air pollution program, and found that Ohio's air-pollution program is understaffed, poorly trained, and ineffective at identifying sources of pollution.

On Sept. 17, 2001, Schregardus withdrew his candidacy for confirmation due to the trouble his nomination was facing in the Senate. Many breathed a sigh of relief for the environment upon Schregardus' withdrawal. However, he has since been appointed to the newly-created post of Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Environment for the Navy, a post which does not require Senate confirmation. The Bush administration obviously does not care that he was found entirely unfit to work at EPA to protect the environment, as he was simply handed another position that did not go through the confirmation process.

Ohio

Aída Chávez

ALEC's Grip on the Ohio Legislature

Corporate Interests Backing the Bill

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Opponents fear the law will send the growing wind and solar industry to neighboring states while Ohio homeowners are stuck boosting old, uneconomical power plants.

Strangled Ohio wind industry: 'We don't want to give up'

a trifecta the Trump administration has pushed for nationally, with businesses and homeowners footing the bill for uneconomical power plants.

WOSU 89.7 NPR NEWS

'Just Transition' in Appalachia

Challenging Ohio's Regulatory System

The Rise of Clean Energy Scare Studies

08.23.16

The DOJ Is Ending Its Use of Private Prisons: But What About Ohio?

By Jocelyn Rosnick

Failure at What Cost?

​Ohio Utilities Take Renewable Energy Fight to State Supreme Court

A Pushback on Green Power

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all reps http://www.thepoliticalguide.com/Representatives/Ohio/

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Ohio Voters Reject Kasich Anti-Union Bill

Ohio Utilities Take Renewable Energy Fight to State Supreme Court