Blackout Probe Focuses on Ohio Utility
Aug. 18, 2003 — -- Investigators say it will be weeks before they know for sure what caused last week's massive power failure, but their principal focus is on the actions of one Ohio power company where the blackout seems to have started.
Akron-based FirstEnergy, the largest utility in the country, has a long record of troubling safety, operational and financial problems, an ABCNEWS investigation has found.
Unionized employees complain the company cut back on workers who maintain its transmission lines. In addition, its Ohio nuclear plant was shut down by federal regulators last year because of safety violations, including a football-sized hole in the top of the reactor vessel.
Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a Democratic presidential candidate and former mayor of Cleveland, filed a petition with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to revoke FirstEnergy's operating license for the power plant after the hole in the vessel was found. He said the company has a long history of mismanagement.
"Serious questions have to be raised about FirstEnergy's ability to effectively serve the residents of Northeast Ohio," Kucinich said in a written statement.
The utility has other critics.
"The mentality of the FirstEnergy senior management [is that] they place a higher regard for profit and power production than the safety of the public," said consumer lawyer Howard Whitcomb, a former FirstEnergy senior manager and a longtime of critic of the utility.
"It's going to skimp on expenses to make profitability look better than it really is," said lawyer Mel Weiss, who represents shareholders suing the company for allegedly deceiving the public by "cooking the books" to impress Wall Street. "And that, of course, ultimately hurts the consumer and in this case, maybe 50 million people."
FirstEnergy officials said it is unfair to blame them alone and that it is a "very complex situation far broader" than just the outages in Ohio, involving "unusual electrical conditions."
The blackout that began Thursday afternoon affected 50 million people, making it the largest in U.S. history. It crippled parts of the Northeast, Midwest and Canada.
Millions Spent on Political Connections
Consumer groups say FirstEnergy has been able to avoid tight scrutiny because it has spent millions of dollars on lobbyists and campaign contributions.
In 2002, FirstEnergy gave $1,044,807 to political parties — 70 percent to Republicans and 29 percent to Democrats — the 10th-largest amount contributed by an energy and natural resources company and the sixth-largest amount contributed by an electric utility, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. FirstEnergy spent another $2,259,975 on lobbying in 2002
In June, the CEO of FirstEnergy, Peter Burg, hosted a fund-raiser for Vice President Dick Cheney that raised $600,000 for President Bush's re-election campaign.
And when he first prepared to move into the White House, Bush appointed the president of FirstEnergy, Anthony Alexander, to serve on the administration's energy transition team.
"That kind of connection buys you access," said Tyson Slocum, research director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy Program. "And they've had an enormous amount of access in Washington, D.C., and as a result there hasn't been enough scrutiny of the company's investments and business operations."
White House press secretary Scott McClellan told ABCNEWS there would be a thorough investigation into the blackout's cause. "We will investigate fully what happened and follow the leads wherever they go, even if they are big contributors," he said.