Strickland Veto Threat on Ohio Energy Bill Powers Nickname of “General Electric”

ePluribus Media OhioNews Bureau

COLUMBUS, OHIO: During the Wednesday session of the Ohio Senate, Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland was given the moniker of “General Electric” by senators who said major compromises arrived at by opposing stakeholders in a week’s worth of negotiations on a far-ranging energy bill would not have happened had he not threatened to veto the bill unless changes were made to better balance the interests of energy users with those of energy producers.

The bill, which the House of Representatives passed the previous day, was given a green light in the senate, where the final vote of 32-0 showed concurrence with both House amendments to it and the extent to which all parties and their interests were satisfied by a bill senators said was not perfect but the best they could produce.

Introduced last fall by Strickland, the bill was designed to create a new hybrid energy environment before the expiration at the end of 2008 when the last bill the General Assembly passed might result in a spike of higher rates. Today's legislative love fest was widely touted by Republicans and Democrats alike as a model process for how future major issues should be resolved.

But what was instrumental to the forging of a new consensus among disparate parties on this bill that had not been in play on previous bills in previous years, was the power of a veto by a Democratic governor over legislation that had been crafted in the wee hours of the morning by an energy committee still dominated by the Majority party that did not need Democrats to move the bill out of committee to the House floor and who gave the Minority party virtually no time to consider new, massive portions of the bill some said would benefit energy-generating utility companies at the expense of consumers and business who buy their product.

Sen. Teresa Fedor, D-Toledo, wondered aloud how the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) would handle its role in deciding when a utility can move to a market-based system. Clearly, all eyes will be on the PUCO, whose members are appointed by the governor. Strickland has already appointed two members to the five-member commission, which has generally been seen as more supportive of the industry than of Ohio energy consumers.

BATTLE LINES BEING DRAWN, NOBODY'S RIGHT IF EVERYBODY'S WRONG

The battle lines on the bill were drawn over how to fashion an energy environment that would protect rate hikes hitting consumers by vesting more regulatory authority in the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio but not so much as to stifle a utility to moving to a so-called free market system.

Republicans were led by House Speaker Jon Husted, who pushed for market concepts, which critics said would cause consumers to pay more and more for their energy at a time when they are already paying more for gas and food.

Democrats, who fell in line behind their executive office leader, said protecting ratepayers was paramount to their support of a bill.

Yet another major player in the crafting of the bill was Janine Migden-Ostrander, Ohio’s Consumers’ Counsel, the state’s residential energy consumer advocate, who lobbied vigorously for the advanced energy portions of the bil, cautioned that the bill would give utilities opportunities to request rate increases. Telling consumers to prepare for the coming rise in rates, which all parties said would happen, she advised everyone to change light bulbs and “do whatever you can” to soften the blow from rate increases.

SENATORS SPEAK OUT ON PROCESS AND THREAT OF VETO

Sen. Robert Schuler, R-Sycamore, the chairman of the Energy and Public Utilities Committee, held up an incandescent light bulb during his presentation on why the Senate should concur with the bill as passed by the House. Schuler, whose term ends in 2010, said he received a similar bulb in 1999 as a symbol of the then-passage of SB 3, which deregulated energy producers and forecasted the emergence of a competitive retail market for electricity. The crystal ball senators looked into in 1999 should have been returned, because the future they envisioned never came to pass. Schuler then held up a new symbol for a new bill, an energy efficient light.

“How many legislators does it take to change a light bulb,” he asked, in his homespun way? “It takes 132,” he said, the cumulative number of senators and House members.

Schuler said the “collaborative effort” with the House produced a good bill, “not a perfect bill, but it’s the best possible bill.”

Sen. Tom Niehaus, R-New Richmond, spoke to the advanced energy portions of the bill. He said today’s clean coal technology could put Ohio’s vast reserves of coal to good use and emphasized that using it would require attention to carbon capture and sequestration, a term referring to preventing it’s entrance into the atmosphere by storing it underground.

