The watchdog organization the Checks & Balances Project has requested the identities of the Ohio Public Utilities Commission staff members who recommended issuing the protective order that declared publicly available information to be trade secrets in the audit conducted into the details of Ohio’s HB6 law.
The redaction included the identity of the company auditors accused of “overcharging” the Ohio Valley Electric Corp.’s Clifty Creek power plant for coal and other financial information about the utility – details are publicly available in filings to the U.S. Energy Information Administration and on the utility’s website.
The PUCO’s request for the protective order said the “financial information contained in the Audit Reports that is highly sensitive in nature.”
Concealing the name of the company supplying expensive coal to Clifty Creek – Resource Fuels of Columbus – made it difficult for the public to discover the profit motives behind the company’s financial support of former Ohio House speaker Larry Householder, who pushed HB6 through the Ohio legislature in 2019. Householder is now serving a 20-year prison sentence.
At the time HB6 became law, Clifty Creek was Resource Fuels’ only coal contract. Testimony provided to PUCO in October showed Resource Fuels made $12.6 million more for the coal it supplied OVEC in 2020 than Alliance Fuels, which provided more coal from the same mine.
Read the full report at the Checks & Balances Project.