On June 3, 2026, a Summit County grand jury in Akron, Ohio, returned a fresh indictment against the two men accused of orchestrating the largest public corruption scheme in Ohio history. Former FirstEnergy Corporation Chief Executive Officer Charles “Chuck” Jones and former Senior Vice President of External Affairs Michael Dowling were charged with a combined 22 new felony counts, including engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, bribery, telecommunications fraud, conspiracy, tampering with evidence, tampering with records, and obstructing justice (Ohio Attorney General, WOSU Public Media).
This was the second indictment. The first ended in March 2026 in a Summit County courtroom after a six-week trial and nine days of jury deliberation, with the jurors deadlocked. According to outgoing Attorney General Dave Yost, ten of twelve jurors voted to convict (Signal Akron, Signal Ohio).
The retrial is set for late September 2026. While Ohioans wait, the same Ohioans continue paying the $445,000-a-day cost of the legislation that the alleged bribery was designed to buy. Total ratepayer cost to date: more than $500 million (Common Cause Ohio).
If you read the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, or the Washington Post this week, you almost certainly did not see this story. The Summit County grand jury filed 22 felony counts against two former executives of one of the largest investor-owned utilities in the country, in the middle of one of the biggest state corruption cases in American history, and the national press could not be bothered.
What the Centercratic Party Stands For
The Centercratic Party holds nine governing principles. Three of them describe exactly what happened in Ohio.
“Safeguard Our Democratic System. Govern through compromise, not domination. Reject extreme tactics by special interests and defend the Constitution for everyone.” A $61 million dark-money operation funneled through a 501(c)(4) shell to elect compliant legislators and buy a billion-dollar bailout is the textbook definition of an extreme tactic by a special interest (U.S. Department of Justice).
“One Law for All. The law applies equally to all. Independent courts ensure fair process and protect basic rights.” The speaker who took the money is serving 20 years. The lobbyist is serving five. The PUCO chairman who allegedly took $4.3 million is dead. The two corporate executives allegedly at the top of the scheme have been indicted twice by the state and once by the feds, and they still walk free (Ohio Attorney General).
“Govern with a Balanced Approach. Reject both government overreach and government absence. Provide essential services, measure results, end what fails, and enforce fiscal discipline.” A $1.3 billion ratepayer bailout for failing nuclear and coal plants that competitive markets had already condemned is the opposite of fiscal discipline. It is government as a private subsidy machine for the people who paid to capture it (Energy and Policy Institute).
The Sordid Details
Here is the scheme, stripped to its bones.
In 2017, Chuck Jones and Michael Dowling, the two top executives at FirstEnergy, faced a problem. The company owned aging nuclear power plants at Davis-Besse and Perry that could not compete on the open electricity market. The subsidiary that owned them, FirstEnergy Solutions, was sliding into bankruptcy. They needed a state legislative bailout. They needed it big, and they needed it fast.
They allegedly bought one.
According to federal prosecutors, FirstEnergy and an affiliated generation company funneled approximately $61 million in dark money through a 501(c)(4) called Generation Now, which was controlled by then-State Representative Larry Householder. The money was spent to elect Householder’s preferred candidates to the Ohio House, install him as Speaker, and then pass House Bill 6 in 2019. HB6 imposed a new charge on every Ohio electricity ratepayer to bail out the failing nuclear plants and two aging coal plants partially owned by FirstEnergy and a consortium called Ohio Valley Electric Cooperative (U.S. Department of Justice, Grist).
That was only half of it. While Householder ran the legislative side, Jones and Dowling allegedly handled the regulator. In January 2019, just before Governor Mike DeWine appointed Sam Randazzo to chair the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, FirstEnergy paid Randazzo $4.3 million through what it later admitted was a sham consulting agreement. Once seated as PUCO chair, Randazzo helped shape HB6, fought the citizen referendum effort to repeal it, and four months after the bill became law gave FirstEnergy another gift: he eliminated the requirement that FirstEnergy submit to a 2024 rate case. That single decision let FirstEnergy keep its books closed for years and likely cost Ohio ratepayers millions more (Energy and Policy Institute, Ohio House).
