While the bribery trial of two former FirstEnergy executives has dominated the headlines, recent actions have kept a longer-term and less explosive legal proceeding involving the utility in the public eye.
At issue is a filing by FirstEnergy before the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) requesting that the commission ease standards of reliability that the utility has recently failed to meet. The request would allow the company to take longer to restore power in the event of outages, according to the Ohio Capital Journal.
Cleveland City Councilman Brian Kazy denounced the request in a statement before the January 12 council meeting Kazy characterized the request as “the latest attempt by Ohio’s worst corporate citizen — FirstEnergy — to once again abuse the public,” and called it, “a cruel joke from a company that has repeatedly proven it could (sic) care less about its customers.”
Kazy’s statement came six months to the day after FirstEnergy held a town hall-style meeting at Lakewood Civic Auditorium to announce the utility’s plans to address power interruptions to neighborhoods on Cleveland’s west side, including Ward 16, which Kazy represents, and in Lakewood.
While Kazy requested no formal action, Lakewood city government filed a formal comment with the PUCO in December opposing FirstEnergy’s request (Kazy did not respond to The Land’s requests for comment on his statement).
Lakewood City Councilman Tom Bullock voted to approve the resolution authorizing the City of Lakewood to file a motion to intervene in the PUCO proceeding. “To my knowledge, the city of Lakewood hasn’t done this before,” Bullock said. “So I think it’s a significant and meaningful step, and certainly we welcome the focus and the advocacy and the commonsense arguments from the city of Cleveland leaders as well because they were affected too.”
Bullock also serves as executive director of the Citizens Utility Board of Ohio, a position that gives him insight into the arcana of public utility regulation and the complex intersection of law, economics and science that attracts little public attention from consumers until it shows up on a utility bill.
“Having energy and utility issues on the front page is a good thing,” Bullock said, responding to Kazy’s statement. “There’s a joke around Columbus about getting the utilities and energy bills off the front page again. I don’t think that’s going to happen, though, because energy prices are going up.” Bullock cited tariffs, the reshoring of industry, winter storms that freeze natural gas wellheads, data center speculation and conflicts involving energy-producing countries as contributing to rising prices. “It’s not a good look for the utility to say, number one, we’re not going to reimburse you for a loss of service, or reverse your economic damages, and number two, guess what? Your bills are going to keep going up in the next several years.”
When asked to comment on Kazy’s remarks, First Energy, in a statement provided to The Land, cited “disruptive weather events, heavier rainfall and trees outside our rights-of-way falling into electrical equipment” as reasons why reliability measures failed to meet state standards.
The utility’’s claim that adverse weather conditions can be blamed for service interruptions sits uneasily with data cited in the notice of probable non-compliance the PUCO sent to FirstEnergy on July 25, 2025, which cited “Failure to invest in necessary improvements to maintain adequate service following frequent reoccurrence of equipment failures at the same circuit/substation” among the reasons supporting the action,, further stating that “many circuits serving the Lakewood area have recently been identified by CEI in its ‘worst performing circuits’ reports.”
Responding to the notice 14 days later, FirstEnergy submitted a “reliability improvement plan,” the most notable portion of which was the replacement of breakers and transformers at two substations in Lakewood. FirstEnergy listed the project’s cost at $5.6 million over the period concluding in 2028.
This plan was also presented at the August meeting. Yet several citizens asked how FirstEnergy would be held to account for executing the plan. “We don’t trust you,” one attendee said, a sentiment echoed by others.
One mechanism to do so has become available via House Bill 15 (HB 15), which went into effect in August 2025. While the main thrust of the legislation is to encourage the development of electrical generation infrastructure, HB 15 also requires utilities to file rate cases at an interval not to exceed three years. When rate cases are filed, utilities must submit data to justify the action, usually a rate hike, that they are requesting. Previously, utilities could choose the time of their filing, and sometimes years elapsed between rate cases.
“When the books open again for the next rate case, interveners will have the right to ask for documentation to be issued so that FirstEnergy can show what they’re doing,” said J.P. Blackwood, OCC public affairs liaison. “The PUCO might come back and do audits or true-ups [accounting where initial estimates must be adjusted to reflect actual figures] or ask for reports to make sure that if [utilities] projected they were going to spend more money than they really did, then the PUCO would step in and order some money returned to consumers.”
In the meantime, until FirstEnergy’s request that reliability standards be lowered is adjudicated, FirstEnergy consumers may submit public comments in the case by visiting this website and clicking “File a Public Comment” link.
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