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Tag: Gov. Mike Dewine

  • Ohio Lawmakers Send Five Property Tax Reform Measures to the Governor – Cleveland Scene

    Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has some decisions to make on property tax reform. State lawmakers have signed off on five proposals in recent weeks, and now they’re headed for DeWine’s desk.

    Although the governor has expressed concern about rising property taxes, he has bucked earlier legislative proposals tucked into the state budget.

    Lawmakers initially promised to override several of those vetoes but pulled back after overriding just one, which prohibited certain kinds of levies including substitute and emergency levies.

    Instead, Republican lawmakers in the House launched a kind of property tax blitzkrieg, led in large part by former Ashtabula County auditor, state Rep. David Thomas, R-Jefferson.

    Thomas is a primary sponsor on all five of the bills lawmakers sent to DeWine.

    The proposals empower county officials to pare back levies previously approved by voters, create more room for tax reductions, limit the growth of tax bills to the rate of inflation, and shift the burden of proof in valuation disputes.

    On the Ohio Senate floor last week, another former Ashtabula County auditor, state Sen. Sandra O’Brien, R-Ashtabula, reduced it to a simple equation.

    “Our taxpayers, whom we represent, want property tax relief,” she said. “The bills that we are about to vote on, offer them that relief.”

    She reminded lawmakers they have little margin for error with grassroots organizers around the state collecting signatures for a ballot measure eliminating property taxes outright.

    “That scenario, if successful, would place Ohio at the edge of the abyss,” O’Brien said. “Today, we have the chance to show the taxpayers of Ohio that we hear their pleas for property tax relief.”

    Speaking at an event Friday, DeWine pointed to the property tax working group he set up after vetoing lawmakers’ budget proposals.

    He explained the group was tasked with “coming up with solutions where there’s no great solutions, frankly, no matter what we do.”

    The working group had to balance funding for local services like schools against homeowners struggling to make ends meet.

    DeWine acknowledged he doesn’t like all the compromises they reached, but insisted the group did a very good job.

    “So, I’ll judge those bills based upon what the committee came up with,” he said, “and in a few days, we’ll have some comments about that.”

    How the bills compare to recommendations

    Ohio House Bills 186 and 335 together limit the increase of property taxes to overall rate of inflation.

    The state constitution gives local governments the authority to levy up to 10 mills (or 1%) of property tax without prior voter approval.

    That constitutionally guaranteed amount is known as inside millage, while any additional taxes approved at the ballot are known as outside millage.

    Ohio House Bill 186 applies to outside millage and Ohio House Bill 335 applies to inside millage.

    DeWine’s working group explicitly endorsed the former and encouraged lawmakers to apply the same inflationary cap to inside millage.

    Ohio has a tax reduction system that lowers a homeowners rates to keep their tax bill steady for decades. But there’s an important limitation. The total amount of school levies can’t dip below 20 mills.

    Ohio House Bill 129 includes additional taxes in the calculation of the 20-mill floor.

    In particular the substitute and emergency levies lawmakers prohibited going forward didn’t previously count toward the floor.

    The working group suggested they should and be renamed as fixed sum levies, as well. I

    mportantly, the members urged lawmakers to maintain a 12.5% state share of funding if those taxes get renewed.

    Without that so-called ‘rollback’ districts would get less money for the same levy. All told, the gap would be about $96 million.

    Lawmakers agreed to keep the rollback, but in the House version, allowed for only one renewal of expiring levies.

    Critics warned that would delay rather than solve the problem. The Senate tacked on an amendment to allow ongoing renewals.

    Ohio House Bill 309 allows the county budget commission, made up the local auditor, treasurer, and prosecutor, to reduce voted levies they deem unnecessary or excessive.

    DeWine’s veto message said that “breaches” voters’ approval.

    His property tax working group determined the commission should have the authority but insisted on guardrails.  They recommended a five-year safe harbor for new levies and two years for renewals.

    The group also said there should be explicit definitions of “excessive” and “unnecessary.”

    State lawmakers took up the definitions, and in the House, they agreed to a five-year safe harbor for new levies.

    Renewals, however, would be eligible for reductions immediately.

    In the Senate, lawmakers trimmed further — reducing the protections to just one year after voter approval.

    Ohio House Bill 124 gives county auditors the benefit of the doubt when it comes to property valuations.

    Ohio counties do a full reappraisal on six-year cycles, but they update values three years in based on statistical trends.

    Under current law, if state tax officials object to the county’s math, the auditor’s only option is to go to the board of tax appeals.

    The bill would instead put the onus on the Department of Taxation to bring an appeal if it disputes the auditor’s findings.

    That proposal wasn’t part of the working group’s recommendations, but it cruised through committee without any opposition.

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

    Nick Evans, Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Allowing Politicians to Stay in Charge of Ohio Redistricting Has Just Led to More Gerrymandering – Cleveland Scene

    Betrayal can be dressed up as bipartisan or best-case scenario, but it is still betrayal. 

    Ohio Republicans picked off two more congressional districts to gerrymander, in defiance of the Ohio Constitution and the clear will of Ohio voters. 

    They framed their con as a “compromise” with Ohio Democrats who defended their complicity in disenfranchising thousands of Toledo and Cincinnati voters as the best possible outcome.

    This is not what democracy looks like. This is what partisan preservation over democratic representation looks like.   

    No wonder people have clocked out of politics. Can’t blame them for thinking their vote isn’t worth a fig if self-dealing politicians don’t respect it or the law.

    Ohioans voted twice to end the egregious practice of contorting electoral district boundaries for political gain— like the gerrymandered sham just approved at the expense of voters in two of Ohio’s largest cities.

    Over 70% of voters approved constitutional amendments in 2015 and 2018 precisely to prevent what the Ohio Redistricting Commission did last week. 

    Ohioans demanded a level playing field in the redistricting done every decade based on the results of the decennial census. 

    They voted to amend their constitution to outlaw political subterfuge that skewed the boundary lines of state legislative and congressional districts to loop in decisive shares of desired voters and dilute the influence of disfavored voters to handily win elections. 

    An overwhelming majority of Ohio voters called that deliberate manipulation of district maps cheating and wanted it stopped.

    Yet the doubly gerrymandered congressional map hastily approved (without public input) by the redistricting commission Friday dilutes the voting power of big swaths of the electorate in diverse metropolitan communities. 

    It grossly betrays Ohioans who trusted their elected representatives to honor the anti-gerrymandering mandate in the constitution by upholding the law. 

    Citizens were sold out by ruthless partisan operators determined to steal power any way they could. Silenced in a shameful affront to self-rule. 

    But here’s the thing: The redistricting reform amendments passed by voters were drafted by the same legislators behind Ohio’s 2011 gerrymandered maps who never intended to give up control or create fair, competitive districts. 

    In the 2020 redistricting process, Ohio Republicans repeatedly defied the constitution and the Ohio Supreme Court with rigged voting maps that illegally gave disproportionate power to one party over the other. 

    Now they have done it again with a congressional district map even more gerrymandered than the last. 

    They manipulated the maps of two congressional districts, held by incumbent Democrats, to unfairly tip the scales and boost the GOP’s chances of retaining its U.S. House majority next November. 

    Their dirty deal, cut behind closed doors with Democratic commissioners, drew higher ratios of Republican voters into Ohio’s 9th and 1st districts to overpower diminished shares of Democratic voters and neutralize their ability to sway elections. 

    Controlling Republicans on the panel hailed their bipartisan swindle as proof that the voter-approved redistricting process worked. 

    Commission Democrats, who agreed to throw U.S. Reps. Marcy Kaptur and Greg Landsman under the bus with Republican-leaning districts, fished for praise for staving off a worst-case scenario.

    A pox on them all for weakening the collective voting strength of their fellow Ohioans in a self-serving “compromise” rationalized as a political means to an end not policy to advance the public good.

    Toledo’s Kaptur, long targeted by Republicans for defeat, got the poorest bet for survival in the new congressional map of the 9th District in northwest Ohio. 

    Extreme gerrymandering turned her already red district into a much redder one that will be formidable, if not impossible, for the 79-year-old Democrat (who won her last race by less than 1 percent) to capture in 2026. 

    The urban constituency in Landsman’s Cincinnati-based 1st District will be converted into a marginalized minority in a newly jiggered map that scooped up more heavily GOP counties to change the southwest district from one favoring Democrats to one favoring Republicans. 

