FBI agents were seen removing boxes from the home of the head of Ohio’s utilities regulator this week, according to The Columbus Dispatch, although it’s unclear what they were looking for.
The chairman of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO), Sam Randazzo, has connections with FirstEnergy, an electric utility tied to a $60-million nuclear-bailout scandal, the paper reports.
Randazzo was a lobbyist and an attorney for energy companies before leading the commission, and conducted business with former FirstEnergy subsidiary FirstEnergy Solutions, now Energy Harbor, according to bankruptcy reports.
The PUCO recently launched an independent audit of the company after repeated requests to do so from the Ohio Consumers Council (OCC), which criticized the utility regulator for not doing more to probe FirstEnergy. The OCC is the state’s consumer advocate.
Before launching the audit, The PUCO initially launched a probe looking into a single question: whether or not ratepayers were impacted by FirstEnergy’s lobbying in favor of the bailout law, House Bill 6. The OCC criticized the investigation and said the commission was going too easy on the company.
