COLUMBUS, Ohio – Ohio lawmakers on Wednesday, both Republicans and Democrats alike, introduced separate resolutions to remove indicted former Speaker Larry Householder from office after an effort to introduce a resolution in a bipartisan fashion failed.

The resolution, however, means little unless the state legislature takes action to remove him from the House of Representatives.

State Rep Jeffery Crossman, a Parma Democrat, led the way in introducing the Democratic resolution to remove Householder, and Rep. Brian Stewart, an Ashville Republican, did so on the Republican side of the controversy

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.

But efforts to remove him from office have 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, news of the charges and  arrest of the leader of Ohio's Republican-dominated House of Representatives has rocked political circles in Ohio, a pivotal state that, at the time, was  awaiting a Nov. 3 presidential election between  then president Donald Trump and and former vice president Joe Biden, then the Democratic nominee who went on to win the presidency.

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 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.

But 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 four conspirators, the four also arrested, 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.