Timing Key in Consulting Deal Between Firstenergy, Regulator
“Shortly before a utility lawyer and lobbyist was appointed Ohio’s top regulator of electric and power generating companies, he received $4.3 million from top executives at one of the companies whose fortunes would soon be in his hands,” report Mark Gillispie and Julie Carr Smyth in StarTribune.
“In the months that followed, that company — Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp. — won a string of legislative and regulatory victories worth well over $1 billion over time to the company and its subsidiaries, including a nuclear plant bailout that’s at the center of a $60 million federal bribery probe. The bulk of that tab was to be paid by the state’s electricity customers.”
“What investigators at the state and federal levels now want to know is whether Sam Randazzo, the utility lawyer-turned-regulator who has since resigned, helped FirstEnergy in exchange for millions.”