Good lord, Cuyahoga County!
The ongoing HB-6 investigation has taken another wild turn.
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Whenever Ohio political news goes national, you can almost guarantee it will bring shame to the polluted backwater outpost that we call home for various reasons.
That’s been the case with HB-6, the handout to the fossil fuel industry that sent former House Speaker Larry Householder, who was far from the mastermind of the scheme, to prison for the next 20 years.
The case generated new interest earlier this month when Ohio Attorney General “Dusty Dave” Yost did something useful for the first time in his career by charging former FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones and former FirstEnergy Vice President of Bribes Michael Dowling.
Those two joined former Public Utilities Commissioner Sam Randazzo, whom FirstEnergy bribed with $4.3 million days before Governor Mike DeWine appointed him to the position, in the blender.
This week, however, we learned that Dusty Dave Yost isn’t satisfied with Householder's likely death in an overcrowded, low-security prison. The Attorney General wants to send Householder straight to Hell to bolster his credentials before his 2026 gubernatorial run.
From Michael Wines of nyt.com:
A former speaker of the Ohio State House of Representatives, now serving a 20-year federal prison sentence, was indicted on 10 more state felony charges on Monday in connection with a sprawling bribery scheme that handed a $1.3 billion bailout to a major regional energy utility.
The charges against the former speaker, Larry Householder, followed an inquiry by the Ohio Organized Crime Commission that also produced indictments last month of two former executives of the Akron-based utility, FirstEnergy Corporation.
[…]
The charges — three counts of theft, five counts of record-tampering and single counts of money laundering and telecommunications fraud — could permanently bar Mr. Householder from public office if convicted.
He had been investigated on suspicion of public corruption earlier in his legislative career, after a first stint as House speaker in the early 2000s, but that inquiry ended without charges.
Though I’ve never been in prison (hi, haters!), I assume that waking up to the news you’ve been charged with an additional ten felonies is one of the worst feelings you can have.
The charges came via a grand jury in Cuyahoga County.
You can see one of the six pages in the charging file below, as obtained by The Rooster:
There would be nothing abnormal about this single sheet of paper to probably 99 percent of Ohioans—even those familiar with “HB-6” and the years-long fallout.
But I’d like to draw your attention to the grand jury's foreperson: David Wondowlowski, the Executive Director of Cleveland Building Trades. He’s an inside baseball player in a county with a long and storied history of political corruption.
Neil Clark, the corrupt superlobbyist indicted next to Householder, said in his book, What Do I Know? I’m Just a Lobbyist, that HB-6 would not have been possible without Big Labor. Clark went on to shoot himself in the head while wearing a “Mike DeWine for Governor” shirt.
I wrote about Big Labor’s big problem back in October.
Wondolowski was one of Householder’s most prominent supporters in the labor movement. His union vocally supported HB-6 and even wrote a $250,000 check to Generation Now, the dark money front group that has since been liquidated as the financial hub of the bribery money.
To be clear, Wondolowski has yet to be charged with any wrongdoing in the scandal. As of now, he has poor taste in politicians. And though $250,000 isn’t an eye-popping donation, it’s another example of the risk in Big Labor’s gambit of getting into bed with Republicans to stave off Right-to-Work legislation.
Householder was a crook that anybody with a brain saw coming. And Wondolowski’s decision to get in bed with him should have been enough to see him relieved of his duties as a so-called labor leader.
Readers of The Rooster won’t be surprised at what happened next.
Wondowlowski, despite his proximity to Householder and pushing of the HB-6 legislation, earned an appointment to the Public Utilities Commission Nomination Council.
From Jeremy Pelzer of cleveland.com in January 2022 (emphasis mine):
COLUMBUS, Ohio—A year and a half after the House Bill 6 scandal broke, more than a third of the council tasked with picking nominees to the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio consists of men who backed, lobbied for, or even co-sponsored the infamous energy law.
That includes the chair of the Public Utilities Commission Nominating Council: Michael Koren, who helped FirstEnergy Corp. lobby for the passage of HB6 in 2019. It also includes recently appointed David Wondolowski of the Cleveland Building and Trades Council, who was a supporter of HB6 himself and whose union vocally supported the legislation.
The PUCO has come under increasing scrutiny since Sam Randazzo resigned as the commission’s chair in 2020 after the FBI raided his Columbus home. FirstEnergy later admitted to bribing Randazzo (as well as Householder) to take actions that benefitted the Akron-based utility.
I guess in their defense, it would be almost 24 months later before federal investigators charged former PUCO chairman Sam Randazzo for embezzlement and bribery. Maybe they thought Householder’s arrest and Randazzo’s resignation in 2020 meant it would all blow over soon!
A couple of months later, in 2022, Wondolowski drew fire from over 20 civics groups when Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish restored Wondolowski to the Port Authority Board after Mayor Justin Bibb let Wondolowski’s term expire.
From Sam Allard of clevescene.com in April 2022:
More than 20 local organizations have called on Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish to withdraw the appointment of Dave Wondolowski to the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority Board of Directors.
In a letter to Budish delivered early Friday morning and copied to members of Cuyahoga County Council, as well as the media, the organizations argued that Wondolowski's rhetoric on the 2021 mayoral campaign trail, and his work behind the scenes of the Kevin Kelley campaign to design a mailer that darkened Justin Bibb's skin and presented a timeline of his supposed criminal history, made him unfit for the position. The Port board oversees operations in the Cleveland Harbor and supports major infrastructure and economic development projects through its financing arm.
