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| Pictured is Larry Householder |
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Ohio lawmakers on Wednesday, both Republicans and Democrats alike, officially removed indicted former House Speaker Larry Householder from office, the House voting 75-21 to expel the embattled state representative in connection with a multi-million dollar pay-to-play scheme that has rocked Ohio Republicans and enraged Democrats who are the minority in both the House and Senate.He is the first member to be expelled from the Ohio House of Representatives in 164 years, his ouster coming behind federal racketeering charges related to House Bill 6.
Householder has denied the allegations.
He called his expulsion while his criminal case is pending undemocratic and said the basis for it, disorderly conduct, is ludicrous.
And he called it a disrespect to voters.
"They have taken away the vote of the 72nd house district and disenfranchised voters," Householder told reporters on Wednesday.
But House Minority Leader Emilia Sykes, an Akron Democrat and one of a handful of Black women in Ohio's state legislature, said it was long overdue and should have been done sooner.
Republican Brian Steward co-sponsored the expulsion resolution and said Wednesday that if bribery, money laundering and racketeering are not disorderly conduct then what is.
House Speaker Robert Culp, a Republican and one time Householder ally, agreed, saying the expulsion was needed and that "now we can put this behind us."
The expulsion operates for a year and a half and Householder can run for office again, if he is vindicated on the pending public corruption and racketeering charges.
The House voted 90-0 in July of 2020 to remove him as speaker, a week after he and four other Republican affiliates, including former Ohio GOP chair Matt Borges, were arrested following an indictment regarding a $ 60 million pay-to-play scheme steeped in claims of bribery and money laundering involving FirstEnergy Corp. of Akron and two Ohio nuclear power plants.
While the House quickly got rid of him as its speaker, initial efforts to remove him from office altogether stalled.
Householder and Borges were two of the top influential Republicans in Ohio at one time, and until authorities came lurking around, including the FBI, and the IRS.
A Republican political consultant and ally to former Ohio GOP governor John Kasich who managed the 2014 campaign of auditor Dave Yost, Borges was chair of the state GOP party from 2013 until former president Donald Trump assumed office in January of 2017.
He is a Trump critic and lobbied against the former president's failed reelection bid last year.
Also arrested besides Housholder and Borges were Neil Clark of Grant Street Consultants, Oxley Group co-founder Juan Cespedes, and Jeffrey Longstreth, an adviser to Householder.
Described in a damning FBI complaint as widespread public corruption and conspiracy involving FirstEnergy Corp with bribery at the helm, prosecutors say the case is one of the worst bribery schemes in Ohio history.
At the center of the bribery investigation is Householder's relationship with FirstEnergy Corp officials and a $1 billion financial rescue, legislation dubbed House Bill 6 that added an additional fee to every electricity bill in the state, and that generated some $150 million to the energy company.
FirstEnergy helped finance Householder's election in 2018, the scorching FBI complaint says, coupled with bankrolling a successful effort led by the former House speaker to get the Republican-dominated general assembly to pass a bill that allocates $1.3 million for the troubled energy company.
That bailout bill came via the statewide electricity bill surcharge under HB6, which was supported by only 10 House Democrats.
A failed 2019 referendum seeking to repeal the legislation was also financed in part by the energy corporation.
HB 6 was eventually discarded by state lawmakers.
In March of this year Republican Gov, Mike DeWine signed into law such a repeal of HB6, a bipartisan effort pushed primarily in response to the bailout scandal.
Householder is also accused of using some $100,000 in bribery money, part of $500,000 in illegal monies the FBI confiscated from his personal accounts, for costs on his home in Florida.
His conspirators, including Borges, got millions too, the complaint says.
David DeVillers, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, has called it one of the worst misuses of Ohio tax-payer money in American history, and public corruption and money laundering of mass proportions.
Nearly a half dozen others, practically all of them Republican operatives, have been arrested in connection with the now infamous bailout fiasco.
By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor in chief. Coleman trained for 17 years as a reporter with the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland Ohio and is an investigative and political reporter with a background in legal and scientific reporting. She is also a former 15-year public school biology teacher.
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper in Ohio and in the Midwest. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview. CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL
