In early 2007, the nominating council of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) met to decide on a list of four nominees to present to Governor Strickland to fill a vacancy in the Commission. The purpose of the PUCO is to regulate utility services for the benefit of Ohio consumers.
When Ohio Citizen Action asked for the minutes of the meetings at which the nominees had been decided upon, the office of the Attorney General responded by denying that a meeting had occurred, even though newspaper accounts suggested otherwise. Unfortunately, the notes from another meeting of the PUCO nominating council revealed that the committee "voted to destroy the ballots" on which they had voted for nominees to send to the governor. It became very clear that the nominees had been selected in closed sessions and that the records associated with meetings had been destroyed.
These were clear violations of Ohio's open meetings law, which requires that public bodies take official action and conduct deliberations on official business only in meetings open to the public.
It was soon revealed that not only had the nominations process for the current vacancy been performed illegally, but also that the nominating council had followed the same process of closed meetings and records for each of the current members of the PUCO. Attorney General Marc Dann declared that the members of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio had been appointed to their posts illegally and ordered the commissioners to resign so that the nominating process could be done legally. One of the commissioners was allowed to remain on the PUCO because the statute of limitations had expired on his illegal appointment.
This was an opportunity for the public to be involved in a process that they had been shut out of for years, but rather than have a new, public debate, Governor Ted Strickland decided to reappoint the same commissioners to the PUCO. With the exception of the substitution of one name on one of the lists, the nominating council sent the Governor the exact same four lists that they had previously sent. There were no deliberations, and the public was permitted to witness nothing more than they had when the appointments were first made.
“The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.” President John F. Kennedy
When Ohio Citizen Action asked for the minutes of the meetings at which the nominees had been decided upon, the office of the Attorney General responded by denying that a meeting had occurred, even though newspaper accounts suggested otherwise. Unfortunately, the notes from another meeting of the PUCO nominating council revealed that the committee "voted to destroy the ballots" on which they had voted for nominees to send to the governor. It became very clear that the nominees had been selected in closed sessions and that the records associated with meetings had been destroyed.