Tag: Larry Householder

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insider corruption term limits

A Plutocrat’s Expensive Friend

Larry Householder, Ohio

An “expensive friend” — in documents obtained by federal prosecutors, that’s how former FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones sized up former Ohio Speaker of the House Larry Householder.

What made the Speaker so Big Ticket?

“Republican Larry Householder hatched a plan to cement his hold on power for an additional 16 years,” The Columbus Dispatch reported, “and Akron-​based FirstEnergy Corp. invested $2 million into the effort.”

Their scheme?

Petition a citizen initiative onto the ballot to slap lifetime term limits on legislators, rather than the current eight-​year consecutive limits, as bait to hook pro-​limits voters — emphasizing this toughening part, while hiding the fact that the eight-​year limits in each chamber would be doubled to a 16-​year limit in either.

The initiative would also set a brand-​new clock, wiping out all past service so that Householder could command the House, uninterrupted, for 16 more years. 

“He told me he’ll retire from [the House],” Jones joked with an associate, “but get a lot done in 16 more years.”

The pandemic stopped Householder’s scam. And then, last July, the FBI dropped the other shoe, arresting him for racketeering. Now awaiting trial, Householder has been pushed out as Speaker and then expelled from the House completely — the first time in over 150 years.

FirstEnergy fired CEO Jones — who, according to The Washington Post, “prosecutors continue to investigate” for his “involvement in a $60 million bribery scheme secretly funded by the company to win a $1 billion legislative bailout.”

Mr. Householder never liked term limits, but his corrupt attempts to thwart them serve as evidence of their importance.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption term limits

The Limits of Corruption

Republican Speaker, Larry Householder, bribery

Another corrupt, term-​limits-​hating, careerist politician bites the dust. 

“Federal prosecutors say Republican Speaker Larry Householder and four others — including a former state GOP chairman — perpetrated a $60 million federal bribery scheme,” reports the Dayton Daily News, “connected to a taxpayer-​funded bailout of Ohio’s two nuclear power plants.”

Last year, a citizen-​initiated referendum campaign sought to give voters the final say on the legislature’s $1.5 billion baby. “The relentless machinations of HB 6’s backers,” Cleveland Plain-​Dealer columnist Thomas Suddes points out, “kept [that] repeal effort launched against the bill off Ohio’s ballot.”

At a news conference to explain the arrest of Householder and his co-​conspirators on racketeering charges, federal prosecutors detailed some of the ways the scheme illegally blocked last year’s referendum effort. 

Now, the rush is on to repeal House Bill 6.

Mr. Suddes is correct that “[t]he legislature also won’t be OK till voters amend the Ohio Constitution to make it easier to place issues on the statewide ballot for up-​or-​down votes.” 

But when he goes on to argue that term limits are “part of that problem”?

The only thing Ohio’s term limits need is to make the limits lifetime — forbidding legislators from returning after a timeout. Householder had previously been speaker from 2001 to 2004. “While he officially left office due to term limits,” informs the Plain-​Dealer, “he departed Columbus amid an FBI investigation that closed without charges.”

Householder also came to our attention back in March, when he called Ohio’s eight-​year limits “pretty oppressive.” Before the pandemic, he was pushing a ballot measure designed to weaken the term limits law and serve until 2036 — foreshadowing what Putin* did later in Russia. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* I referred to them as “two pols in a pod,” but now, Householder reminds me more of former Arkansas State Sen. Jon Woods, who after sponsoring a deceptive ballot measure to weaken term limits was convicted on multiple felony charges and is serving his current term in prison.

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