DAVID DEWITT
FEBRUARY 16, 2024
Power. Politics. Greed. Bribery. Regulatory capture. The buying and selling of government. Robbing the people blind.
In the wretched hustle of public corruption, modern Ohio Republican state politicians make the notorious “Ohio Gang” of the Teapot Dome scandal look like rank amateurs.
Consider the latest: Three-and-a-half years after news of the largest bribery scandal in Ohio history broke, citizens are seeing fresh indictments with damning new details about the breadth and depth of the depravity, including how the entire operation reached into the orbit and actions of Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and Lt. Gov. Jon Husted.
Let’s marshal our facts.
What we know
The latest indictments concern a $1.3 billion dollar bailout that Akron-based FirstEnergy has already admitted to the federal government that it paid more than $60 million in bribes to purchase. Former Republican Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and former state GOP Chairman Matt Borges are serving federal prison sentences for their roles. Two other lobbyists cooperated and are awaiting sentencing, while a third died by suicide wearing a “DeWine for governor” t-shirt.
In December, the feds charged Sam Randazzo with 11 felony counts. Randazzo is a lawyer and longtime energy consultant whom DeWine nominated to chair the state’s top utility regulator, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.
On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost announced state felony charges against Randazzo and former First Energy CEO Chuck Jones and former Vice President Michael Dowling for their alleged roles. The three were arraigned in Akron on Tuesday and each pleaded not guilty.
Among the new allegations was that Randazzo had a corrupt relationship with the FirstEnergy executives stretching back to 2010, allegedly serving as general counsel to the Industrial Energy Users of Ohio while secretly being paid as a consultant for FirstEnergy: Randazzo settled disputes over electricity rates on terms acceptable to the energy companies, then channeled the settlement money through shell companies where he skimmed off a portion, the indictment said.
The indictment said the money was really intended to be a cash payment to the industrial users so they would drop their opposition to a rate hike FirstEnergy was seeking. Through that “side deal,” a powerful utility paid off powerful industries to make way for a rate hike on all FirstEnergy customers, if the allegations are true.
Between 2016 and 2019, FirstEnergy paid $13 million into Randazzo’s shell companies, the indictment said. Of that, Randazzo passed $7.75 million to the industrial users and pocketed the rest, it said.
DeWine’s chief of staff, Laurel Dawson, was married to a man who had been a paid lobbyist for FirstEnergy — and who had received a $10,000 loan from Randazzo in 2016, the indictment said.
DeWine’s legislative affairs director, Dan McCarthy, had also been a FirstEnergy lobbyist. When he was, McCarthy founded Partners for Progress, a 501(c)(4) dark money group that FirstEnergy admitted was used to funnel tens of millions of the corporation’s dollars into the effort to make Householder speaker and pass and protect the bailout. Once in the administration, McCarthy helped pass the bailout legislation.
On Dec. 18, 2018 — just before DeWine and Husted took office — they met at the Columbus Athletic Club with Jones and Dowling, the then-top executives for FirstEnergy. Among the topics was whether Randazzo would be acceptable to regulate the executives’ company, the indictment said.
Whether he would be acceptable to the companies to regulate the companies.
According to the state indictment, Jones and Dowling went from that dinner to Randazzo’s German Village condo, where they seem to have negotiated a payment that FirstEnergy later characterized as a bribe.
The next day, Randazzo sent the executives a text message requesting $4.3 million over a period of years, according to copies filed as part of Randazzo’s indictments. Jones responded by saying it would be paid in a lump sum, the messages said.
In January 2019, as Randazzo was being vetted to chair the PUCO, he told Dawson, DeWine’s chief of staff, about the $4.3 million payment, but he did not tell her about the other millions he had received from FirstEnergy, the state indictment said
. Randazzo didn’t report any of the payments to the Ohio Ethics Commission, it added.
A former aide gave DeWine a dossier reporting shady financial connections between Randazzo and FirstEnergy on Jan. 28, 2019. But the governor’s office says that Dawson never told the governor about the $4.3 million payment before DeWine nominated Randazzo to chair the PUCO on Feb. 4, 2019.
According to the state indictment, Randazzo spent the rest of the year and part of the next helping to draft and openly lobby for the corrupt bailout.
Householder and four others were arrested in July 2020. But it wasn’t until the following November — when the FBI searched Randazzo’s condo — that Dawson told the governor about the $4.3 million payout.
DeWine has staunchly defended Dawson, just as he defended McCarthy, the former aide and FirstEnergy lobbyist with the dark money bribery pass-through group.
