Householder’s resignation may begin the healing
To the chorus calling for the resignation of Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, we add our voice.
However fast or slow the wheels of justice turn to establish his guilt or innocence on criminal corruption charges levied on Tuesday, the only appropriate course of action with respect to his elected office is for him to relinquish it.
The damning allegations in an 81-page criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court rendered his leadership null as soon as the document became public.
The evidence of his political neutering came in swift demands for his resignation issued by so many of his fellow Republicans — Gov. Mike Dewine, Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, Secretary of State Frank Larose and Attorney General Dave Yost among them.
The federal charges prompting the arrest of Householder and four others are so egregious that they also mandate immediate corrective legislation to undo the tainted enactment last year of House Bill 6 — the $1.3 billion nuclear plant bailout bill at the center of the corruption investigation by the FBI.
That alone won’t be enough to restore public trust in the legislative process. Election law that allows unlimited, undisclosed contributions to 501(c)4 entities also must be addressed to prevent more such corruption.
This case invokes the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act to allege that Householder used a 501(c)4 called Generation Now to build a powerful, illegally funded political enterprise fueled by limitless “dark money” contributions.
Others slapped with RICO charges are Matt Borges, former chairman of the Ohio Republican Party; Neil Clark, long one of Ohio’s most powerful lobbyists; Jeffrey Longstreth, longtime political and campaign strategist for Householder; and Juan Cespedes, a multi-client lobbyist identified in the complaint as a “key middleman.” Generation Now also was charged. Additional charges are expected as the investigation continues.
Unnamed by U.S. Attorney David Devillers, but acknowledged by him to be widely known, is Firstenergy Solutions (later renamed Energy Harbor), the company believed to have provided the bulk of nearly $61 million funneled to Householder for the purpose of shepherding the bailout legislation. It imposes fees on electric customers throughout Ohio beginning next year to prop up the company’s two nuclear power plants in northern Ohio.
The Dispatch salutes the FBI and Devillers for an investigation that began even before HB 6 was passed and spans activities going back 2 ½ years, starting with Householder’s recapture of the speaker’s office that he had left in 2004 under the cloud of an FBI investigation that did not yield charges.
The U.S. attorney and Chris Hoffman, FBI special agent in charge of the Cincinnati field office, said Householder’s 2018 quest for power was specifically fueled by Firstenergy Solutions to get HB 6 passed and then fend off a referendum campaign.
They allege that bribery was employed throughout, even to the point of buying off those hired to circulate petitions for the referendum, which failed to make the 2019 general election ballot.
The Dispatch had repeatedly editorialized against HB 6 and the dirty-tricks media campaigns waged on its behalf. Now it is clear why this was never about public policy. And we share Devillers’ anger that limited public resources that should be fighting the opioid epidemic and other crimes had to be diverted to root out evil in the legislature.
TALK TO US
The Dispatch invites your thoughts in typed letters of about 200 words; all might be edited. They can be emailed to letters@dispatch.com. Include name, home address and daytime phone in order to be considered for publication.