    What happens in the 2026 midterms is anybody’s guess, of course, but there is little doubt about what happened this fall in Ohio and why. 

    It is no secret that the GOP fix was in on redrawing congressional maps from the get-go. 

    Republicans held all the cards. They planned to steal at least two more U.S. House seats through unconstitutional gerrymandering to score points with the convicted felon in the White House and expand GOP dominance in the state. 

    Democrats stooped to a trade-off that saved a third district from being included and insisted it was better than nothing.  

    But nowhere, it seems, did the equal voting rights of every Ohioan take precedence in the infuriating redistricting charade that flagrantly disregarded the letter and spirit of the constitutional amendment which explicitly barred partisan gerrymandering      

    The result is disenfranchised citizens whose voting power to choose their own representatives has been sacrificed to gerrymandered winning at all costs, damn the democratic consequences.

    Shame on both Republicans and Democrats for breaking faith with Ohio voters on their most fundamental right of self-governance to wield partisan leverage in a political war for control. 

    Call it what it is — an epic bipartisan betrayal. 

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

    Marilou Johanek, Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Ohio’s Hemp Bills Saw No Movement Last Week Despite DeWine’s Blocked Executive Order – Cleveland Scene

    Ohio Republican and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate agree there needs to be regulations that prevent children from buying intoxicating hemp products, but there was no movement last week on legislation that would regulate those products. 

    DeWine recently announced a 90-day executive order that bans the sale of intoxicating hemp products that started on Oct.14. 

    Franklin County Court of Common Pleas Judge Carl Aveni granted a 14-day temporary restraining order on DeWine’s executive order. The next hearing in this case is scheduled for Oct. 28.

    Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman, R-Lima, said the 14-day pause on DeWine’s hemp ban does not give legislators urgency to pass legislation that would regulate these products. 

    “I think that the governor issuing the order may have jumpstarted trying to get some resolution of the whole thing,” he said, speaking to reporters on Oct. 15. “I think that perhaps a 14-day TRO only muddies the water worse than it was before.” 

    The temporary pause causes uncertainty, Huffman said. 

    “With uncertainty, in one sense, uncertainty isn’t good, but it is also when things are uncertain, that’s when people are more likely to try to resolve something,” he said. “We don’t want Delta-8 products being sold to children in stores. Everybody agrees on that. There’s a lot of other details that need to be worked out.”

    Ohio Senate Bill 56 is up for a possible vote out of the Ohio House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday afternoon. The bill would only allow a licensed marijuana dispensary to sell intoxicating hemp products that have been tested and complied with packaging, labeling and advertising requirements. The bill, which passed in the Senate earlier this year, would also change parts of the state’s marijuana law. 

    Ohio House Minority Leader Dani Isaacsohn, D-Cincinnati, said there is opportunity for bipartisan compromise when it comes to regulating intoxicating hemp products and preventing children from buying these products at a convenience store or gas station. 

    “Our role is to keep communities safe by finding common sense regulations and laws around intoxicating substances,” he said. “… We should be able to do a number of good, reasonable, middle-of-the-road things with any bill that deals with intoxicating hemp. We should be able to focus on keeping kids safe.” 

    There are a handful of bills in the Ohio legislature that would regulate intoxicating hemp products in various ways. The Ohio Senate passed a couple of bills related to regulating intoxicating hemp products earlier this year that are now in the Ohio House.

    “We’re really trying to just wait and see what the House is willing to pass,” Ohio Senate President Rob McColley, R-Napoleon, said. “A lot of these hemp products, my concern is, there’s really no regulatory scheme around them. We don’t have any way of determining the point of origin if we get a bad batch. There’s no age limit to a lot of the stuff.” 

    The Ohio lawmakers should have done something regarding hemp a long time ago, he said.  

    “We need to make sure that we put some very basic protections in place to make sure that if we’re going to allow this to be sold, it’s only adults that are purchasing this and it’s not in containers the children can get into,” McColley said.  

    Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio, D-Lakewood, said she hopes there is a sense of urgency around passing a bill to regulate intoxicating hemp products. 

    “We should set an age limit for this,” she said. “I think that’s the biggest concern that Democrats and Republicans have, is we do not want stuff like this in the hands of children.”

    At least 32 states have some regulations on intoxicating hemp products.

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

    Megan Henry, Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Max Miller Claims Suburbanites Are Afraid to Visit Cleveland – Cleveland Scene

    Representative Max Miller, in an op-ed published in the Washington Times that could double as a middle school thesis paper complete with quotations of the Constitution’s preamble, called for the National Guard to be deployed in Cleveland.

    Miller, in echoing the sycophantic call of Republicans to militarize Democratic cities across the country after Trump’s deployment of the Guard to the District of Columbia and Memphis, cited public safety as the driving force to localize the boots-on-the-ground movement.

    Crime is out of control, he wrote, contrary to stats that have showed Cleveland’s homicide rate declining 26% and nationwide data showing a 17% drop in homicides in the country’s 30 largest cities. (As Justin Bibb argued in an MSNBC op-ed earlier this summer, those improvements are due to the work of Democratic mayors in the face of obstacles and cuts from the Trump administration.)

    But Miller, a lifelong suburbanite, isn’t here for that.

    Miller is here for a dystopian and false picture of life in Cleveland.

    “My constituents in the suburbs are afraid to go into the city. The Cleveland I grew up in is now unrecognizable. Families no longer feel safe walking down the street, and small businesses are being boarded up,” Miller wrote.

    While it’s certainly believable that some suburban residents are simply petrified of crossing city limits — like some of those in Rocky River, for example, who are terrified of the handful of homeless people living in the rich west side burg and want to criminalize camping on public property — the contention is simply hyperbolic fear-mongering.

    As is the assertion that “small businesses are being boarded up.” (Whether he means in response to or as a precaution against public safety issues isn’t clear, but since neither are happening, it’s a moot point.)

    Giving him the absolute benefit of the doubt, he’s referencing the recent shooting in the Flats that led to the closure of Play Bar & Grill. An action taken immediately by Mayor Bibb and the City of Cleveland the night of the shooting (which the owners objected to, saying they had nothing to do with the incident), and which was followed by the Flats East Bank landlord terminating the lease of the establishment for what it claimed were repeated violations.

    How the National Guard solves that situation better is a good one.

    Reactions elsewhere have been admittedly mixed. Cleveland, like Baltimore and Memphis, has a troubled history with policing. Communities that have been disproportionately targeted by law enforcement have voiced concerns in other cities about the prospect of being harassed for low-level infractions. Immigrants remain concerned about arrests. And there’s the whole prospect of authoritarian militarism in America.

    “(Dr. Martin Luther) King referred to militarism as a sickness. Unfortunately, this president is full of that sickness,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said recently after Trump threatened once again to send troops to the city. “There are no circumstances under which the deployment of American soldiers should be sent in cities across America. It is actually quite upsetting that this president has seduced a number of American people into his meretricious form of governance that has placed our democracy at incredible risk.”

    Tennessee Governor Bill Lee welcomed the move in Memphis — where police just released stats showing crime at a 25-year low — which is a key legal lynchpin. Objections by governors in Illinois and Maryland have so far blocked Trump’s desire to deploy the Guard in Chicago and Baltimore. Which is why Miller wants DeWine to give the green light.

    “The people of Cleveland deserve to feel safe again,” Miller wrote. “They deserve to live without fear. The people I represent should be able to go to a Guardians, Browns or Cavs game without fearing for their lives. There is no higher duty of government than this.”

    DeWine’s office, in a statement, said Ohio is a home rule state and thus mayors would have to be the ones to invite help.

    The City of Cleveland, in a statement, said it welcomes assistance from the state and federal government but in ways that don’t involve the National Guard.

    “Reducing crime is this Administration’s top priority. One victim is too many. The most effective way to keep cities safe is through local law enforcement working hand in hand with our communities, the State of Ohio, and our federal partners,” it read. “Just last week, the U.S. Marshals announced yet another successful operation in Cleveland partnering with our Division of Police and other law enforcement agencies with more than 130 violent fugitives arrested, over 3,000 rounds of ammunition seized, and numerous guns and drugs removed from our streets. These are the types of partnerships we need and will continue to advocate for from the federal-level.”

    Those partnerships include help from the state as DeWine recently announced multi-agency assistance in Cleveland in coordination with Bibb that will see Highway Patrol and other staff working with local authorities as they have in Cincinnati.

