Gov. Mike DeWine on Wednesday rejected an effort by lawmakers to establish regulations for submetering, arguing House Bill 173 would roll back new consumer rights.
Submetering is when middlemen buy electric and other utilities at wholesale cost to resell it. It’s common in apartments, condominiums and other multi-tenant housing, where apartment managers buy utility services and then include the cost in the rent, often dividing that based on individual usage among tenants.
“If this bill became law, Ohio, for the first time, would be legitimizing and legalizing this flawed submetering model,” DeWine wrote in his lengthy veto message.
Lawmakers and consumer advocates have said submetering companies offer near-identical services to traditional utility companies, but without the regulatory strings attached, like offering payment assistance programs or honoring disconnection procedures.
“The utilities won today,” Rep. David Thomas (R-Jefferson) said on social media. “Had anyone in the (DeWine) administration raised a red flag during the year and a half we have worked on this, perhaps this could have been avoided.”
But his bill had weaker guardrails for consumers than what the Ohio Supreme Court established in an April ruling, Ohio Consumers’ Counsel Maureen Willis said.
“It was a lesser degree of regulation,” Willis said in an interview Friday. “There’s no need for that, (the) court was very clear, the (Public Utilities Commission of Ohio) is now ready to act.”
The court’s ruling reversed a PUCO decision that submetering company, Nationwide Energy Partners, was not a utility. A company spokesperson wrote in an email Thursday that DeWine's veto showed his longstanding “alignment with utility interests over the affordability concerns of Ohioans.”
Lawmakers have proposed varied ways to regulate submetering, from the vetoed HB 173 to House Bill 265, which has stricter measures. It is unclear whether they will try and override his veto. The vote must come before the end of the legislative session in December.
Estimates show tens of thousands of Ohioans are submetered, Willis said.
