When Jon Husted was asked in November 2021 what role he played in passing House Bill 6 — the FirstEnergy bailout at the center of the biggest corruption scandal in Ohio history — he answered with one word: "none."
The company that bribed its way to that bill tells a different story. And now there's a new hole in the record: on the day the bill became law, every meeting on Husted's official calendar is blacked out.
What House Bill 6 was
House Bill 6 created a bailout for two nuclear plants owned by a FirstEnergy subsidiary, paid for with $150 million a year collected from Ohio ratepayers. FirstEnergy spent $61 million to get it passed.
In 2021, FirstEnergy admitted in a federal deferred prosecution agreement that it paid millions of dollars to public officials in exchange for official actions, and agreed to a $230 million penalty. Former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder was convicted of leading the racketeering scheme and sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.
Husted was lieutenant governor when it passed. He has not been charged.
What FirstEnergy said he was doing
On July 1, 2019, while the Ohio Senate was deciding how long the subsidy should last, FirstEnergy senior vice president Michael Dowling texted CEO Chuck Jones:
"Just had a long convo with JHusted just now. All is well. JH is working on the 10 years. He's afraid it's going to end up being 8. Talk later."
FirstEnergy wanted 10 years of ratepayer money. The final bill gave seven. The company's deferred prosecution agreement also included a text saying "State Official 2" — later confirmed to be Husted — was "fighting to the end" for a longer bailout.
TiffinOhio.net reports that another FirstEnergy executive described Husted as "highly engaged" on the bill. Before he took office, Jones told a fundraiser crowd that Husted was "a good friend of FirstEnergy." A FirstEnergy lobbyist later called him the company's "Golden Boy."
How his story kept changing
Husted's answers have shifted as new records came out. As TiffinOhio.net lays them out:
- November 2021: His role in passing HB 6? "None."
- August 2022, after the texts surfaced: he said he had pushed for the bill publicly and privately, but "I wasn't involved in the legislative process."
- 2024, when News 5 Cleveland showed him more FirstEnergy messages: "I don't know what you're talking about. We weren't involved."
- January 2026: "My role was very clear. I wanted the nuclear power plants to remain operational."
You can't go from "none" to "my role was very clear" without one of them being wrong.
The blacked-out calendar
TiffinOhio.net reviewed Husted's official calendars for the final two days before HB 6 became law.
- On July 22, 2019, every entry on his calendar is redacted.
- On July 23, 2019 — the day Gov. Mike DeWine signed the bill — every listed meeting is redacted.
The pages don't say who blacked them out or what legal exemption allowed it. Under Ohio's public records law, a redaction counts as a denial, and the office is supposed to give the legal reason for it.
Those aren't the only gaps. Husted's calendar shows a scheduled phone call with Sam Randazzo — the state's top utility regulator, whom FirstEnergy admitted paying $4.3 million — on April 10, 2019, two days before HB 6 was introduced. The hour around that call is also redacted. Phone records entered in this year's criminal trial of Jones and Dowling showed Husted spoke with Dowling nine times, for 51 minutes in all, while the new administration was choosing who would run the utility commission. Jones and Dowling have denied that the Randazzo payment was a bribe; their first trial ended in a hung jury and they were charged again in June.
A pattern
Now Husted is in the U.S. Senate, still blaming electric bills on coal plants his opponent never voted to close, and still refusing to say what gifts he took from JobsOhio while he was lieutenant governor.
He's not the only Ohio Republican in Congress tied to the bill: Mike Carey was a registered lobbyist on House Bill 6 before he got to Washington.
What the records show
Jon Husted told reporters his role in passing House Bill 6 was "none." FirstEnergy's own texts say he was "working on the 10 years" of ratepayer subsidies and "fighting to the end," and he has since said his "role was very clear." His official calendar for the two days before the bill became law — including the day it was signed — is redacted, and the calendar pages state no legal reason for it.