It’s a position in which Wondolowski still serves, though his influence on the board couldn’t stop it from repealing its prevailing wage policy.
Given his controversial history, it’s remarkable that in a county of 1.249 million people, the presiding judge appointed Wondolowski to be the foreperson of the Householder grand jury.
It’s also remarkable that the office of Michael O’Malley, who just won a hotly contested Democratic primary last week with the help of Republican donors like Browns owner Jimmy Haslam, was—at best—asleep at the wheel in failing to notice the blatant conflict of interest.
Sure, Wondolowski brought charges against Householder. But as of now, we don’t know if he refused to bring any other charges. And worse, as the grand jury foreperson, Wondolowski became privileged to inside information about the ongoing investigation into Householder’s financial malfeasance.
And that’s all before mentioning that a Cuyahoga Politics Knower reached out to The Rooster last night to mention the yet-to-be-named judge campaigned with the support of Wondolowski and the Cleveland Building Trades.
Regardless, I assume Householder’s defense team did a little jig when they learned the news, as the dismissal of the case is all but assured. Was that part of the plan when Wondolowski “earned” the appointment? As of now, it’s impossible to say.
At the very least, Wondolowski had no problem with the apparent conflict of interest when the judge appointed him and refused to raise that fact throughout the grand jury process.
This is wild incompetence at best. At worst, it’s blatant corruption that could have given key, yet-to-be-charged co-conspirators inside information about an ongoing investigation.
It almost feels like it’d only happen in Cuyahoga County, too. As much as I rag on Franklin County, Cuyahoga is corrupt in a way that reminds me of an old-time mafioso. It’s bad enough that the people involved in this appointment knew the truth would eventually come out, yet they seemingly didn’t care if it did.
It reeks of desperation from Wondolowski, given the shame that this will bring to his union. But that’s speculation on my part, and I have a feeling I’m not the only concerned citizen digging into this farce of justice.
Watch this space!
Odds & Ends
I testified Monday night at City Council about the so-called “Real Time Crime Center.” I used one of my lesser-known aliases, Solomon Grandé, because I like to keep the council on their toes.
Council President Shannon Hardin, who City Hall sources tell The Rooster will run for mayor in 2027, was not enthused to see my melon-sized head wobbling toward him. You can hear him mutter, “Oh, this is great,” when he realizes that it’s his old friend coming to testify.
I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy having achieved a modicum of fame in this godforsaken city that ensures former Mayor Michael Coleman will hear about me mentioning that time the FBI taped him having sex with a Chinese spy named Fang Fang.
I also meant what I said about Franklin County Commissioners Kevin Boyce and John O’Grady. They reek of corruption. If you know anything I should know, please email me or drop me an anonymous tip.
I want to get both of them on camera soon enough!
The ACLU is suing Ohio over HB-68, which bans gender-affirming care for minors and transgender women from participating in sports. State Rep. Gary Click (R-Vickery), the two-bit pastor who wants to eliminate transgender people as a legal concept, cried about it on Twitter.
A 79-year-old former attorney agreed to pay a $9,500 fine for mailing envelopes of human feces to Republican Congressman Jim Jordan (R-Urbana) and other statewide Republicans. Richard Steinle told the judge he acted out of “frustration and rage.” He did nothing wrong in my mind!
State Auditor Keith Faber found 124,000 people enrolled in Ohio’s Medicaid program and Medicaid programs in other states. Medicaid fraud is a massive problem in America. Still, I’m sure Ohio Republicans will use this news to repeal the state’s Medicaid expansion, which was like the one good thing former governor John Kasich did.
Former Hamilton County Auditor Brigid Kelly, who resigned last week after a two-year battle with cancer, died days after entering hospice. It’s hard to overstate what a loss this is for Hamilton County and the state. She could have been governor.
Ohio wants to buy “shoot houses” to train armed teachers in the event of a school shooting. You almost have to laugh at this point.
North Carolina authorities have accused Jason Dawson, the former girl’s basketball coach at Worthington Christian, of having sex with a minor.
Politico reported that in the summer of 2023, kl;former United States Senate candidate Frank LaRose wanted Bernie Moreno to leave the Senate race to earn the golden LaRose endorsement for another race. It’s amazing to learn that those idiots bought their own hype. If only they had subscribed to The Rooster!
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Hello my fellow politically warped minded sick-in-the-head Ohioan!
Great research/coverage on this!
Whoa there's a lot of these big money scheming goin'on aint there!!??
It's amazing how these richie riches fund themselves. Gym Jord'n, for example, is a henchmen for billionaire interests. He's for sure got superior blowjob skills which correlate directly with his rise in congress. The billionaires directly put him there with the use of Cambridge-analitica-style public works project level mind tricks on us lowly peasants!
You're one of the only lines of defenses we have right now DJ! Good work!!!
I don't know if you've done them before, but I appreciate the summaries of news from around the state. I have no idea where else to find snippets of whats going on across our little patch of land.
Also, thank for mentioning Brigid Kelly. A friend of mine and I went to high school with her. We were talking about her entering hospice last night. This hits hard.