    “We can bring in a team involving three or four of our different departments that can help that local community target violent offenders and get them off the street,” DeWine said. “That is something we have frankly perfected in Ohio. It works very well.”

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    Vince Grzegorek

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  • ‘Not a National Emergency.’ Retired Military Oppose DeWine Deploying Ohio National Guard Troops to D.C.

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    Tourists pass by members of the National Guard stationed outside Union Station in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 18, 2025.

    Retired military and active-duty Ohio families spoke out against Gov. Mike DeWine recently deploying Ohio National Guard troops to Washington D.C. at the request of President Donald Trump. 

    Trump said earlier this month he would send National Guard troops to Washington D.C. to crackdown on crime and Ohio is one of six states that has so far sent troops to Washington D.C.

    Violent crime in Washington D.C. is at a thirty year low and Toledo, Dayton, and Cleveland all had a higher crime rate than Washington D.C. in 2024. 

    “This is not a national emergency,” said VALOR Media Network President Kenneth Harbaugh. “The impact on the morale of these soldiers on the ground is palpable when they are pulled away from their families, when they have to miss birthdays and graduations and the beginning of school and things like that to go guard a Shake Shack.”

    Trump has also talked about possibly sending troops to other cities including Chicago, New York, and Baltimore.  

    “The current deployments … and the ones that are being contemplated in other places throughout the country in the near future are unnecessary and disruptive to the lives of all these citizen soldiers,” said Christopher Dziubek, retired U.S. Army Brigadier General. 

    Secretary of the Army Daniel P. Driscoll asked DeWine on Aug. 15 to send 150 members from the Ohio National Guard to Washington D.C. and members of the Ohio National Guard are currently there on a 30-day deployment.

    Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Tennessee have also sent troops — all states with Republican governors. 

    “These deployments to D.C. are not an emergency and are an overstep in the use of our military,” said Ohio Army National Guard veteran Jermaine Collins. “It’s downright disrespectful to our citizen soldiers to pull them away from their families and their communities to police the unhoused population in D.C. and assist ICE in mass deportations.” 

    Part of Trump’s crackdown on crime comes from a recent executive order that forces those experiencing homelessness off the streets.

    “Our loved ones are being deployed, not for defense, not for disaster relief, not for emergencies, but for missions that are vague, polarizing, and even cosmetic,” said Brandi Jones, an Ohio military spouse and co-executive director of Secure Families Initiative. “Beautification of cities is not the job of the military.”

    The Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia has not asked for National Guard troops to be deployed, and Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has spoken out against the deployment.

    “Folks did not sign up for the National Guard to become political pawns,” Collins said. “If our citizen soldiers wanted to become Metro P.D. or ICE agents, they would have signed up for that instead of the National Guard. … National Guard troops shouldn’t be used as political pawns.”

    Trump does have the authority to request National Guard troops to Washington D.C.

    “But the trigger for using those legal authorities is in an emergency situation … where normal local authorities are hamstrung by lack of resources, or they’re utterly overrun by violent rioters, protesters, insurrectionists, (or) rebels,” said Dan Maurer, U.S. Army veteran and Ohio Northern University College of Law associate professor.

    Sixty cities have a higher violent crime rate than Washington D.C., he said. 

    “The governor should have asked questions … like, ‘Well, what exactly is the emergency we’re facing? … What are the facts on the ground that justify the extraordinary use of another state’s National Guard on the streets of American cities to do law enforcement?” Maurer said. 

    The Ohio National Guard is one of the largest in the country with around 17,000 soldiers and airmen, according to the 122nd Army National Guard Band. 

    Advocates are calling on DeWine to bring the deployed National Guards troops home.

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

    Megan Henry, Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Ohio Gov. DeWine Sending Guard Troops to D.C. Makes Him Complicit in Trump’s Military Occupation

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    (Photo by Graham Stokes for the Ohio Capital Journal )

    Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine talks with the press.

    What Pandora’s Box has Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine opened by joining other Republican-led states in sending hundreds of reinforcement National Guard troops to Washington, D.C. to join the 800 military already mobilized on the streets of the nation’s capital?

    Whatever possessed the lame duck Republican governor to become complicit in Donald Trump’s authoritarian power grab to seize control of an American city with a manufactured “crime emergency” and boots on the ground? 

    DeWine must know the bizarre, militarized occupation of D.C. is based on fallacies about rising Washington crime debunked by data that proves otherwise.

    To be sure, violent crime is a serious, ongoing problem in D.C. — as it is in other major U.S. cities — but Trump’s hostile takeover of the capital city is not about effective crime-fighting and prevention. It is a distraction. A stunt. Trump has to change the subject about the Epstein coverup with something surreal.

    But deployment of National Guard troops in iconic Washington — whose number will nearly double in size after the out-of-state reinforcements arrive — is a gross abuse of power by a would-be autocrat whose favorite tactic is to assert fake emergencies (with no acute crisis) as cover for extreme action.

    Trump has declared 11 of them since January to justify everything from turning the southern border into a military zone (and soldiers into de facto border police) to setting tariffs on every country in the world, promoting fossil fuel production and exerting police power (deploying National Guard troops, federal agents and actual military) in an appalling show of force and weaponry meant to strike fear first in Los Angeles and now in the District.

    Tourists on the National Mall are greeted by active-duty soldiers on a domestic mission to surveil Americans and keep them law-abiding.

    The troops have their marching orders from a charlatan drunk on power to look tough on crime as they sightsee in combat fatigues.

    Many will soon be armed against enemy civilians who cross the line — a reversal of initial deployment directives that Guard troops would wear body armor but leave their weapons at the armory.

    Tactical armored vehicles, developed for troops in Afghanistan, are parked throughout D.C. on apparent standby to combat falling crime. Newly erected barricades and random checkpoints conducted by masked federal law enforcement appear out of nowhere.

    Outraged local residents have erupted into spontaneous “Free D.C.” demonstrations to protest the insane federal surge of law enforcement flexing its muscle and stopping people for no apparent reason.

    The militarized patrols have had a chilling effect on free speech and the exercise of assembly, but that’s right out of the authoritarian’s playbook.

    Trump uses his unchecked power as a weapon to crush the vulnerable into submission. His stated rationale for excessive use of force in D.C. is to rehabilitate “conditions of law and order,” which is rich coming from a convicted felon who praised and pardoned lawbreakers who violently assaulted police officers, rampaged through the U.S. Capitol and hunted the vice president to hang.  

    The performative theatrics of Trump’s military policing of Americans — in the ostensible land of the free — would almost be comical if the unprecedented siege of armed combatants against fellow citizens wasn’t so scary.

    Trump has made no secret of his intentions to squash self-rule elsewhere, too. He has indicated troops could be deployed to other Americans cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Baltimore where, coincidentally, the mayors are all Black Democrats.

    This is the dystopian hellscape we feared under construction. Trump is desperate to distract his base from his years-long relationship with an infamous pedophile accused of victimizing hundreds of teenage girls, so why not normalize military occupations in America with Republican enablers like Ohio’s governor?

    “We’ve been asked by the Secretary of the Army to send 150 military police from the Ohio National Guard to support the District of Columbia National Guard,” read a brief statement from DeWine’s office Saturday night.

    Ohio guard members will “carry out presence patrols and serve as added security,” the press release explained with an odd asterisk that none of the military police from Ohio were “currently serving as law enforcement officers in the state of Ohio.” 

    Wait, what? DeWine just dispatched Ohio soldiers to play cops on the beat in Washington but it’s okay?! My friends, we are deep down the rabbit hole.

    Would the governor also welcome hundreds of troops to carry out presence patrols in Ohio cities with higher crime rates than D.C., as a few do?

    Would that also warrant hostile federal takeovers by armed military rolling from Toledo to Dayton to restore “law and order” under Trump’s selective application of justice?

    When word spread about DeWine’s decision to send military reinforcements — to be deployed against a nation’s own people — demonstrators gathered at the Ohio Statehouse to protest his offering of homegrown troops “to further militarize D.C.”

    What if Columbus is next?

    Could Ohioans count on their governor to be a bulwark against an authoritarian regime leveraging the military for control of Ohio’s “big three” cities, or would DeWine follow orders as a partisan invertebrate to the end and reinforce the takeover with more troops to suppress dissent, maintain power and project strength?

    Ask the 150 Ohio soldiers on their way to D.C.

