Customers shouldn’t be dinged for utility

Six years ago, the Cleveland Browns organization and owner Jimmy Haslam excitedly announced that Akron-based Firstenergy Corp. had bought the naming rights to the team’s stadium.

“This is a great day for all of us and it builds on the momentum we have experienced as we enter into a new era of Cleveland Browns Football,” Haslam said.

“The Browns and Firstenergy have enjoyed a tremendous relationship for more than a decade. Our core values of being the best at everything we do are clearly aligned,

and because of their commitment to the city of Cleveland and to all of Northeast Ohio, we felt this would be the perfect partnership.”

“By joining two Ohio traditions, this partnership and regional branding opportunity makes good business sense,” added Firstenergy’s then-president and CEO Tony Alexander.

Fans can decide for themselves whether the Browns, since that announcement in 2013, have been the best at everything they do.

But given that Firstenergy has said a $150 million annual bailout by Ohio’s electricity customers was needed to save its two northern Ohio nuclear power plants, the company appears to have lost the good business sense to which Alexander referred.

While Firstenergy’s business acumen might be in question, recent events at the Statehouse suggest that the company is skilled in securing corporate welfare.

On Tuesday, the Ohio House, by a 51-38 vote, agreed to Senate changes to proposed legislation known as House Bill 6, and Gov. Mike Dewine immediately signed the bill into law.

The new law will impose an 85 cents-per-month, or $10.20-per-year, fee on residential ratepayers from 2021 through 2027 that will rake in about $170 million a year.

Most of that money, about $150 million annually, is earmarked for the Davis-besse and Perry nuclear plants, which generate about 15% of Ohio’s electricity. Firstenergy Solutions, the former power generation arm of Firstenergy that is working through bankruptcy protection, has said both plants would close without the subsidy.

That would mean the loss of about 1,400 jobs, another link in the chain of economic troubles endured by working Ohioans. At issue, though, is why ratepayers should pay the price for one company’s ineptitude.

Firstenergy and the Browns never formally revealed the cost of the stadium sponsorship, but news outlets including The Plain Dealer reported that it came at a cost just north of $100 million. Given the dire straights the company purports to be in these days, that kind of money might have been better spent keeping the lights on at the nuke plants and its employees employed.

But don’t expect any lessons to be learned, not when it comes to corporate accountability.

Proponents of the new state law swear it will end up saving ratepayers money. We’ll see about that. That is, if we can afford to keep the lights on to read the bill.

And while the money for the plants is subject to an annual review, and the subsidy, in theory, could be reduced or eliminated, don’t bet on that happening either.

That would require that the parties who put this deal together recognize that corporate bailouts funded by taxpayers or ratepayers are not models of good government, but dishonest rackets.

House Speaker Larry Householder, R-glenford, indicated on Tuesday that no such enlightenment is imminent.

“This is something that needed to be done, and the legislature rose up and took care of business,” Householder said.

A correction if I may, Mr. Speaker.

The legislature rose up and took care of a business.