In 2021, FirstEnergy entered a deferred prosecution agreement with the federal government, admitted to paying both the $61 million to Householder’s operation and the $4.3 million to Randazzo, and paid a $230 million federal penalty. Householder was convicted at trial in 2023 and sentenced to 20 years. Borges got five years. Randazzo killed himself in April 2024 (Watching PUCO, U.S. Department of Justice).
But Jones and Dowling have continued to fight. Their first state trial began in early 2026 in Summit County. Six weeks of testimony, dozens of witnesses, hundreds of exhibits. Their defense was that Randazzo was not yet a public official when they paid him, and that the $4.3 million was meant for his outside clients, who they say he then stole from. The jury deliberated nine days and could not agree. Yost said the vote was ten to two for conviction. Judge Susan Baker Ross declared a mistrial on April 1 (Signal Ohio).
The June 3, 2026 reindictment is the state’s second swing. Jones faces eight counts. Dowling faces 19, including 14 separate counts of tampering with records. Yost said in a video statement that the new indictment includes facts the state did not have during the first trial, uncovered through a civil lawsuit against FirstEnergy that surfaced documents prosecutors had not previously seen. The new charges allege a scheme stretching from 2010 to 2021, with Jones and Dowling working in concert to, in the indictment’s own words, “steal the power of government and bend it to the will of FirstEnergy” (TiffinOhio.net, Ohio Attorney General).
While the two men prepare for their September retrial, Ohio ratepayers keep paying. The coal-plant portion of HB6 ran from 2020 until August 14, 2025, when Governor DeWine finally signed HB15 to end it. By then it had cost Ohio electricity customers more than $500 million, roughly $445,000 every single day, to subsidize coal plants that competitive markets had already condemned (Common Cause Ohio).
Both Parties Have Failed Us
The Republican Party owns this one in Ohio. Larry Householder, Republican Speaker. HB6, passed by a Republican-controlled legislature. Sam Randazzo, Republican appointee of a Republican governor. Mike DeWine, Republican governor, who later said he wished he had not appointed Randazzo. Dave Yost, Republican attorney general, who at least had the integrity to indict the executives and to push the second indictment through before he left office. One-party Republican rule in Columbus produced one of the largest pay-to-play schemes in American political history (Ideastream State News).
But the failure is bipartisan in its design. Democratic-run states have produced their own utility-and-statehouse corruption cases, from Illinois ComEd to New York. The pattern does not care which party holds the gavel. It cares only that one party holds it firmly enough that there is no real opposition to police the deals. Where one party dominates a state capital, regulated industries learn that the most efficient lobbying dollar is the one delivered straight into the speaker’s dark-money pocket. Republican or Democrat, blue state or red, the structure of one-party dominance is the structure of corruption.
And the press has failed too. Ohioans owe what they know about this scandal to Cleveland.com, the Akron Beacon Journal, Signal Akron, Signal Ohio, WOSU, Energy and Policy Institute, and Common Cause Ohio. The national outlets that filled their front pages with federal politics for the last two years could find no room for the largest state-level utility bribery prosecution in American history. A grand jury returns 22 felony counts against the alleged corporate masterminds of a scheme that has already cost Ohio ratepayers half a billion dollars, and the national press treats it as too parochial to bother with.
We do not have time left to keep tolerating this. A democracy where utilities buy speakers, speakers buy laws, regulators sell decisions, and ratepayers absorb the bill, while the national press looks the other way, is a democracy already paying for its own decline. The Centercratic Party exists to insist on the alternative: term limits that break the political machines, one law that actually applies to everyone in the boardroom and at the PUCO, transparent campaign finance that makes a $61 million dark-money laundry impossible, and a politics where regulators work for ratepayers instead of for the companies they regulate.
We must save our democracy before it is too late.
That is the wave.
The CenterWave is published by CenterVoter, the home of the Centercratic Party. Visit centercratic.party | centervoter.com