From The Toledo Blade The governor’s administration and the fossil-fuel industry are closely intertwined.
Gov. John Kasich has signed a measure that freezes Ohio’s popular renewable-energy standards. Although the freeze attracted most of the attention, the new law also calls for a two-year study of the standards’ impact on the state.
While the General Assembly conducts this review, the process that led Governor Kasich to suspend the standards deserves scrutiny as well. That’s why I have filed a request for information about communications Mr. Kasich and his senior staff may have had with fossil-fuel interests before he decided to repeal clean-energy expansion in Ohio.
My organization, a government watchdog group called the Checks and Balances Project, seeks documentation of written and email communications from the governor and his staff to representatives of Koch Industries Inc., and the lobbying organizations they are known to support financially, as well as communications between the governor’s office and Ohio’s investor-owned utilities.
We made this request in light of a recent $12,155 donation — the maximum contribution allowed by Ohio campaign finance law — by David Koch to Governor Kasich’s 2014 re-election campaign. We’re also curious about the significant donations the governor has received from Ohio utilities, such as FirstEnergy.
Ohioans deserve to know why Mr. Kasich signed Senate Bill 310 even though it could cost Ohio consumers $1.1 billion, could put 25,000 Ohio jobs at risk, and was overwhelmingly opposed by Ohioans, a significant number of major businesses, and the state’s leading newspapers. The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, a nonpartisan agency, concluded that the state’s renewables policy would save consumers tens of millions of dollars.