‘Henchman’ for Ohio utilities should be removed from panel

‘Henchman’ for Ohio utilities should be removed from panel

Ohio, the leader in the U.S. of toxic air pollution emitted by power plants, claimed another related dubious distinction this summer. We became the first state to legislate a reversal on renewable energy progress, in the form of Senate Bill 301.

Despite vocal, vehement opposition to that bill — from a broad coalition that included the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association, Ohio Farm Bureau, Catholic Bishops of Ohio, Ohio’s Lutheran leadership, Whirlpool and others — the giant electric utility monopolies and their hired guns in Ohio’s General Assembly prevailed. And the governor signed their renewable energy freeze into law.

In this irresponsible, regressive, job-killing bill, the devil is now rearing his head in the details. As part of the two-year freeze on Ohio’s renewable energy standards, ostensibly to “study the issue,” the study committee is now forming.

That committee’s first appointee? None other than Bill Seitz, the Ohio Senate’s leading henchman for the giant utilities, monopolies determined to protect their autonomy and continue producing electricity any way they please. Pollution? Climate disruption? So what!

Seitz, the supercilious senator from Cincinnati, who has called renewable energy standards “Stalinism,” coincidentally receives large campaign contributions from First Energy and AEP. He becomes the first kangaroo appointed to this court, whose thinly veiled agenda is to squash renewable energy and “burn coal, baby, burn coal.”

Seitz’s appointment makes this study committee an outlandish joke. The governor must immediately extricate Seitz from it. Further, anyone receiving campaign contributions from the giant utilities should be automatically disqualified from appointment to this so-called study committee.

Jess Ennis, Hudson