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

    Marilou Johanek, Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine Lost All Credibility When He Repeatedly Voted for Illegally Gerrymandered Maps

    Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine Lost All Credibility When He Repeatedly Voted for Illegally Gerrymandered Maps

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    Photo by Graham Stokes for the Ohio Capital Journal

    Ohio Governor Mike DeWine talks with the press.

    Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine clutching his pearls Wednesday morning about predetermined partisan outcomes after he forced unconstitutional district maps on voters that gave his party 67 out of 99 Ohio House seats and 26 out of 33 Ohio Senate seats in a 56-44 state was hilarious, absurd and pathetic.

    Even more striking was how condescending and insulting it was for DeWine to lecture Ohio voters about gerrymandering after he went along with the unconstitutional gerrymandering of districts seven times in defiance of Ohio voters and a bipartisan Ohio Supreme Court in 2021 and 2022.

    Probably the worst part of that was DeWine acknowledging that gerrymandering leads to extremist legislatures who get elected mostly in primaries because the outcomes of general elections are predetermined: So he knows what’s wrong, but when he had his chance to do something about it, he supported gerrymandering anyway.

    Now the governor is using his bully pulpit to try to disparage an anti-gerrymandering proposal heading to Ohio voters this November. That proposed amendment would kick politicians like DeWine out of the mapmaking process in favor of a 15-member citizen redistricting commission. The effort is led by two bipartisan former Ohio Supreme Court justices — spearheaded by retired Republican Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor. Blissfully lacking all self-awareness as well as basic comprehension of the plan he claimed to have studied carefully, DeWine called it “horrible.”

    DeWine attempted to gaslight Ohioans into thinking that the citizen commission plan would lead to the worst gerrymandering Ohio has ever seen, after DeWine joined Statehouse Republicans in forcing voters to cast ballots in 2022 under the worst gerrymandered maps Ohio has ever seen.

    For the last two years, Ohio has had Statehouse lawmakers seated in unconstitutionally gerrymandered districts. Nevertheless, with a straight face, DeWine proposed an “Iowa plan” that he said he would work with gerrymandered Ohio lawmakers to introduce. If that Iowa model is followed, it would leave gerrymandered Ohio lawmakers with final authority over maps.

    The “Iowa plan” DeWine went on and on about requires a plan to be first developed by their non-partisan Legislative Services Agency, which is then sent to the legislature for approval. If that plan fails to get lawmakers’ support, the Legislative Services Agency has to develop a second plan adjusting for lawmakers’ problems with the first plan. If that second plan is rejected by lawmakers or the governor, a third plan is submitted by the LSA, but under the third plan, lawmakers can make any changes they want. So, if lawmakers don’t like the maps, all they have to do is keep rejecting them and run out the clock and then they can draw whatever maps they want.

    Running out the clock to impose unconstitutionally gerrymandered maps is exactly what Ohio Republican politicians did in 2021 and 2022.

    DeWine evaded questions about the fact that his proposal would leave politicians in charge by trying to be cute that it’s only the criteria for mapmaking that he likes about the Iowa plan. But DeWine is proposing to work with lawmakers to draft the plan — gerrymandered lawmakers. If gerrymandered lawmakers start with a model plan that leaves final authority over maps in their hands, what are the chances they will strip that out and give up their authority? Does DeWine think Ohioans are idiots?

    By trying to focus his comments on the criteria, DeWine spent the bulk of his time criticizing requirements for proportionality proposed by Citizens Not Politicians — meaning requirements that the districts reflect the actual political preferences of voters. The maps DeWine helped force on Ohio voters left us with a 67-seat Republican supermajority House in a 56% Republican simple majority state. So I’m not surprised that DeWine doesn’t give a damn about proportionality.

    The “Iowa plan” doesn’t mention proportionality in criteria at all. Instead it emphasizes that districts be compact and contiguous and preserve political subdivisions. It prohibits intentionally favoring a party, incumbent, person or group by disallowing political data from being used in map-drawing, but it should be noted that it’s fairly simple to draw a heavily politicized map by just using geography and not data.

    The Citizens Not Politicians plan that DeWine disparaged as “horrible” requires districts be contiguous, preserve communities of interest, and that they be relatively proportional: within three percentage points of overall voter preferences.

    As I have written before, fair maps ought to minimize the number of seats that have to be drawn safe and make the number of those districts proportional, and evenly maximize the number of competitive districts.

    DeWine was confronted Wednesday with the fact that the primary frustration of Ohio voters with our currently gerrymandered districts is that they do not reflect Ohioans’ actual political preferences, and he was asked if the Iowa plan would produce proportional maps.

    “I think they would,” is all DeWine could weakly offer. Sure. If we only trust Ohio’s gerrymandered lawmakers. Hey Charlie Brown, come try to kick this football again.

    The truth is, DeWine lost all credibility on the subject of gerrymandering when he repeatedly voted for illegally gerrymandered maps. Now he’s pitching a proposal that would have lawmakers draft redistricting reform based on an “Iowa plan” that leaves lawmakers with final authority.

    If you didn’t enjoy the last turd sandwich we forced you to eat, Ohio voters, perhaps you’ll let us serve you another one: refried and microwaved.

    Does DeWine really think he’s this slick? Does he really think Ohio voters are this dumb?

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

    David Dewitt, Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Ohio Gov. DeWine Said He Didn’t Know of Millions in FirstEnergy Support. Is It Plausible?

    Ohio Gov. DeWine Said He Didn’t Know of Millions in FirstEnergy Support. Is It Plausible?

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    (Photo by Graham Stokes for the Ohio Capital Journal.)

    COLUMBUS, OH — MAY 03: Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine joined on stage by First Lady Fran DeWine, Lt. Gov. Jon Husted and Second Lady Tina Husted to celebrate DeWine winning the Republican Party nomination for governor in the Ohio primary election, May 3, 2022, at the DeWine-Husted campaign headquarters, Columbus, Ohio.

    Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s claim to not know about the millions an Akron utility spent supporting his 2018 campaign for governor simply isn’t credible, an Ohio political scientist said in a recent interview. A spokesperson for DeWine pushed back.

    FirstEnergy provided that support, then spent more than $60 million to pass and protect a $1.3 billion ratepayer-financed bailout that mostly benefited the utility. In 2019, DeWine signed the law within hours of its passage. 

    But now that two GOP officials are in federal prison as part of the scandal and two others involved in the scheme have died by suicide, DeWine and Lt. Gov. Jon Husted are downplaying what they knew about FirstEnergy’s support for their campaigns. They’re also downplaying connections between their administration and the utility.

    They say they supported the unpopular bailout because they thought it was good public policy to protect nuclear generation in Ohio.

    However, a batch of records turned over in response to a records request by a group of news organizations — including Floodlight, the Energy News Network, the USA Today Network and the Capital Journal — are showing that the support they’ve gotten from FirstEnergy is greater than previously known.

    Big, dark money

    The company made donations totaling $1 million to 501(c)(4) dark money groups supporting Husted in 2018 before he dropped his gubernatorial bid and joined the DeWine ticket. The records also reveal that the company gave as much as $2.5 million to dark money groups supporting DeWine the same year.

    Husted’s office wouldn’t say whether the lieutenant governor knew about the contributions at the time they were made. DeWine Press Secretary Dan Tierney last week denied that DeWine knew about the trove of newly revealed FirstEnergy contributions. 

    University of Cincinnati political scientist David Niven said there’s a “zero-percent chance” that DeWine’s claim is true. He explained that in 2018, there was a nationwide backlash against the presidency of Donald Trump and support for Democrats was surging. That meant a “razor-wire thin” election for DeWine, a Republican running in a state Trump carried by eight points two years earlier, Niven said.

    DeWine “was running in an election cycle when the tide was going against his party,” Niven said. “The notion that he was just this fumbling, naive grandpa who has no idea about seven-figure flows (supporting) his campaign is perhaps the single most far-fetched thing he’s ever said.”

    There’s also the fact that it’s questionable for a company to make such a huge expenditure and not make sure the public official benefiting from it knew about it That seems especially true of FirstEnergy, which later admitted to paying an outright bribe of $4.3 million to Sam Randazzo just before DeWine nominated him to regulate the company and other Ohio utilities.

    A state indictment of Randazzo and two former FirstEnergy executives says that on Dec. 18, 2018, the executives had dinner with Gov.-elect DeWine and Lt. Gov.-elect Husted and went from there to Randazzo’s condo to arrange the bribe. Randazzo, who was accused of helping to draft and lobby for the corrupt bailout, died by suicide earlier this month.

