Bill 79 narrowly passed the Ohio House of Representatives earlier this summer by a vote of 50 to 46. However, the sponsor of the bipartisan energy efficiency proposal said the Ohio Senate will at least hold hearings on the proposal in November.
“I’m not Nostradamus, so I don’t have a perfect crystal ball that predicts the future,” Republican Rep. Bill Seitz (Cincinnati) said in an interview on Friday. “I would say there are some encouraging signs.”
The long-serving MP, who is retiring this year, compares himself more to the biblical prophet Jeremiah. At least in the energy and utilities sector, he has recently regularly asked his colleagues to participate in legislative solutions for a not-too-distant demand crisis, he said.
This is the second time Seitz has introduced HB 79, a bill that would allow electricity providers to create voluntary programs for their customers to save costs by incentivizing lower consumption.
Consumers would be automatically enrolled and would have to pay a monthly fee of $1.50 to receive rebates on energy-efficient appliances and electronics that reduce energy consumption when they are not at home and can save money.
Seitz said it’s one piece of a larger puzzle, with the threat of blackouts looming on the horizon. He’s conservative on most issues, but has allies across the House on this one. Sen. Kent Smith (D-Euclid) said he plans to support the proposal in the Senate.
“We’re not in a desperate situation yet, but we can get out of this by taking preventive measures,” Smith said in an interview. “Either we do it now and are glad we did it, or we wish we had done it.”
A wide range of interest groups support the bill. Utilities, environmentalists and even the Catholic Church’s lobbying organization are all supporters. Seitz said Senate President Matt Huffman (R-Lima) promised the bill would be seriously considered in the Senate, but called the close vote in the House “troubling.”
“We had a lot of people who were not on the committee who decided to be know-it-alls and vote ‘no,'” Seitz said.
Still, it took Seitz and Rep. Bride Rose Sweeney (D-Westlake) a full year to get HB 79 in the House. Although the list of opponents is shorter, Seitz believes the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity (AFP) had an “undue influence” on the debate.
Donovan O’Neil, director of AFP Ohio University, said that after the election, defeating the bill in the Senate will be a top priority. The organization opposes the bill for several reasons, he said, primarily because consumers are more likely to vote against it than for it.
“They are the ones who are going to foot the bill for this energy efficiency mandate,” O’Neil said.
He sees the other side, he said.
“The arguments of the proponents of HB 79 are understandable. There is a great demand for online offerings in Ohio. We think the solutions to this are different,” said O’Neil.
HB 79 could fall victim to another problem. Ohio House Speaker Jason Stephens (R-Kitts Hill) and Huffman will likely challenge each other for the speakership next session because the bills have stalled.
“There are a lot of really good bipartisan bills that have passed in one chamber but not the other because, as I said, we’re in a kind of coward’s game,” Smith said.
But Seitz is finished in December – there is no next session to bring it back.
“I haven’t seen many times in the last 24 years that the utilities and the environmentalists are on the same side, and that the Republicans and the Democrats, most of us, see this the same way. Why shouldn’t we seize this moment to do something?” he said.
Statehouse News Bureau intern William O’Malley contributed to this story.
