Published May 27, 2021
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The following is a contributed article by Landon Stevens, Director of Policy & Advocacy, and Mark Pischea, President & CEO, at the Conservative Energy Network.
In 2020, Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder was arrested and subsequently resigned his speakership after an FBI investigation found that the influential lawmaker accepted $61 million dollars from electric utility FirstEnergy in exchange for passage of a nuclear bailout bill. The legislation sought to subsidize two of the company's failing nuclear plants by charging Ohioans a monthly fee.
Another recent scandal in Illinois saw Michael Madigan, the longest serving state Speaker of the House in U.S. history, lose his position when the state's largest utility, ComEd, confessed to giving jobs and contracts to Madigan associates for nearly a decade in an effort to sway legislation at the state capitol.