    Return on investment

    Tierney, DeWine’s press secretary, was asked last week why FirstEnergy would spend millions supporting his boss and not make sure DeWine knew about it. Tierney cited rules prohibiting dark-money groups from coordinating their activities with campaigns. 

    “Regarding your question regarding why donors to independent expenditures might not engage candidates directly on the independent expenditures, my guess is that this goes back to the fact that it is illegal for candidates to coordinate with 501 (c)(4) independent expenditure groups,” Tierney said in an email. “I would guess that entities that frequently make such donations are aware of those legal restrictions. I don’t believe you were trying to accuse the Governor of illegal conduct, as he follows the law, but I would vociferously push back on any such innuendo as there is no basis for it.”

    However, merely informing a candidate of a contribution to an independent group doesn’t seem sufficient to meet the state’s definition of “coordination.” That applies to communications “made pursuant to any arrangement, coordination, or direction by the candidate, the candidate’s campaign committee, or the candidate’s agent… ” the Ohio Revised Code says.

    Some special interests have made pious claims that they spend millions supporting candidates not to buy influence, but because they wish to support good governance. Niven, the political scientist, said such a claim would be laughable in the context of FirstEnergy and Ohio’s 2018 gubernatorial election.

    “This is all about return on investment,” said. “This isn’t even primarily about affecting the outcome of the election, it’s about affecting the behavior of the elected.”

    And, Niven said, given that FirstEnergy’s expenditures in 2018 and 2019 won it a billion-dollar bailout, “The return on investment on this thing is spectacular.”

    Who benefits?

    In an email, Tierney questioned press coverage implying that groups supporting DeWine received all of the $2.5 million in dark money FirstEnergy put up in 2018. The donations were made to a dark money group affiliated with the Republican Governors Association, but only $500,000 was specifically labeled “DeWine.”

    “… I am sure Ohio political reporters are laser-focused on Ohio matters, I would point out that FirstEnergy operates in seven states,” Tierney said. “Some of those states have Republican governors, others have had recent Republican governors, and even more have had competitive gubernatorial elections recently as well.”

    However, of those states, only four — Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Maryland — had gubernatorial elections in 2018. And of those, Ohio’s was by far the closest and thus the most likely to be affected by big expenditures. It’s also the the state that had two nuclear plants that FirstEnergy was desperate to bail out.

    DeWine beat Democrat Richard Corday by 3.7 percentage points. The next-closest race was in Maryland, where Republican Larry Hogan beat Democrat Ben Jealous by 12 points — or more than triple the margin in the Ohio race.

    In addition, among the documents obtained by the news organizations are messages that demonstrate FirstEnergy’s interest in plowing dark money into Ohio’s 2018 gubernatorial election. One, from FirstEnergy Vice President Michael Dowling, attempted to ease worries over the company’s massive expenditures through the Republican Governors Association to help DeWine and Husted.

    “Theoretically, DeWine/Husted could have a balance of $10M in their campaign account and the RGA could spend $40M in support of DeWine in Ohio,” Dowling said in an email first reported by the Cincinnati Enquirer. “My point is that comparing the size of a contribution to the RGA to what the DeWine campaign has raised or what the DeWine Campaign’s current balance is can be done, but I’m not sure is logical.”

    Other claims

    In addition to pleading ignorance of FirstEnergy’s dark money, the governor and his staff haven’t explained what senior members of his administration who had close connections to the company knew about about a vital part of the scandal — the relationship between FirstEnergy and the man DeWine picked to regulate it.

    The governor and his staff have claimed that connections between Randazzo and FirstEnergy were common knowledge when DeWine took office in 2019. However, there’s little evidence to support the claim. 

    Meanwhile, Randazzo’s state indictment says Randazzo and FirstEnergy had a long, secret partnership that paid Randazzo millions even before his $4.3 million payoff in 2019. It also lays out evidence that both parties were anxious to keep it hidden. 

    Throughout the scandal, DeWine and his staff have staunchly maintained that the governor supported the FirstEnergy bailout not out of any ulterior motive, but because he thought it was good public policy. To support that, Tierney last week pointed to the fact that Cordray, DeWine’s Democratic challenger, also supported keeping FirstEnergy’s nuclear plants open.

    But there’s some important context. FirstEnergy gave dark money to support DeWine and oppose Cordray. In addition, DeWine’s chief of staff, legislative-affairs director and his choice to regulate the industry all had lucrative financial connections to the company either contemporaneously or in the recent past.

    “It’s just laughable,” Niven said. “They find themselves in the literal center of the biggest corporate-political swindle in the state’s history and their answer is, ‘Well anybody would have done this.’”

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

    Marty Schladen, The Ohio Capital Journal

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  • DeWine Says Randazzo’s Ties to FirstEnergy Were Well Known, But the Evidence of This is Lacking

    DeWine Says Randazzo’s Ties to FirstEnergy Were Well Known, But the Evidence of This is Lacking

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    The Ohio Channel

    Sam Randazzo

    The office of Gov. Mike DeWine has for months been saying that connections between the guy he picked to be the state’s top regulator and a utility at the center of an epic bribery scandal were well known around Capitol Square when DeWine nominated him in January 2019. 

    If the relationship were common knowledge, it might seem more innocent that some in DeWine’s administration knew the utility had paid the regulator $4.3 million just before the governor nominated him. However, the administration has provided scant evidence that the claim is true — and there’s considerable evidence suggesting it isn’t.

    The regulator, Sam Randazzo, died by suicide earlier this month and the utility, Akron-based FirstEnergy, has admitted to its role in a scandal that has sent one public official to prison for 20 years and seen yet another defendant die by suicide. 

    Meanwhile, DeWine’s lieutenant governor, Jon Husted, won’t talk about a $1 million FirstEnergy contribution to a group supporting him. And DeWine himself hasn’t explained what senior people in his administration with FirstEnergy connections knew about the scheme — in which $61 million in bribes were paid for a $1.3 billion ratepayer bailout.

    Multiple ties

    Among them is Laurel Dawson, who was chief of staff of the incoming DeWine administration at the beginning of 2019. At the same time, her husband, Mike Dawson, was a lobbyist for FirstEnergy.

    A few weeks before, on Dec. 18, 2018, Gov.-elect DeWine and Lt. Gov.-elect Jon Husted had dinner at the Columbus Athletic Club with FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones and Vice President Micheal Dowling. At the dinner, they discussed whether Randazzo would be acceptable to head up the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio — the agency that was supposed to regulate the executives’ utility, according to a state indictment of Randazzo, Jones, and Dowling that was filed in February.

    After the dinner, the FirstEnergy executives drove about a mile to Randazzo’s condo and negotiated a $4.3 million payment to Randazzo, the indictment said. FirstEnergy later said the payment was a bribe in a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Justice Department.

    As PUCO chairman, Randazzo helped draft and lobby for the bailout law and did several other lucrative favors for FirstEnergy. His indictment said it capped off a decade-long relationship in which he was a paid “consultant” for FirstEnergy unbeknownst to his law firm or a group of industrial energy users on whose behalf Randazzo was supposed to be negotiating concessions.

    The indictment says at least one person in the DeWine administration — Laurel Dawson — knew that Randazzo had gotten a huge payment from FirstEnergy in the weeks before DeWine nominated him to chair the PUCO at the beginning of February 2019.

    Randazzo told “the Governor-elect through his incoming Chief of Staff that he had received $4.3 million from FirstEnergy, which he claimed was final payment of a ‘consulting agreement,’” Randazzo’s indictment said.

    For her part, Laurel Dawson is cooperating with the state prosecution, but she isn’t commenting publicly.

    Common knowledge?

    In the months since the state indictment of Randazzo and the FirstEnergy executives, DeWine Press Secretary Dan Tierney has been saying that Randazzo’s ties to FirstEnergy weren’t news even at the time the governor was considering him in early 2019 to head the PUCO.

    In February, he told Cleveland’s News Channel 5, “it was well known that Randazzo was a paid consultant for FirstEnergy.” 

    Tierney modified that somewhat, telling the Capital Journal earlier this month, “it was well known to our staff that Mr. Randazzo was an energy consultant, and it was well-known to them and many people that Mr. Randazzo was a consultant employed by First Energy.”

    However, it appears that Randazzo and FirstEnergy’s top leadership went to great lengths to keep their relationship secret. 

