On Wednesday, February 12, The Buckeye Institute’s Statehouse Liaison and Policy Analyst—Greg R. Lawson—offered interested party testimony to the Ohio Senate Public Utilities Committee regarding Senate Bill 34. This bill, sponsored by Sen. Kris Jordan (R- Ostrander) would repeal Ohio’s current advanced and renewable energy portfolio.

In 2008, the General Assembly passed Senate Bill 221, which dramatically overhauled the laws surrounding Ohio’s energy market.

SB 221 explicitly forces electric distribution utilities and electric services companies to obtain a significant portion of their electricity from a combination of renewable and advanced energy sources. Specifically, it imposes a 25 percent mandate, of which 12.5 percent must be from renewable sources with .5 percent set aside for solar energy. SB 221 also developed mandates for utilities regarding energy efficiency.

Lawson stated in his testimony that the energy portfolio requirements, “…constitute gross government intervention into the marketplace and, contrary to the assertions of renewable energy advocates, are likely to cost consumers much more money over the long run.”

Ohio is unlikely to avail itself of a competitive advantage for many renewable resources compared to other states. For example, access to wind, already a resource that by its very nature is variable and inconsistent, is even more limited in Ohio than some other states. Additionally, Ohio’s energy landscape has been fundamentally changed since the mandates were initially passed. Thanks the shale boom, the price for natural gas is much lower today than it was in 2008.

Any cost increases will not only hurt homeowners, but—over time—will lead to significant increases in cost to high-energy users, particularly the manufacturing community. Ohio is barely pulling itself out of the economic recession into which it fell between 2000 and 2010, when it lost more private sector jobs (619,000) than any state in the country except Michigan. Now is the worst time to risk increasing energy costs and forcing businesses to choose between electricity and growing their businesses and hiring additional employees.

For the full testimony, click here.

Greg R. Lawson also testified at the end of January on a package of bills introduced by State Representatives Mike Duffey (R- Worthington) and Christina Hagan (R- Alliance) collectively known as “DataOhio.” House Bills 321-324 work together to:

• Require state and local public entities to maintain an open data standard, which would facilitate public access and searchability (HB 321);
• Provide a uniform chart of accounts for state and local governments that will make it possible to make apples-to-apples comparisons across jurisdictions (HB 322);
• Create a website, data.ohio.gov, that offers descriptions of various public data as well as tutorials (HB 323);
• Offer $10,000 grants to local governments to incentivize them to provide various data in the open data format while utilizing uniform accounting practices (HB 324).

Given The Buckeye Institute’s longstanding dedication to government transparency and accountability, the expansion of easily-accessible and publically-available data as envisioned by “DataOhio” would provide the sort of transparency and accountability that taxpayers should expect.

In the testimony, Lawson states,

There are literally thousands of local governmental bodies and various taxing authorities in this state. Transparency for those entities is just as important as it is for transparency related to state-level expenditures. Until we open the books to allow disinfecting sunlight into the crevices of local government expenditures, taxpayers, and many local government officials themselves, will remain in the dark without access to the requisite information to hold all levels of their government accountable.

To read the full testimony, click here.