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Olga Ravn's latest novel reflects the growing and ever changing demands that work subjects us to, writes Elinor Potts

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Ohio Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, a longtime ally of indicted former Public Utilities Commission of Ohio chairman Sam Randazzo, says it’s time to repeal HB 6, the law that Randazzo helped write and which subsidizes two coal-fired power plants.

“I think that anything that was connected to House Bill 6 needs to be completely removed,” Husted told reporter Natalie Fahmy of WCMH. “The people who are accountable for it are being held accountable, some are already being convicted. We would all be better off if we just stripped everything.”

HB 6 was passed in 2019 after utility FirstEnergy led a $61 million campaign that bribed Ohio House speaker Larry Householder to pass the law. So far, Householder and former Ohio Republican Party chairman Matt Borges have been convicted on federal bribery charges.

Randazzo, a coal industry lawyer who was appointed as PUCO chair in January 2019 by newly elected Gov. Mike DeWine, was indicted in December for accepting a $4.3 million bribe from FirstEnergy.

When first passed, HB 6 required Ohio ratepayers to pay a subsidy to keep FirstEnergy’s nuclear power plants going as well as a subsidy for the two coal-fired power plants owned by Ohio Valley Electric Corp. (OVEC), which is owned by FirstEnergy and a consortium of other utilities.

Indicted former PUCO chairman Sam Randazzo

Checks & Balances Project reporting has shown that one of the main beneficiaries of HB 6 was coal company Resource Fuels, which was overpaid for the coal it supplied OVEC’s Clifty Creek power plant.

Resource Fuels gave $100,000 to a political action committee tied to Husted – Ohio Conservatives for Change – in 2018. Resource Fuels’ owner, Wayne Boich, and his wife also gave $37,497 to the DeWine-Husted ticket in 2018.

The company also donated $250,000 to Generation Now, the dark-money political fund used to bribe Householder.

In 2022, texts revealed that Husted was a key ally in getting HB 6 passed. Husted told WCMH that he was only acting a middleman to relay information.

Husted has been subpoenaed to testify in a civil suit between investors and FirstEnergy.

Rep. Jason Stephens, the current Ohio House speaker, said he was opposed to repealing HB 6.

“Every power plant we can have in Ohio, the better off we, as Ohioans, are going to be so we can continue to grow our economy,” Stephens said.
OVEC’s Kyger Creek power plant, one of the two supported by the HB 6 subsidy, is located in Stephens’ district.

Ray Locker is the executive director for Checks & Balances Project, an investigative watchdog blog holding government officials, lobbyists, and corporate management accountable to the public. Funding for C&BP is provided by Renew American Prosperity and individual donors.

PUCO let utility redact information from audit examining electricity prices
OVEC power plants were losing between $150,000 and $175,000 a day, emails show
Utility agrees to disclose audit details highlighted by C&BP

The post Longtime coal industry ally Husted says it’s time to repeal HB 6 appeared first on Checks and Balances Project.

The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio granted a protective order in its ongoing audit into the effects of the HB 6 law, based largely on the utilities’ claims of trade secrecy and the lack of any opposition to those claims, according to a revised protective order issued last week.

“The existing protective order was granted, in part, based on the fact that the moving parties [the utilities that own the Ohio Valley Electric Corp.] averred that the information was not available in the public domain,” said the revised order issued by PUCO Attorney Examiner Megan Addison. 

Several times in her order, which authorized the disclosure of some information previously redacted from the audit, Addison mentioned how the utilities’ December 2021 motions were not challenged by any of the interested parties in the case, which include consumer groups and industry organizations. Addison granted the original protective order on July 7, 2023.

However, as Checks & Balances Project reporting has shown, many of the claims from OVEC’s owners were false and misleading, as they claimed that routinely publicly available information was a trade secret. C&BP also reported that still-unnamed PUCO staff members recommended granting the protective order without any detailed review.

PUCO has denied a Freedom of Information Act from C&BP seeking the names of the staff members who recommended the original order.

It was only after consumer and industry groups were able to review the private version of the audit by London Economics International (LEI) did they determine that some of the details hidden by the protective order were actually already public information.

Testimony submitted by outside analysts last October revealed the name of the company that was overcharging OVEC for coal at its Clifty Creek power plant, the price of that coal and the name of the other company that was charging far less for coal from the same mine.

Those details can be found in annual reports filed by OVEC to the federal Energy Information Administration, which routinely publishes the details on its website.

The utilities, also known as the sponsoring companies, also claimed that OVEC’s net income was a trade secret, even though it is available on OVEC’s website.

Filings have shown the PUCO staff has been very accommodating to the requests of the sponsoring companies to hide details of OVEC’s operations.

Last week, a filing by the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association Energy Group revealed emails that showed the PUCO staff members allowed officials of utility company AEP to redact parts of an audit into OVEC’s operations.

Emails between PUCO staff and LEI auditors show how the staff urged auditors to tone down the conclusions in their work, including the conclusion that “keeping the plants running does not seem to be in the best interests of the ratepayers.”

Ray Locker is the executive director for Checks & Balances Project, an investigative watchdog blog holding government officials, lobbyists, and corporate management accountable to the public. Funding for C&BP is provided by Renew American Prosperity and individual donors.

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Staff members of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio allowed officials of utility company AEP to redact parts of an audit into the operations of the Ohio Valley Electric Corp., a series of emails between PUCO staff and AEP show.

The emails were introduced last week in the case surrounding the first audit into the effects of Ohio’s HB 6 law, the 2019 legislation that required Ohio electricity customers to pay a surcharge to subsidize the operations of OVEC’s two coal-fired power plants.

The emails were actually part of an audit into the 2018-2019 riders that required customers to pay extra to support OVEC. A Sept. 2, 2020, email from auditor Marie Fagan of London Economics International (LEI) to AEP official Edward Locigno said: “This is to confirm that LEI provided the draft OVEC report to the Commission staff. The process now, as I understand it, that staff will review and after that we will provide it to AEP Ohio for redacting.”

In another email to Fagan, PUCO staffer Mahila Christopher recommended watering down the audit to achieve “a milder tone and intensity of language.” Existence of that email was reported in October 2021 after the scandal surrounding HB 6 blew up in 2020.

PUCO stonewalling on staffers’ names

Last November, Checks & Balances Project requested the names of the PUCO staff that recommended granting a protective order that allowed key details of the LEI audit to be removed. C&BP also filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the names that was also denied.

The latest filing in the HB 6 audit case mentioned Christopher and PUCO Rodney Windle.

The protective order granted July 7, 2023, removed multiple pieces of information from the LEI audit, including details that are already publicly available, including the OVEC’s annual net income, the companies that supplied coal to OVEC and the prices they charged.

C&BP reporting has shown that one OVEC coal supplier, Resource Fuels of Columbus, was overcharging OVEC for coal. It was paid more for supplying less coal from the same mine that another company was supplying. Resource Fuels and its owners, Wayne and Cynthia Boich, were some of the major donors to the political fund that bribed former Ohio House speaker Larry Householder, who is now serving a 20-year federal prison sentence.

The latest filings show that PUCO staff allowed the companies that share ownership of OVEC, also known as the sponsoring companies, to determine which information it wanted to cloak from the public. Filings from AEP and other sponsoring companies claimed that routinely available information was somehow a trade secret.

Ray Locker is the executive director for Checks & Balances Project, an investigative watchdog blog holding government officials, lobbyists, and corporate management accountable to the public. Funding for C&BP is provided by Renew American Prosperity and individual donors.

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The coal-fired power plants owned by Ohio Valley Electric Corp. (OVEC) were losing between $150,000 to $175,000 a day in April 2020, according to emails between officials of Duke Energy, one of the utilities that owns part of OVEC.

John Swez, Duke’s director of generation dispatch, said Duke should propose to the OVEC board that the company start running its power plants on an “economic” instead of a “must-run” basis.

