House could easily killHB 6 at center ofHouseholder case

If Ohio’s House of Representatives and state Senate really want to repeal House Bill 6 — a bill that makes Ohio electricity consumers subsidize two nuclear power plants, and two coal-burning power plants — it wouldn’t take rocket science to write a repeal bill.

The legislature could kill HB 6 by passing legislation with just under 30 words: “Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Ohio: Section

1: That Amended Substitute House Bill 6 of the 133rd General Assembly is hereby repealed.”

Agreed, some of those words have more than one syllable, but that’s why Ohio taxpayers pay capable people to work as aides to Ohio’s legislators.

HB 6 requires Ohio’s electricity consumers to bail out two nuclear power plants formerly owned by Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp.: Lake County’s Perry plant and Ottawa County’s DavisBesse plant. The plants are now owned by an outfit named Energy Harbor, a one-time FirstEnergy subsidiary that’s now an independent company.

HB 6 also requires Ohio electricity consumers to subsidize two coal-fueled generating plants, one in Indiana. The coal plants are owned by a group of electric companies, including Ohio electric companies.

The politicking leading up to HB 6, which the legislature passed in July 2019, with support from both Republicans and Democrats and which Gov. Mike DeWine immediately signed, prompted a federal grand jury to indict former House Speaker Larry Householder, a Republican from Perry County’s Glenford, and four other Statehouse figures.

The U.S. attorney’s office for Southern Ohio, said Householder was “charged in a federal racketeering conspiracy involving approximately $60 million paid to a 501(c) (4) entity to pass and uphold a billion-dollar nuclear plant bailout.”

The formal, official Statehouse name of that $60 million bailout: House Bill 6. (Householder and the other defendants must be presumed innocent unless they are convicted.)

House Bill 6 barely passed the Ohio House, where passage required 50 votes (it drew 51 votes) and the Senate, where passage required 17 votes (it drew 19 votes).

But a pro-HB 6 counter-offensive will surface when someone at the Statehouse tries to repeal HB 6: The General Assembly’s public utility fanboys will claim that House Bill 6 is really a great deal for Ohio’s electricity consumers.

Their argument will be something like this: HB 6 abolishes Ohio’s energy efficiency requirement for electric companies, and hammers down Ohio’s renewable energy requirement. Energy efficiency requirements reduce demand for electricity. That reduces the need to build, or maintain power plants with smokestacks – or to prop up aging nuclear power plants (unless they’re in Ohio, that is) whose operating costs price their electricity out of the market.

Renewable energy requirements mean a percentage of Ohio’s electricity must be generated by the sun, the wind and similar resources. (Even before HB 6, though, the legislature imposed arbitrary, politically determined setbacks on windmills, setbacks that demand revision.)

A small amount of each Ohioan’s electric bill has included energy efficiency and renewable energy charges. The pro-HB 6 argument, is that ending the efficiency standard, and slashing the alternative energy standard, will save consumers more than HB 6 will cost them, producing a net (if very small) savings.

All that means is that HB 6 will let Ohio consumers cough all the way to the bank: The purported “savings” are new environmental and health costs imposed on Ohioans.

In fairness, you are free to believe that somebody, or something, spent (an alleged) $60 million on Ohio House campaigns, and an army of lobbyists, just to do something nice for Ohio’s electricity consumers. You’re also free to believe that water runs uphill.