Quotable: “We are pleased to have reached a resolution with the Ohio Attorney General's Office and the Office of the Summit County Prosecutor, which recognizes the substantial actions FirstEnergy has taken to establish a highly effective compliance program and instill a culture of ethics and integrity at every level of the organization,” said Brian X. Tierney, FirstEnergy’s president and chief executive officer. “As we move forward, our focus is investing in our regulated electric companies to improve the customer experience and to meet their energy needs today and into the future.”
The scandal: The bribery scheme centered on House Bill 6, which would have established a seven-year program to charge fees to Ohio electricity consumers to provide support to the state’s nuclear plants. The legislation has since been repealed.
In 2020, federal prosecutors arrested Larry Householder, then speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, and four associates for taking $61 million from what the criminal complaint termed “Company A entities” in exchange for help in passing H.B. 6 and preventing the bill from being repealed through a ballot initiative organized by its opponents.
Householder and two of those associates, former Republican Party chair Matt Borges and lobbyist Neil Clark, entered not guilty pleas. The two other associates, lobbyist Juan Cespedes and political strategist Jeff Longstreth, pleaded guilty.
Householder was expelled from the Ohio House and in July 2023 was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Clark took his own life.
What’s next: The agreement FirstEnergy signed with the offices of Ohio’s attorney general and Summit County’s prosecuting attorney requires FirstEnergy to provide evidence, access to witnesses, and testimony in both the ongoing criminal cases against Chuck Jones and Michael Dowling and the civil proceeding relating to the passage of H.B. 6, said Steve Irwin, a spokesperson for the Ohio attorney general’s office.
“FirstEnergy today is not the company it was five years ago—the corporation has undertaken, and continues to undergo, reforms to strengthen its internal ethics programs, to increase transparency, and promote reporting of questionable conduct by its employees and leadership,” Irwin added. “It has also restructured its board and leadership to remove the individuals responsible for the conduct that gave rise to the House Bill 6 scandal.”
FirstEnergy is based in Akron, Ohio, and serves 6 million customers in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions. Davis-Besse and Perry, as well as the two-unit Beaver Valley plant in Pennsylvania, were held by FirstEnergy successor Energy Harbor until an acquisition by Vistra was completed in March 2024.
The State of Ohio and FirstEnergy reached a settlement this week to avoid prosecution in an ongoing corruption investigation involving the Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear plants.