The Ohio Manufacturers’ Association Energy Group (OMAEG) filed the emails on Jan. 22 as part of its campaign to limit the effects of HB 6, the 2019 law that requires Ohio ratepayers to subsidize the two OVEC power plants – Kyger Creek in Ohio and Clifty Creek in Indiana.

Swez’s April 8, 2020, email said Duke officials should ask the entire OVEC board to approve shifting how the company sends its electricity to the grid.

“My proposal is to offer approximately half of the units with a commit status of Economic starting with this Friday, April 10,” Swez wrote.

The audit conducted by London Economics International (LEI) in 2021 for the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio determined that shifting the status of the OVEC plants in 2020 was “prudent. That option was in place temporarily in 2020; LEI recommends that AEP Ohio and the other members of the Operating Committee allow this flexibility on an ongoing basis.”

Auditors acknowledged the difficulty of running coal plants as economic all the time, because it takes extra time to get the plants warmed up and running. However, “the option to do so provides additional flexibility and could reduce costs for customers,” the audit said.

HB 6 requires Ohio electricity customers to pay a surcharge on their electricity bills to subsidize the OVEC plants. The law was passed in 2019 after utility FirstEnergy, which is also one of the owners of OVEC, led a $61 million campaign to bribe former Ohio House speaker Larry Householder, who is now serving a 20-year federal prison sentence.

Last October, Swez submitted testimony to PUCO in the HB 6 audit case in which he said it was possible for OVEC to commit its electricity economically instead of must-run.

Swez also said Duke lacked the ability to force OVEC to change how it commits electricity to the grid. That requires a vote by officials from the companies that own OVEC, which are called the sponsoring companies.

Ray Locker is the executive director for Checks & Balances Project, an investigative watchdog blog holding government officials, lobbyists, and corporate management accountable to the public. Funding for C&BP is provided by Renew American Prosperity and individual donors.

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Two of the utility companies that own the Ohio Valley Electric Corp. (OVEC) want to keep the public from learning about how OVEC’s two money-losing coal plants are allowed to operate at will and send expensive electricity to the grid because of Ohio’s scandal-plagued HB 6 law.

Ohio Power, also known as AEP Ohio, and Dayton Power and Light filed motions with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio on Jan. 17 opposing attempts to obtain more details about OVEC’s operations. Those questions include the amount of money the companies earned in 2020 in payments mandated by HB 6, their returns on investments from OVEC and communications related to whether the OVEC plants should operate on a “must-run” basis.

The companies called those questions “vague and undefined” and “harassing,” and asserted that they shouldn’t have to answer them.

Wednesday’s filings represent another attempt by the utilities that own OVEC, also called the “sponsoring companies,” to keep secret details in the ongoing audit of the effects of HB 6 conducted by London Economics International (LEI). That audit has already concluded that OVEC’s plants lost money by self-committing electricity to the grid.

Those attempts, as Checks & Balances Project has reported, have included claims that information that was available to the public was somehow a trade secret that needed to be hidden from the public version of the LEI audit.

When the LEI audit was completed in December 2021, the sponsoring companies sought a protective order that redacted multiple pieces of financial information from the audit. They claimed the data were trade secrets whose disclosure would damage OVEC’s competitiveness.

Staff members of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) agreed to the protective order, and neither the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel nor industry groups opposed the utilities’ motions.

Redacted from the LEI audit were the names of the companies that supplied overpriced coal to OVEC, the prices OVEC paid for the coal and OVEC’s net income. Despite the utilities’ claims that this information was a trade secret, they utilities themselves had provided the information to the U.S. Energy Information Administration and on OVEC’s website.

However, analysts representing electricity consumers filed testimony with PUCO in October that cited the public information and revealed how much one of OVEC’s coal suppliers, Resource Fuels of Columbus, was charging OVEC for coal. In 2020, Resource Fuels made $12.6 million more for the coal it sold OVEC than another company that was supplying OVEC with more coal from the same mine.

C&BP reported those details in November and subsequent reporting has highlighted the utilities’ misleading claims of trade secrecy.

Last month, PUCO agreed that many of the details should be part of the publicly available version of the LEI audit. Earlier this month, Ohio Power acknowledged that many details covered by the protective order were not trade secrets and should be disclosed. That included the information revealed by C&BP’s reporting.