    Many of the counts Randazzo was charged with have to do with his failure to report income from FirstEnergy on state ethics disclosures while he was PUCO chairman. A bill of particulars accompanying the indictment adds that Randazzo didn’t disclose a 2015 consulting agreement with FirstEnergy to the members of his own law firm, McNees, Wallace and Nurick. Randazzo’s membership agreement in the firm barred barred him from outside employment, the filing said.

    Pressed on the matter this week, Tierney said in an email, “Mr. Randazzo testified numerous times at the General Assembly prior to his appointment to the PUCO. In addition, Mr. Randazzo served on the PUCO Nominating Council, which requires ethics disclosures. These were among the reasons Mr. Randazzo’s relationships with utilities and FirstEnergy were well known at the Statehouse and on Capitol Square.”

    The Capitol Journal obtained Randazzo’s disclosures from the Ohio Ethics Commission for the period he served on the PUCO Nominating Council — 2007 to 2017. “FirstEnergy” doesn’t appear on any of them.

    Tierney was informed of that and asked whether DeWine’s office could point to any testimony Randazzo gave to the General Assembly in which he divulged his long, profitable relationship with FirstEnergy. Tierney didn’t answer that question, saying instead, “My understanding is that Mr. Randazzo’s business entities are listed on the ethics form(s), and those business entities not only were well known to be associated with Mr. Randazzo on Capitol Square, but also well known to have First Energy as clients.”

    Shell game

    The entity that appears on Randazzo’s ethics disclosures is the Sustainability Funding Alliance of Ohio — a group prosecutors accused Randazzo of using as a shell corporation to skim millions in FirstEnergy money earmarked for his industrial clients. The group’s relationship with FirstEnergy was so secret that the corporation’s top executives feared that a partial disclosure would tank Randazzo’s nomination to the PUCO.

    FirstEnergy Solutions — a subsidiary Jones and Dowling desperately wanted ratepayers to bail out — was going through bankruptcy. One of its filings mentioned the Sustainability Funding Alliance, which Randazzo had also listed on his ethics disclosures.

    The FirstEnergy executives were in a panic about it and their communications show that the connection between their company and Randazzo’s entity was far from well known.

    The DeWine administration is “going to be mad at Sam (and hopefully not us) for not disclosing the financial relationship,” Dowling texted Jones on Jan. 30, 2019, less than a week before DeWine nominated Randazzo. “That’s Sam’s responsibility.”

    When the nomination went through anyway, Dowling told Jones, “A bullet grazed temple,” to which the FirstEnergy CEO replied, “Forced DeWine/Husted to perform battlefield triage.”

    “Secret for-profit entity”

    In his email Monday, Tierney also said, “What media has described as the ‘dossier’ regarding Randazzo’s relationship with First Energy, which is a collection of public domain documents from the time in 2019, shows that much of this was colloquially known on Capitol Square and within the energy advocacy community.”

    The “dossier” Tierney referred to was a 198-page document from a former aide warning DeWine about Randazzo’s murky relationships. It was delivered to Laurel Dawson on Jan. 28, 2019 — about a week before her boss nominated Randazzo. 

    Tierney said the document shows that Randazzo’s ties to FirstEnergy were well known. But the first page of the dossier says something quite different. 

    “Publicly available documents suggest that PUCO applicant Sam Randazzo has opaque, undisclosed financial ties to FirstEnergy that should be fully examined and made public,” it says. “The enclosed evidence demonstrates that Randazzo personally profits from a secret for-profit entity funded by FirstEnergy Solutions.”

    Catherine Turcer, executive director of Common Cause Ohio, said that it’s past time for DeWine, Husted and their staffs to be much more forthcoming about their involvement in the bailout and about what DeWine and Husted did to investigate whether any member of the administration acted improperly.

    “It makes sense to be as clear as possible about what actually happened,” she said. “And I don’t just want to hear from the governor. I want to hear from the lieutenant governor.”

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

    Marty Schladen, The Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Ohio’s True State of the State: Relentless Misrepresentation, Extremism and Corruption

    Ohio’s True State of the State: Relentless Misrepresentation, Extremism and Corruption

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    The DeWine had many connections to FirstEnergy

    You wouldn’t know it from Gov. Mike DeWine’s State of the State Wednesday, but Ohioans are currently suffering under a state government captured by corruption and yoked to extremist lawmakers racked with dysfunction and intent on little more than imposing radical ideology from the safety of unconstitutionally gerrymandered districts.

    Sweetheart Republican special interests often get everything they ask for in Ohio, while community advocates fighting every day to obtain proven policy solutions that improve the lives of Ohioans get largely ignored. Wealthy families and corporations continue to do phenomenally in the Buckeye State while millions get left behind, or outright attacked.

    Back in 2010, Ohio was ranked by Education Week as having the 5th best public school system in the nation. Education Week’s last ranking was in 2021 and put Ohio at No. 20. A recent ranking from U.S. News & World Report puts Ohio education at No. 29. If you break those numbers down, Ohio sits at No. 21 for Pre-K to 12 education, and No. 37 for higher education.

    State disinvestment from higher education is one of the primary drivers of our country’s vastly over-inflated higher education costs and subsequent record student loan debt.

    The National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics calculated state support for higher education per full-time student in 2021. Ohio ranked No. 40 in the amount of money we provide to fund higher education, giving about $5,600 per student compared to a national average of nearly $8,000.

    So are gerrymandered Ohio lawmakers thinking of how they can help better support our storied and cherished institutions of higher learning as they grapple with enrollment declines and right-sizing? No. They are attacking them. They are attacking freedom of speech and expression in the classroom, and any efforts toward diversity on campuses.

    They’ve proposed and then walked back their ultimate desire to attack tenure and collective bargaining, and in accordance with their own weird preoccupations, they also want to force transgender people on campus to use restrooms that do not match their gender identity and appearance.

    The Ohio Attorney General’s Office has meanwhile put the fear into Ohio colleges over awarding any diversity scholarships. Our student loan debt at college graduation is higher than the national average, and our high school graduation rate is below the national average.

    Regarding K-12, Ohio was giving out $69 million worth of private school vouchers in 2008. In 2023, gerrymandered Ohio lawmakers imposed near-universal private school voucher eligibility. This year, Ohio public funding of private school vouchers is on track to be more than $1 billion by June.

    Who is all the new voucher money going to? Mostly to families whose children were already attending private school. As for the 90% of Ohio K-12 students who attend public school, many are in cash-strapped districts facing budget cuts.

    Ohio doesn’t fare much better in any of the other rankings by U.S. News & World Report. Overall, it puts us at No. 34.

    Ohio ranks No. 31 in crime and corrections; No. 37 in economy; No. 42 in natural environment; No. 32 in infrastructure; and No. 29 in health care.

    Take heart though, Ohio is sitting on $3.5 billion in the state’s rainy day fund and ranks No. 14 in fiscal responsibility. But don’t go counting those chickens just yet. Gerrymandered Ohio lawmakers want to end state income taxes, which would leave a $13 billion state budget deficit.

    They say they could make up the money by raising the sales tax, cutting spending, and letting the economy allegedly “fix itself.” In other words, the rich get richer while everybody else pays a higher percentage of our income for other taxes and fees to make up the difference, and low-income families get their support services cut. This, in a state where 1 in 5 children already suffer food insecurity.

    But wait, what’s this? Ohio ranks No. 11 in “opportunity”? What’s that mean? Well, it’s not economic opportunity. For that we rank No. 35. But it is affordable to live in Ohio, so we grabbed a No. 16 ranking for that.

    Nevertheless, our median household income is below the national average and our poverty rate is above the national average. Ohio also has one of the worst infant mortality rates in the country, and ranks No. 29 in income inequality, with the top 1% of Ohioans taking home nearly 16% of all of the income in the state.

    We often hear from our leaders about what a great place Ohio is to do business. Surely we have a top-notch ranking there then, right? No. We rank No. 29 in business environment, No. 34 in growth, and No. 42 in employment.

    We crack the top half of states on health care when it comes to access (No. 24) and quality (No. 23), but our public health is abysmal, coming in at No. 42. Our pollution ranking is also abysmal, at No. 45. Columbus even recently won the crown for most-polluted city in America. And even though gerrymandered lawmakers have now opened our beautiful state parks and lands to fracking, we still rank No. 35 on energy.

