Group files again to divert $87M from city budget
Green energy initiatives had stalled last year
A group has once again submitted a petition for a Columbus ballot issue that would move $87 million in city money toward green energy initiatives, an effort that stalled last year after the City Attorney's office said it didn't meet requirements of the city charter.
Proenergy Ohio LLC on Friday submitted petitions Friday to the Columbus City Council office.
The language is much the same as its 2019 effort. It seeks to divert $57 million for an electricity subsidy program for Columbus residents.
The electricity subsidy program would “further the purpose of reducing the cost of electricity for customers who live in Columbus with a subsidy to purchase electricity from only wind, solar, fuel cell, geothermal, or hydro power producers.”
It would also move $10 million to each of these three programs: an energy conservation and energy efficiency fund; a clean energy education and training
fund, and a minority business development program. The petition also mentions an accountability and transparency requirement for the city auditor for how the funds are used.
In 2019, city officials and business leaders said Columbus would have had to make extensive budget cuts if such an effort were successful.
In a statement Tuesday, Columbus Mayor Andrew J. Ginther said: “It’s clear to me that the leaders of the repeated attempts to place this issue on the ballot are not interested in clean energy.
“The leaders of Proenergy Ohio are interested in enriching themselves and their associates on the backs of Columbus taxpayers.
“We already have a plan to deliver renewable energy to our residents,” he said, referring to Issue 1, an ‘ opt-out’ green-energy electricity aggregation plan that would supply all of the city’s power needs with renewable energy by 2023.That issue is on the Nov. 3 ballot.
Columbus City Councilman Rob Dorans called Proenergy Ohio’s action the “same flawed proposal” that gives the city no say in where that money would go and how it would be spent.
“They have not engaged the city in any meaningful dialogue,” said Dorans, who chairs the City Council’s public utilities committee.
Dorans also said the city already faces a budget hole. In September, the Columbus City Council council voted to reduce this year’s city general fund budget by $41.5 million because of lower income-tax revenues from coronavirusrelated job losses.
Dorans said it remains unclear who is behind the group. “I don’t know who these folks are,” he said.
in 2019, environmental groups such as the Ohio Environmental Council opposed it. That group said the initiative did not guarantee that Columbus tax dollars would go toward clean-energy projects in central Ohio.
In an email, Proenergy Ohio’s John Clarke, an electrical engineer and Columbus resident, said there aren’t any changes from the last petition effort. “We corrected for a copy and paste issue on one of the petition pages that City Attorney Zach Klein and City Council used to invalidate the entire last clean energy petition,” he said.
In 2019, Clarke told The Dispatch that he was a “serial entrepreneur” who had filed articles of incorporation for several companies, including two that he said were his: the Daticus Corporation in 2000 and the Castilla Corporation in 2005.
City Attorney Zach Klein’s office has not received the materials for review, spokeswoman Tammy Roberts-myers said.
To make the ballot, Proenergy Ohio LLC’S petition needs the signatures of registered voters that total at least 5% of the vote cast at the last preceding regular municipal election for mayor, which was November 2019. The total vote was 102,418, so at least 5,121 signatures would have to be valid for the issue to make the ballot.
Twice in 2019, similar Columbus initiatives that Proenergy submitted failed. Once because because the city’s chief counsel mistakenly reviewed an earlier version of the petition to place the issue on the ballot, and that the correct petition is not sufficient because of contradictory language, and the second because of a flaw in the petition.
In 2012, Proenergy Ohio unsuccessfully worked to change the Ohio Constitution to so the state would issue $1.3 billion in bonds for 10 years that the organization would have controlled. mferench@dispatch.com @Markferenchik