Other states seem to have learned a lesson from Ohio about the potentially corrupt influence of "dark money" in elections from the massive House Bill 6 pay-to-play scandal.
Ohio, apparently, has not.
By Ohio, we mean specifically, the Republican supermajority that rules the legislature.
Those Republican lawmakers that saw their House speaker, Larry Householder, go to prison for 20 years and their former GOP state chairman, Matt Borges, imprisoned for five years in a $61 million bribery scheme engineered by Akron-based FirstEnergy in an effort to have Ohio taxpayers bail out two of its troubled nuclear power plants through House Bill 6.
The whole scheme — all $61 million of it — was funded by dark money, or money that was raised and never reported publicly.
Dark money has been a major problem in politics since 2010, when the U.S. Supreme Court, in the Citizens United case, decided that unions and corporations could make donations to committees that can help candidates and causes without being affiliated with the campaigns.
Independent expenditures, in other words.
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Dark money, funneled into committees with innocent sounding names, are used by both Republicans and Democrats.
It happens through pouring money into 501 (C)(4) committees and LLCs that are not required to report the source of the money.
What does that mean in practical terms?
Well, let's say there is a candidate for state representative you really like and you write a $25 check to his or her campaign.
That campaign has to file, in a campaign finance report, not only your name and the amount you gave, but also your address and your occupation.
That $25 donation becomes part of the public record, which anyone can look up.
But a dark money group can spend $250,000 to help that candidate or an issue campaign without disclosing where any of it came from. Not a single dime.
That's because after the U.S. Supreme Court decision, the tax code says 501 (C)(4) committees are not required to disclose where their money comes from.
There is a potential cure for this. It's called House Bill 112, and it was filed over a year ago by two Democratic state representatives, Bride Rose Sweeney of Westlake and Jessica Miranda of Forest Park, now the Hamilton County auditor.
One hearing was held on the bill on April 18, 2023, before the House Government Oversight Committee.
The bill has sat there, without even a vote up or down in committee, since that hearing. It is stuck in the mud, with its wheels spinning, going nowhere.
"Since then there are four other states that have looked at what happened in Ohio with House Bill 6 and acted to make their systems more transparent," Miranda said this week. "And the Ohio General Assembly has done nothing."
House Bill 112 is really very simple: 501 (C)(4) committees could still raise and spend however much they want on campaigns; they would just have to report the donations publicly.
"Ohioans have a right to know who funds these campaigns," Miranda said. "If dark money groups want to campaign — fine. Just tell us where you are getting your money."
The people of Ohio are paying for the House Bill 6 bailout every time they pay a utility bill. The "corruption tax" has already cost Ohio utility customers $245 million, according to the Ohio Consumers' Counsel.
"Somehow, the Republicans in the Statehouse are trying to convince people that their utility bills are the fault of inflation and President Biden," Miranda said. "Every Ohioan is paying a corruption tax for utilities."
In the hearing before the House Government Oversight Committee last year, State Rep. Bill Seitz (R-Green Township) a committee member, pushed back against the idea of disclosing the names of dark money donors.
"The reason why we have secrecy for issue campaigns is that we don't want to have those donors outed, doxed, victimized, just for expressing an idea," Seitz said at the time.
"They could be the worst people on the planet," he added, "but if they have a good idea, they should be allowed to do that anonymously, without being vilified by representatives who come in here and talk about the 'ugly agenda of greedy corporations.' "
"Just because you're spending dark money on campaigns doesn't mean you are corrupt or doing bad things," Sweeney responded. "You can still spend $60 million on campaigns. You just have to say who you are."
In an interview Thursday, Seitz told WVXU the point he was trying to make in April 2023 was about the difference between dark money for candidates and dark money for issue campaigns.
"I was differentiating between dark money being used to help specific candidates for office and dark money that is spent to try to explain an issue to voters," Seitz said.
"If the names of those donors are exposed, their opponents will try to make the campaign not about the merits of the issue, but about those 'bad old corporate interests' spending the money."
Seitz said both sides of last fall's Issue 1, the abortion rights amendment, spent massive amounts of dark money to advance their arguments.
"It is something that happens often, both on the left and on the right," Seitz said.
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The top Republicans in Ohio government — Gov. Mike DeWine, Senate President Matt Huffman and House Speaker Jason Stephens — have all said they would consider a way to make dark money more transparent.
But so far, none of them have done anything about it.
Meanwhile, House Bill 112, which could throw sunshine on dark money, has languished in committee for over a year now, with no action in sight.
Just waiting for the next Ohio dark money scandal to show up.
