Wed 12/16 @ noon
Sometimes it can feel like ethics in government are in short supply, that there’s little accountability or consequences for conspicuously corrupt actions.
Earlier this year, Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder was arrested for a $60 million bribery scheme to push through HB 6, which put Ohio rate payers on the hook to not only bail out two failing nuclear plants, but a pair of obsolete coal plants, one in Indiana. It was called “likely the largest bribery, money laundering scheme ever perpetrated against the people of the state of Ohio” by U.S. Attorney David M. DeVillers, who charged Householder and his cronies.
And then in November, Householder was reelected to the House (although he lost the speakership).
Good government groups Common Cause Ohio and the League of Women Voters, along with the City Club, are partnering to look at how this lack of transparency has metastasized in Ohio and how to expose it by strengthening laws on lobbying and ethics and making dark money less dark so we can know who our legislators are beholden to.
The City Club will host an online forum addressing these issues, moderated by Statehouse News Bureau chief Karen Kasler. Speakers include Ned Hill, Professor of Economic Development at John Glenn College of Public Affairs at The Ohio State University; Catherine Turcer, executive director of Common Cause Ohio; and Kedric Payne, general counsel and Senior Director of Ethics of the Campaign Legal Center.
Log onto the discussion here. It’s free and open to all.