    The national average for renewable energy usage is 12.3%, and Ohio’s is 4.4%. We once had one of the robust commitments to alternative energy in the nation, but, if you’ll recall, that corrupt Ohio House Bill 6 law that DeWine signed same-day that was the product of a $60 million political bribery and money laundering scheme that awarded a $1.3 billion bailout to FirstEnergy and a couple of failing coal-fired plants? It also gutted the state’s renewable energy portfolio.

    Insult to injury, gerrymandered Ohio lawmakers and DeWine also stripped Ohio communities of home rule when it comes to fossil fuel rigs, but made sure local solar projects could be astroturfed and attacked into oblivion.

    This may all sound pretty bleak, because it is.

    But hey, buck up, Ohio. We may not be No. 1 in anything. (In fact, we don’t even crack the Top Ten in anything good.) But at the end of the day, at least we can pick up our kids from one of our under-funded public schools or colleges, gather with our over-worked and under-paid family and friends, and get out in the sun to enjoy some pollution.

    We could picnic at one of our favorite state parks, and take in the soothing views of a fracking operation.

    “We’re No. 34! We’re No. 34!”

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

    David Dewitt, Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Further Questions About DeWine Administration’s Involvement in HB6 Bribery Scandal

    Further Questions About DeWine Administration’s Involvement in HB6 Bribery Scandal

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    The DeWine had many connections to FirstEnergy

    As Gov. Mike DeWine in 2019 nominated Sam Randazzo to be Ohio’s top utility regulator, Randazzo went to great lengths to hide a decade-long relationship with FirstEnergy that had paid him more than $10 million. Those payments included $4.3 million just as DeWine was picking Randazzo, according to court documents filed last week.

    Yet DeWine Press Secretary Dan Tierney in February said it “was well known that Randazzo was a paid consultant for FirstEnergy.” On Tuesday, Tierney modified that statement to say “it was well known to our staff that Mr. Randazzo was an energy consultant, and it was well-known to them and many people that Mr. Randazzo was a consultant employed by First Energy.”

    DeWine’s appointee to chair the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, Randazzo went on to help write and lobby for a $1.3 billion bailout that Akron-based FirstEnergy paid more than $60 million in bribes to pass, according to a federal jury and the indictments of Randazzo and two former FirstEnergy executives. 

    The scandal broke into the open in July 2020, when the FBI arrested former House Speaker Larry Householder, R-Glenford, and four others. Householder and former Ohio GOP Chairman Matt Borges were convicted, two others pleaded guilty, and lobbyist Neil Clark died by suicide.

    DeWine, who signed the bailout law, and his staff haven’t been accused of illegal activity in the case. But with the administration’s many connections to FirstEnergy, questions continue to linger about exactly what DeWine and his team knew about the conspiracy and what they did with that knowledge.

    A big question relates to the period when the governor was picking Randazzo to be the state’s top utility regulator. Did DeWine or top members of his staff know that Randazzo had a long, lucrative relationship with FirstEnergy, one of the biggest utilities he’d be regulating?

    A state indictment of Randazzo said that he had a shady relationship with FirstEnergy stretching back to 2010. It included hiding his work for FirstEnergy from industrial energy users Randazzo served as general counsel as he secretly skimmed from settlement payments FirstEnergy made to the industrial users, the indictment said.

    Big money, big favors

    On Dec. 18, 2018, Gov.-elect DeWine and Lt. Gov.-elect Jon Husted had dinner at the Columbus Athletic Club with FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones and Vice President Michael Dowling. 

    The executives would be indicted along with Randazzo in February 2024. At the dinner, the men discussed with DeWine and Husted whether to make Randazzo the chief regulator of the executives’ company, the indictment said.

    The executives drove from the dinner to Randazzo’s German Village condo for another discussion. The same evening, Randazzo texted Dowling a column of figures ending with “Total 4,333,333.” 

    The indictment said that within weeks, the executives paid Randazzo that amount without an invoice and over a company lawyer’s objections. DeWine nominated him to chair the PUCO a few weeks after that. 

    Over the next 18 months, Randazzo labored to draft, pass, and protect the company’s massive bailout and did a number of additional, highly lucrative favors besides, the indictment said. It all ended with his resignation after the FBI searched his condo four months after Householder and the others were arrested.

    But what DeWine and his staff knew about Randazzo’s relationship with FirstEnergy as they were considering whether to make him its regulator appears to be a matter of dispute.

    “In January 2019, FirstEnergy agreed to pay out in full Randazzo’s consulting services contract just before he was nominated to run the PUCO,” a bill of particulars that was filed last week to accompany the indictment says. “It was not a gift: Randazzo would work hard for FirstEnergy from inside the government. He did not disclose his relationship, going so far as to lie about it in testimony to the General Assembly and failing to disclose to the Ohio Ethics Commission the massive sums of money he’d received from the company he would soon regulate.”

    Who knew?

    Randazzo’s indictment says Randazzo did, however, “tell the Governor-elect through his incoming Chief of Staff that he had received $4.3 million from FirstEnergy, which he claimed was final payment of a ‘consulting agreement.’” It added that Randazzo didn’t disclose the other millions he made as a FirstEnergy consultant or his work lobbying for the electricity giant.

    Tierney, DeWine’s press secretary, on Tuesday said that Randazzo’s consulting work for FirstEnergy was well known — at least inside the administration.

    “I note our office is not a party to the prosecution, so we cannot vouch for any claims made by the prosecution or defense in these cases,” he said in an email. “Speaking for the staff of the Governor’s office, it was well known to our staff that Mr. Randazzo was an energy consultant, and it was well-known to them and many people that Mr. Randazzo was a consultant employed by FirstEnergy.”

    However, FirstEnergy’s top brass feared public knowledge of their relationship could scuttle his nomination. On Jan. 30, 2019, Dowling, the FirstEnergy vice president, sent a panicked text to CEO Jones. It said Randazzo was going to pull out of the PUCO nomination process because the press found the name of one of his shell companies on a bankruptcy filing by a subsidiary FirstEnergy was seeking to bail out.

    When Randazzo’s nomination got back on track, the executives expressed relief.

    “A bullet grazed the temple,” Dowling told Jones, according to one of the texts filed as part of a civil suit over the scandal. 

    “Forced DeWine/Husted to perform battlefield triage,” Jones responded, referring to Lt. Gov. Jon Husted. “It’s a rough game.” 

    So while administration insiders might have known about the Randazzo-FirstEnergy relationship, it clearly wasn’t common knowledge to the public who would have to pay the utility’s inflated bills. Tierney didn’t answer why, if DeWine knew that Randazzo was a FirstEnergy consultant, he didn’t disclose that to the public the PUCO is supposed to protect from monopoly utilities.

    Inside connections

    While Tierney said he couldn’t vouch for the information in the indictments or other court filings, he said it would have been extraordinary to ask Randazzo whether he had been paid money by Ohio utilities as the administration was vetting him for the position as their chief regulator.

    “…it would have been unusual to review past employment compensation with the Governor as part of cabinet director vetting,” Tierney said.

    As for the chief of staff who did the vetting — Laurel Dawson — she had a FirstEnergy connection of her own. Her husband, Mike Dawson, was a FirstEnergy lobbyist whom the indictment said had received a $10,000 loan from Randazzo a few years earlier.

    It’s unclear whether the loan was repaid or whether Laurel Dawson reported it to DeWine. The DeWine aide isn’t speaking publicly.

    It’s also unclear whether Laurel Dawson told the governor that her husband participated in an early 2020 text conversation with Randazzo and Dowling. The conversation was included in the bill of particulars filed last week. 

    The three jokingly discussed rate cases and decoupling — two matters for which prosecutors say Randazzo had by then received multi-million-dollar bribes from FirstEnergy in exchange for doing even more valuable favors for the company. 

    State prosecutors say that for Randazzo, engaging in the exchange amounted to an improper ex parte conversation. It might have been of interest to DeWine to know that his chief of staff’s lobbyist husband was having such talks with the governor’s PUCO chairman.

    According to a witness list reported on Tuesday by the Toledo Blade, prosecutors plan to call both Dawsons to testify at the trial of Randazzo, Dowling and Jones.

    Pretending?

    Despite the questions surrounding what Laurel Dawson knew about Randazzo and FirstEnergy — and about what she told her boss — she remains on his staff as an advisor, making $182,000 last year.

    “The Governor has previously stated on the record at media briefings he has full faith in Ms. Dawson,” Tierney said.