Niehaus, who shown an openness over the years to consider concerns expressed by Ohio’s environment lobby and its opposition to more nuclear facilities, said the advanced energy portions of the bill “allows us to take advantage of best technology advancements in nuclear generation.” He balanced that statement with his support of the bill for “preserving the governor’s concerns for alternative energy,” generally known as “green energy” because it produces fewer if any toxic emissions

While he quickly chided Ohioans for not using renewable energy options already available to them, he said the bill will be good for “fledgling solar tech companies” who he said will “bring manufacturing jobs” to the state if it has renewable portfolio standards that include benchmarks.

Agreeing with a key talking point by the Ohio’s Consumers’ Counsel that conservation is the least cost option for Ohio consumers, Niehaus, a right-of-center Republican who generally eschews government regulation and promotes the benefits of free markets, said new technology is also “bleeding edge technology” because of the high cost associated with developing it. But he said the three percent cap on the cost of including renewable energy in a utility’s portfolio was good for consumers. But he challenged cities, which are not required to meet renewable energy portfolio standards, to meet the standards in the bill.

Pumping up his support for renewable energy, Niehaus quoted the president of Duke Energy, who described them as the “5^th fuel.” In his closing he said Ohio will have more jobs created because it will now have “predictable, affordable and reliable power,” a troika of reasons for business to stay here and come here.

The surprise soliloquy of the day came from hard-ball Republican Sen. Jeff Jacobson of Dayton. As President Pro Tempore, the term-limited senator has been the enforcer for Senate President Bill Harris, R-Ashland, and the Majority party caucus. Not know for every backing down on any issue, Jacobson, said he was skeptical about what the House would do with “our bill,” a measure he said “was perfect when it left here.”

“I was wrong, starting with fact that their framework was more dynamic than the one we gave them,” he said. “They had a better way to accomplish the hybrid goal we wanted.” Turning the negative of the bill’s delay in the House into a plus for its eventual form, Jacobson congratulated House members for “taking the time to educate themselves to issue to reach a resolution that avoided a conference (committee) and talking past each other.”

The pit bull of the Senate credited the compromises reached on the bill to Strickland for his veto threat. “The Legislature tries to run over people who disagree with us,” said Jacobson, who confessed to do the same thing himself. “Ideas sometime loose out to the inexorable rolling of the boulder, but the veto changed the dynamic.”

Known for fighting hammer and tong with adversaries, Republican, Democrat or others, Jacobson said having a strong governor is healthy. “Three strong leaders make for a better process on any important issue.” He ended, saying, “I hope we emulate this process on future major legislation.”

Sen. John Boccieri, D-New Middletown, an Iraq war veteran now running for Congress, complimented Gov. Strickland by saying that, while he is the general of the state, he should be called “Genera Electric” for the role he played in commanding the powerful army of lobbyists and others who were engaged in trench warfare on the bill in recent weeks to put down their arms and find a sensible, reasonable middle ground. Boccieri’s comment brought laughter to Harris, a 23-year veteran of the Marines who is known for his command and control of the upper chamber.

With a new energy bill, Boccieri said Ohio will not only gain jobs from it but might become an exporter of energy.

Other senators chimed into the energy love fest. Tom Sawyer, representing the 28^th District, described the process from a historical context. “We have only come together a few times on a measure of this magnitude in the last 100 years.”

Jason Wilson, D-Columbiana, son of Ohio Congressman Charlie Wilson, held up a small, shinny chunk of black Ohio coal, calling it a “small example of our future.” Wilson, who said coal produces 87 percent of Ohio’s energy, said “light bulbs would be useless with out this rock.” He called for more use of coal in a “clean, more efficient way.”

In total awe of what had happened, Sen. Joy Padgett, R-Coshocton, who lost a race in 2006 to replace disgraced and jailed Congressman Bob Ney, said her experience of the day was “one of those ‘wow’ moments.” Acknowledging the bill was not perfect, as others had before her, she said her thoughts of not voting to concur on the bill were around by the team process she said led all parties to an agreement. With Ohio’s largest user of electricity in her district, Padgett said the failure of the new energy bill would have brought an outage of sorts in the form of new contracts. She said stability and predictability of energy rates were keys to future business for her constituent company and other Ohio companies.

She reflected on not voting against the last bill passed in 1999, but said voting for this bill would bring “the greatest amount of good for greatest amount of people over greatest amount of time.”

John Michael Spinelli is a former Ohio Statehouse government and political reporter and business columnist. He now serves as the OhioNews Bureau Chief for ePluribus Media Journal.