Nuclear bailout’s foe aims to get on ballot

The fight over House Bill 6 might not be over.

A group is organizing a potential statewide ballot issue in November 2020 to overturn the legislation, which bails out the state’s two nuclear power plants and two coal-fired plants.

Ohioans Against Corporate Bailouts filed paperwork with the Ohio secretary of state’s office on Tuesday to start receiving contributions or making expenditures for the campaign. That’s the same day the House passed the bill by a vote of 51-38 and Gov. Mike Dewine signed it into law.

Brandon Lynaugh, a consultant who has run several statewide campaigns, confirmed Wednesday that his firm, Battleground Strategies, will run the campaign, but he wouldn’t comment further.

Passage of the bill capped a bitter, months-long fight that included a statewide television, radio and mail campaign.

Spending on cable and broadcast television ads alone totaled about $9.5 million, according to Bob Clegg, president of Midwest Communication & Media in Powell, who said he can’t recall more money being spent to influence a piece of legislation.

The law imposes fees on consumers and businesses to shore up the finances

of northern Ohio’s DavisBesse and Perry nuclear plants that are owned by Firstenergy Solutions, the former power-generation arm of Akron-based Firstenergy that is going through bankruptcy, and two coal-fired power plants, one of them in Indiana, that are owned by a group of power companies including Columbus-based American Electric Power.

At the same time, the law eliminates fees for energy-efficiency and renewable-energy programs, which backers say will ultimately result in lower utility bills.

To get the issue on the 2020 ballot, Battleground Strategies has to act fast. It must collect an initial 1,000 signatures from registered voters and get a petition and summary approved by the secretary of state and attorney general. If that happens, the group will need 265,774 signatures collected

from at least 44 of the state’s 88 counties within 90 days of the bill’s signing.

House Speaker Larry Householder, R-glenford, told reporters after Tuesday’s vote that a possible referendum should not concern legislators.

“We’ve just got to put our best foot forward and do what we think in the legislature is best for the folks in Ohio,” Householder said. “If there’s a referendum or something like that down the road, we can’t trouble ourselves for those types of things. We can’t shape legislation around what an opponent of a bill might do.”

House Bill 6 opponents included groups that normally wouldn’t figure to be aligned on much of anything; they include environmentalists, renewable-energy proponents, oil and gas interests, consumer groups and free-market groups.

“The Ohio Environmental Council Action Fund remains opposed to House Bill 6 because it is bad for Ohio’s health and environment,” Trish Demeter, the group’s chief of staff, said in a statement. “We are assessing all options to get Ohio back on the right track. At this time, we are not involved in referendum efforts, but we are not ruling that out as a potential option.”

Dewine, speaking at the opening of the Ohio State Fair on Wednesday, said a ballot option is always a possibility.

“We always have opportunities for people to get enough signatures to put something on the ballot and make their case to the people of the state of Ohio. They certainly have a right to do that.”

In his first comments on the legislation, Dewine said he was happy to sign it.

“It accomplishes what we

wanted to accomplish. It saves the jobs . ... It should bring about a small reduction in the cost to residential consumers,” Dewine said.

“It’s going to allow the vast majority of our production of electricity in the state of Ohio to be carbon (dioxide) free. If we had lost our two nuclear plants, we would have lost 90% percent of our carbonfree production,” he said.

Actually, most of the state’s electricity production still comes from fossil fuels, which produce carbon dioxide. The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio reports that coal provides 47% of the state’s electricity, while natural gas generates 34% and nuclear 15%. Only 3% comes from renewable energy.