On July 2, 2026, the Ohio Supreme Court told Ohioans they had a point about roughly $115 million, and that they would not see a cent of it back. The court unanimously upheld the state utility commission's approval of a fee, born in the House Bill 6 scandal, that charged customers to prop up a pair of aging coal plants the market had already priced out. Justice Megan Shanahan wrote for the court.
Days earlier, a federal judge in Cleveland had thrown out the securities-fraud case against the FirstEnergy chief executive who sat at the center of that scandal. Two institutions in the same week reached the same practical result: the money you paid stays paid, and the man who ran the company gets to close one more file.
The fee you already paid
House Bill 6 passed in 2019. Federal prosecutors later called it the product of a nearly $61 million bribery scheme, the largest public-corruption case in Ohio history. Most of the coverage remembers the nuclear subsidy at the heart of the bribe. The coal piece is quieter. It sent money through the OVEC arrangement to keep two old plants running, one of them in Indiana, and let their owners, AEP Ohio, Duke Energy, and Dayton Power and Light, earn a return on plants that lost money.
The Ohio Manufacturers Association and the Ohio Environmental Council challenged those charges, roughly $115 million by the challengers' count. They argued the commission should have asked whether propping up money-losing coal actually served the public. The court rejected that, ruling the commission applied the right legal test and that the audited charges could stand. Lawmakers repealed the coal rider in 2025 through House Bill 15, but this case turned on the 2021 audit, so the repeal did not reach the money already collected.
The executive closes a file
In late June 2026, U.S. District Judge J. Philip Calabrese dismissed the Securities and Exchange Commission's civil fraud suit against former FirstEnergy CEO Charles "Chuck" Jones. The SEC had sued Jones in September 2024, accusing him of misleading investors by hiding the dark-money payments behind HB 6. The judge found his upbeat statements to shareholders amounted to "puffery" and that he had no legal duty to disclose the payments.
That was the civil case. Jones still faces a separate state criminal bribery prosecution in Summit County. His first trial ended in a mistrial in April 2026, a grand jury re-indicted him in June, and a retrial is set for later this year. So no one has been cleared of the underlying bribery. What happened is more limited: one of several efforts to hold the top of FirstEnergy accountable came apart, on a technical reading of what a CEO owes the people who buy his stock.
The bill outlives the scandal
Line these up and a pattern shows. Larry Householder, the Speaker the scheme installed, is serving 20 years. Refund orders have clawed back some money. And yet the charges that HB 6 put on ordinary bills have proven the hardest thing to undo. Prison sentences and press conferences move on one clock. The line item on your monthly statement moves on a slower one, and courts keep finding reasons the money you already handed over can stay handed over.
This is the throughline Pink Rose has tracked from the coal subsidy that outlived the repeal to the 20-year sentence that fixed less than the headline suggested. The reckoning at the top and the reckoning on your bill are two different jobs, and the second one is losing.
Why it runs through the Senate race
Jon Husted was appointed to fill JD Vance's U.S. Senate seat and is running to keep it in the 2026 special election. He also helped push HB 6 through the legislature. Ohio Democrats and outlets covering the race, including TiffinOhio.net on July 6, put the ongoing cost to a typical household at about $663 a year more than before the law took effect, a campaign figure Husted's opponents are pressing hard.
You will not find "$115 million" or "OVEC rider" on a ballot this November. You will find the name of a man who helped write the law that produced them. The people who set energy policy in Ohio, the legislators and the governor who appoints the utility commissioners, are chosen the same way every cycle, by voters most of whom never learned what the charge on line seven was for. That is the accountability the courts keep declining to deliver, and the only place it is still on offer is the one race the scandal has finally reached.