As of March, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio had yet to complete production of records subpoenaed last year by the U.S. Department of Justice, @PUCOhio Deputy Legal Director said in a letter re: a related Open Records Law request.
The PUCO received the DOJ subpoenas in April and May of last year, so has had ample time to review the records, and produce them to DOJ and to public records requesters cleveland.com/open/2021/08/f…
PUCO released an initial batch of subpoenaed records in February, which showed former chairman Sam Randazzo, who received a $4.3 million bribe from FirstEnergy, played a role in the commission’s weak initial response to the #HB6 criminal investigation cleveland.com/open/2021/08/f…
As of today, the PUCO has still not completed production of the subpoenaed records I filed Open Records Law requests for last year. The law requires the release of public records in a “reasonable” amount of time.
Oops: correct link for info on how initial batch of subpoenaed emails that were made public showed Randazzo’s role in PUCO’s initial lackluster response to the FirstEnergy corruption scandal cleveland.com/news/2022/02/e…
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A preliminary settlement between FirstEnergy and Ohio ratepayers who filed a RICO lawsuit re: the multi-million House Bill 6 bribery scheme quietly grew from $37.5 million to $49 million when Energy Harbor joined the settlement last month documentcloud.org/documents/2210…
The $11.5 settlement Energy Harbor, formerly FirstEnergy Solutions, reached with the ratepayer plaintiffs may be the first time the former FirstEnergy has paid a price for its role in the HB 6 bribery scheme.
FirstEnergy’s lawyers marked as “Confidential” 470,000 out of the 470,000 records from securities litigation the company turned over to Ohio Consumers Counsel as part of a public investigation of the multi-million House Bill 6 bribery scheme dis.puc.state.oh.us/DocumentRecord…
In response, the Ohio Consumers Counsel pointed out that some of the records FirstEnergy marked as “Confidential” are already in the public domain
“Sunlight is the best of disinfectants,” wrote Ohio’s state consumer advocate, quoting Louis Brandeis
FERC's power to assess fines of up to $1 million a day is stated in the instructions for completing Form 1 documentcloud.org/documents/7214… the reporting form where FirstEnergy "improperly" reported lobbying expenses, which resulted in misuse of ratepayer money documentcloud.org/documents/2119…
The FERC audit found evidence of an effort to conceal lobbying and policy expenses, some of which FirstEnergy has now admitted amounted to bribes, wrongly paid for with ratepayer money documentcloud.org/documents/2119…
2004: FirstEnergy publicly disclosed a $500K payment to IEU-Ohio, an org affiliated with future PUCO chairman Samuel Randazzo, in an annual report filed with the SEC, as was required at the time under the PUHCA energyandpolicy.org/firstenergy-se…
Congress repealed parts of PUHCA after 2004, and transparency faded. The money trail between FirstEnergy and Randazzo went dark for years, as Randazzo served on the PUCO Nominating Council and then as PUCO chairman energyandpolicy.org/firstenergy-se…
2022: It takes a bribery investigation and 3-year FERC audit to reveal $22.8 million in FirstEnergy payments to IEU-Ohio and another Randazzo entity documentcloud.org/documents/2119…
A key takeaway from FERC audit of FirstEnergy: What started off as a "$60 million bribery scandal" is now more like a $133 million scandal. Let's breakdown the money in a thread.
FERC's audit team initially found FirstEnergy improperly included $10.9 million spent on lobbying in accounts reserved for expenses that are "presumptively recoverable" from ratepayers documentcloud.org/documents/2103…
Then FirstEnergy, after it signed an agreement with federal prosecutors, revealed additional political payments to FERC's audit team, including $22.8 million paid to two for-profit entities associated with former PUCO chairman Samuel Randazzo documentcloud.org/documents/2119…
A federal court ruling broadened the definition of political spending that must be excluded from utility rates, says @OCC4Consumers, with potentially big implications for PUCO’s investigation into FirstEnergy’s misuse of ratepayer $ to support #HB6dis.puc.state.oh.us/DocumentRecord…
The court ruling could also raise new questions about $137 million in external affairs costs that FirstEnergy included in “above-the-line” accounts that #FERC reserves for utility operating expenses that are “presumptively recoverable” from ratepayers energyandpolicy.org/firstenergy-se…
The court ruling affirmed that FERC should have ordered a transmission company jointly owned by AEP and Allegheny Energy (FirstEnergy) should to refund $6 million in ratepayer money that was misused for political spending cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opini…