Whose state is it anyway? That’s what we should be asking
Almost 2.2 million Ohio voters passed a law last month legalizing marijuana in their state — or what’s supposed to be their state. But some of the 26 Republicans in Ohio’s Senate actually considered telling all those Ohioans to go pound salt by crimping marijuana legalization. The Senate backed off, eventually.
Still, the underlying theme was that the people can’t be trusted to govern themselves, can they? Better that a mostly-white, mostly male, and often small-town clique of Senate Republicans think for voters, yes?
Now, in fairness, had the 2.2 million Ohioans who voted for legalization instead sent plump checks to the Statehouse’s caucus campaign committees, and hired properly connected wire-pullers (lobbyists), legalization might not be such a ... challenge ... for certain legislators.
On Capitol Square, for example, if you spend
$60 million to pass HB 6, the sweetheart deal for FirstEnergy Corp., you’re talking business. But when voters talk ... crickets
Evidently, there is at least some regard for what voters think in Speaker Jason Stephens’s House. Not so in President Matt Huffman’s Senate, similarly GOP-run, which, among other things, had talked last week about outlawing home cultivation of marijuana, a keystone Issue 2 feature. That fell by the wayside.
The funny thing is, for all the delusional talk by some Republicans about how the 2020 presidential election was stolen from the GOP, General Assembly attempts to end-run Issue 2 — marijuana legalization — arguably would represent an actual Election Day steal.
The federal indictment last week of former Public Utilities Commission of Ohio Chair Samuel Randazzo, an appointee of Gov. Mike DeWine, signaled another turn in the House Bill 6-FirstEnergy affair, the biggest public corruption scandal in 220 years of statehood.
In a nutshell, the “[Randazzo] indictment outlines an alleged scheme in which a public regulatory official ignored the Ohio consumers he was responsible for protecting, instead taking a bribe from an energy company” — Akron-based FirstEnergy — “seeking favors,” FBI Cincinnati Special Agent in Charge J. William Rivers
said.
In July 2021 the U.S. attorney’s office for Southern Ohio announced FirstEnergy “[had] been charged federally with conspiring to commit honest services wire fraud and ... agreed to pay a $230 million monetary penalty. The company signed a deferred prosecution agreement that could potentially result in dismissal of the charge.”
True, the legislature has repealed the nuclear-plant bailout that HB 6 would have provided. But still in Ohio’s lawbooks are several other parts of HB 6.
One continuing part of
HB 6 ended Ohio’s energy efficiency and renewable energy requirements. Another part also continues to force Ohio electricity customers to subsidize two money-losing coal-burning power plants — one in Indiana — whose biggest owner is Columbus-based American Electric Power Co. Without total repeal of HB 6, that law will continue to soak consumers — no matter who is charged with what.