    But what did he know?

    The indictment of DeWine’s PUCO chairman and the energy executives has an image of notes that Dowling made in late 2018 as FirstEnergy lobbyist Josh Rubin coached him up on how to talk to Gov.-elect DeWine. They warn the FirstEnergy executives not to tell him that they planned to go meet Randazzo just after discussing his appointment at dinner with DeWine and Husted.

    Rubin added that DeWine could be cagey.

    “Sometimes he knows what you’re talking about,” Dowling wrote in his notes. “Sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes he does and pretends he doesn’t.”

    Tierney was asked if DeWine now is feigning ignorance of the dealings between his administration, his nominee to head the PUCO and FirstEnergy. Tierney replied by saying that some of the players in the scandal have shown a tendency to make questionable statements.

    “Throughout the (utility scandal) prosecutions, third parties have made claims which have been self-serving and ultimately not true,” he said. “I will note, however, the state prosecution alleges the defendants deliberately withheld relevant information from the Governor, Lt. Governor, and other government officials.”

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

    Marty Schladen, The Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Fresh Bailout and Bribery Indictments Raise Questions About What Ohio Gov. DeWine Knew and When

    Fresh Bailout and Bribery Indictments Raise Questions About What Ohio Gov. DeWine Knew and When

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    Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal

    COLUMBUS, OH — JANUARY 31: Ohio Governor Mike DeWine gives the State of the State Address, January 31, 2023, in the House Chamber at the Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio.

    The announcement Monday of new felony indictments against players in Ohio’s massive bribery scandal is again raising questions about what Gov. Mike DeWine knew before and after he nominated Sam Randazzo to be the top utility regulator in the state.

    The indictment contained new allegations of a long, nefarious relationship between Randazzo, one of the state’s biggest utilities and a group of industrial users. On Thursday, DeWine’s spokesman reiterated that the governor believed in 2019 that Randazzo was qualified to be the top regulator because of his prior representation of utilities and large ratepayers. DeWine on Wednesday conceded that the appointment was a mistake.

    Randazzo was indicted along with the former top executives of Akron-based FirstEnergy for their alleged roles in a scheme to pay more than $60 million in bribes in exchange for the 2019 passage of a $1.3 billion ratepayer bailout that was mostly intended to prop up two nuclear plants. Former House Speaker Larry Householder, R-Glenford, was convicted of his role in federal court last year and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.

    Randazzo, DeWine’s 2019 pick to chair the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, was indicted by the feds in December. 

    On Monday, law enforcement authorities led by Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost again indicted Randazzo, this time on state felony charges. Also indicted were former FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones and former Vice President Michael Dowling. They all pleaded not guilty on Tuesday.

    Among the new allegations was that Randazzo had a corrupt relationship with the FirstEnergy executives stretching back to 2010.

    As part of it, Randazzo allegedly served as general counsel to the Industrial Energy Users of Ohio while secretly being paid as a consultant for FirstEnergy. In those capacities, Randazzo settled disputes over electricity rates on terms that were acceptable to the energy companies, then channeled the settlement money through shell companies where he skimmed off a portion, the indictment said.

    In 2015, FirstEnergy also paid out $8.5 million in supposed “consulting fees.” 

    The indictment said the money was really intended to be a cash payment to the industrial users so they would drop their opposition to a rate hike FirstEnergy was seeking. Through that “side deal,” a powerful utility paid off powerful industries to grease the skids for a rate hike on all FirstEnergy customers, if the allegations are true.

    Between 2016 and 2019, FirstEnergy paid $13 million into Randazzo’s shell companies, the indictment said. Of that, Randazzo passed $7.75 million to the industrial users and pocketed the rest, it said.

    On Thursday, DeWine Press Secretary Dan Tierney said that as his boss was entering the governor’s office at the start of 2019, DeWine saw Randazzo’s relationships with FirstEnergy and big electricity users as a special qualification to be the top regulator.

    “Governor DeWine knew of Mr. Randazzo’s relationship to FirstEnergy as a paid consultant prior to the Governor’s appointment of Mr. Randazzo,” Tierney said in an email. “As we have previously stated, Mr. Randazzo was appointed due to his expertise and having represented many sides of utility rate issues, having represented both utilities as well as large ratepayers (in) whose interest it is to pay as little as possible for utilities.”

    The connections between FirstEnergy and the incoming administration of Mike DeWine and Jon Husted were strong. DeWine’s chief of staff, Laurel Dawson, was married to a man who had been a paid lobbyist for FirstEnergy — and who had received a $10,000 loan from Randazzo in 2016, the indictment said. 

    DeWine’s legislative affairs director, Dan McCarthy, had also been a FirstEnergy lobbyist. When he was, McCarthy founded Partners for Progress, a 501(c)(4) dark money group that FirstEnergy admitted was used to funnel tens of millions of the corporation’s dollars into the effort to make Householder speaker and pass and protect the bailout. Once in the administration, McCarthy acted from that perch to help pass House Bill 6, the bailout legislation.

    And, on Dec. 18, 2018 — just before DeWine and Husted took the oath of office — they met at the Columbus Athletic Club with Jones and Dowling, the top executives for FirstEnergy. Among the topics was whether Randazzo would be acceptable to regulate the executives’ company, the indictment said.

    According to the state indictment, Jones and Dowling went from that dinner to Randazzo’s German Village condo, where they seem to have negotiated a payment that FirstEnergy later characterized as a bribe. Shortly after, Randazzo sent the executives a text message requesting $4.3 million over a period of years, according to copies filed as part of Randazzo’s indictments. Jones responded by saying it would be paid in a lump sum, the messages said.

    In January, as Randazzo was being vetted to chair the PUCO, he told Dawson, DeWine’s chief of staff, about the $4.3 million payment, but he did not tell her about the other millions he had received from FirstEnergy, the state indictment said. Randazzo didn’t report any of the payments to the Ohio Ethics Commission, it added.

    A former aide gave DeWine a dossier reporting shady financial connections between Randazzo and FirstEnergy on Jan. 28, 2019. But Tierney said that Dawson never told the governor about the $4.3 million payment before DeWine nominated Randazzo to chair the PUCO on Feb. 4, 2019.

    According to the state indictment, Randazzo spent the rest of the year and part of the next helping to draft and openly lobby for the corrupt bailout. He also took other moves on behalf of FirstEnergy, including canceling a rate review that likely would have forced the utility to lower rates, thereby lowering stock prices and costing Jones and Dowling personally, the indictment said.

    Householder and four others were arrested in July 2021. But it wasn’t until the following November — when the FBI searched Randazzo’s condo — that Dawson finally told the governor about the $4.3 million payout, Tierney said.

    “The Governor had previously stated he had a conversation with Laurel Dawson in November 2020 about Sam Randazzo when Mr. Randazzo’s property was the subject of a federal search warrant,” he said. “The contractual termination payment was part of that discussion.” 

    Subsequently, DeWine has staunchly defended Dawson, much as he defended McCarthy, the former aide and FirstEnergy lobbyist.

    July 2021 brought the lengthy, specific federal indictment of Householder, FirstEnergy, and others on the heels of Randazzo’s questionable work in support of HB 6. But DeWine apparently didn’t suspect that the company’s $4.3 million payment to Randazzo might have been a bribe — until federal agents searched his condo.

    “Please note that the payment was never alleged to our office to be a bribe until later in 2021, well after any such conversation or initial PUCO vetting of Mr. Randazzo,” DeWine’s press secretary said Thursday.

    Interestingly, the indictment unveiled on Monday contained a message from a FirstEnergy lobbyist briefing his top bosses on how to talk to DeWine.

    “Explain things like he doesn’t know anything about it — and be surprised when he does,” the lobbyist wrote. “Sometimes he knows what you’re talking about. Sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes he does and pretends he doesn’t.”

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

    Marty Schladen, The Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Ohio House leaves marijuana users in limbo with weed policy – Cannabis Business Executive – Cannabis and Marijuana industry news

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  • Adults can now legally possess and grow marijuana in Ohio — but there's nowhere to buy it – Cannabis Business Executive – Cannabis and Marijuana industry news

    Adults can now legally possess and grow marijuana in Ohio — but there's nowhere to buy it – Cannabis Business Executive – Cannabis and Marijuana industry news





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  • Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine: Proposed changes to Ohio’s new marijuana legalization law won’t contain ‘surprises’ – Cannabis Business Executive – Cannabis and Marijuana industry news

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