Power plants operate and supply electricity to the grid on either a “must-run” or “economic” basis. Must-run plants operate continuously and commit their electricity to the grid operator, which in Ohio is the PJM system. Economic plants send their electricity to the grid at the request of the grid operator.

OVEC’s two plants run as must-run and self-commit their electricity to the grid, whether it’s cost-effective or not.

The company has argued that it can’t turn its plants on and off at will and that they must run continuously to operate efficiently. But multiple reports from analysts and grid operators have shown it’s wasteful to allow coal-fired plants to run at will and commit their electricity to the grid on their own.

LEI’s audit also showed that in 2020 OVEC was often losing money on the electricity it self-committed to PJM: “LEI’s analysis (based on monthly average PJM prices) shows that some of the time, the PJM energy price did not cover fuel and variable costs.”

During 2020, OVEC ran some of its plants as “economic,” which LEI approved. LEI said OVEC should continue to run its plants that way in the future.

Many of the questions OVEC’s owners don’t want to answer involve OVEC’s self-commitment and must-run practices.

Ray Locker is the executive director for Checks & Balances Project, an investigative watchdog blog holding government officials, lobbyists, and corporate management accountable to the public. Funding for C&BP is provided by Renew American Prosperity and individual donors.

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Ohio consumer advocates and major utility customers want the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio to disclose more information from the audit into the effects of Ohio’s scandal-plagued HB 6 law.

The Ohio Consumers’ Counsel and major consumers, including grocery giant Kroger, filed motions with PUCO this week seeking the end to the protective order granted last July that redacted key parts of the audit into the effects of HB 6. The law requires Ohio electricity customers to subsidize the operations of two coal-fired power plants owned by the Ohio Valley Electric Corp. (OVEC).

“The PUCO must now decide whether the public has a right to know information about the H.B. 6 subsidies that relate back to a 2021 audit report issued by the PUCO-appointed auditor,” says the motion filed by the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel. “The answer should be yes, the public has a right to know. The PUCO should lift the shroud of secrecy the utilities have insisted upon over the last two years.”

OVEC is owned by a consortium of utilities known as “sponsoring companies.”

“Each Sponsoring Company bears its own burden of proof to demonstrate that the costs it incurred during the Audit Period related to the continued operation of the OVEC coal plants, as well as its actions, were reasonable, prudent, and in the best interests of customers,” said the motion by the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association Energy Group and the Kroger Co.

Many of the details removed from the public version of the audit by London Economics International (LEI) were already public information, including the name of the company that has been overpaid for the coal it supplied OVEC.

Checks & Balances Project has reported that the redactions made by the protective order hid the identity of Resource Fuels, the Columbus-based coal company that made $12.6 million more for the coal it supplied OVEC in 2020 than another company that provided more coal to OVEC from the same mine.

Resource Fuels and its owner, Wayne Boich, were some of the earliest donors to the dark-money political fund that bribed former Ohio House speaker Larry Householder to pass HB 6 in 2019. Householder is now serving a 20-year federal prison sentence for his role in the HB 6 scandal.

New opposition to protective order

OCC and the customers’ opposition to the protective order is notable, because they had previously not objected to the utilities’ December 2021 motions that claimed key details in the audit were trade secrets that needed to be removed. C&BP has reported that many of those details, such as the name of Resource Fuels, the amount it charged for coal and OVEC’s annual net income were already public information.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration routinely publishes the names of the companies that supply coal to the nation’s power plants and how much the companies charge. That information comes from the utilities themselves.

OVEC publishes its net income on its website.

New attempts to hide information

Although the sponsoring companies have acknowledged that some of the information covered by the protective order no longer needs to be redacted, at least one persists in trying to limit access to other details that are also available elsewhere.

Ohio Power, also known as AEP Ohio, claims details about the capacity factor and heat rates of OVEC’s two plants must remained hidden from the public. “As with capacity factor, although heat rate information is publicly available at the overall plant level, the Audit Report provides that data at the unit level. OVEC keeps this unit level data confidential because it could be used by competitive parties to alter offer strategies and dispatch,” the company’s Jan. 4 motion said.

Capacity factor refers to the amount of time a plant is producing power. The lower the factor, the less able the plant is to keep operating. Environmental and consumers advocates have cited a plant’s low capacity factor as a reason for closing it.

Heat rate measures the plant’s efficiency in generating electricity. The higher the rate, the less efficient a plant is operating. High heat rates are often cited as reasons to close coal plants.

However, capacity factor and heat rate data are already included in the publicly available LEI audit. It specifically mentions the heat rates for three separate units at the two plants and that both plants had heat rates that were less efficient than the average for plants in the region.

The same data have been cited in news releases from bond rating agency Fitch in its reports on the debt issued by OVEC to help pay for improvements at the Clifty Creek and Kyger Creek power plants.

Instead of issuing an order to redacts all capacity factor and heat rate data, PUCO could release the plant-level details and not for the individual units.

Fitch said last month that it was maintaining OVEC’s credit rating, because of the HB 6 subsidies and the capacity factor and heat rates for its power plants.

Ray Locker is the executive director for Checks & Balances Project, an investigative watchdog blog holding government officials, lobbyists, and corporate management accountable to the public. Funding for C&BP is provided by Renew American Prosperity and individual donors.

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One of the owners of the Ohio Valley Electric Corp. (OVEC), whose coal-fired power plants were bailed out by Ohio’s scandal-plagued HB 6 law, agreed to disclose details in a public audit that the company had previously claimed were trade secrets.

In a series of articles over the last two months, Checks & Balances Project reported that the details Duke Energy Ohio, Dayton Power and Light and Ohio Power claimed were trade secrets were actually information that was publicly available from the federal government and on OVEC’s website.

Ohio Power, also known as AEP Ohio, agreed in its motion filed with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio that these details could be revealed in a new version of the audit by London Economics International (LEI).

“This newly un-redacted information represents data that was publicly disclosed during the hearing, that has been determined to be publicly available, or that is being voluntarily disclosed to more transparently allow public review of the total costs and revenues” in the audit, Ohio Power said in its Jan. 4 filing.

Ohio Power claimed in its filing Thursday that the LEI audit was too long and that company officials didn’t have enough time to analyze what parts of the audit were already public information. “Given the length of the report and the short timeline to conduct the confidentiality exercise, AEP Ohio made its best efforts under the circumstances to propose redactions for those portions of the report that were competitively sensitive and maintained in secrecy,” the filing said.

A key detail redacted from the original public version of the LEI audit was the names of the coal suppliers for OVEC’s Clifty Creek and Kyger Creek power plants. LEI auditors had originally written that OVEC was paying too much for coal, but the names of the suppliers and the costs of that coal were redacted.

That information, however, was available to the public in reports published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which uses data supplied by the power plants themselves.

Resource Fuels of Columbus, Ohio, was the main beneficiary of the higher coal prices paid by OVEC. Its owner, Wayne Boich, was an early donor to the political fund that was used to bribe former Ohio House speaker Larry Householder and pass HB 6 in 2019. That law required Ohio electricity customers to pay a surcharge on their bills to support the habitually unprofitable OVEC power plants.

By redacting the identity of Resource Fuels from the public audit, PUCO obscured the financial motives for Resource Fuels and Boich to support HB 6. Analysts who submitted testimony to PUCO in October estimated that Resource Fuels was paid $12.6 million more for the coal it supplied Clifty Creek in 2020 than a competitor, which supplied more coal from the same coal mine.

Despite the intimate involvement of Boich executives in the HB 6 effort, the company filed lobbying reports that indicated no activity in 2019.

Ray Locker is the executive director for Checks & Balances Project, an investigative watchdog blog holding government officials, lobbyists, and corporate management accountable to the public. Funding for C&BP is provided by Renew American Prosperity and individual donors.

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The post Utility agrees to disclose audit details highlighted by C&BP appeared first on Checks and Balances Project.

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