Josh Rubin, the chairman of the JobsOhio board, is scheduled to sit for depositions Wednesday and Thursday in a federal civil lawsuit accusing FirstEnergy of hiding a scheme to corrupt Ohio's political system. Rubin's ties to the utility run deep: before he ever joined the state's economic development arm, he advised FirstEnergy's top executives, then formally signed on as one of the company's paid lobbyists.
According to Ohio Capital Journal, state pension systems and other investors suing FirstEnergy allege the company failed to disclose what they describe as “an illicit campaign to corrupt high-profile state legislators.” FirstEnergy is the named defendant in the case, and Rubin's scheduled testimony puts a sitting JobsOhio board chairman squarely inside the discovery process for one of Ohio's largest corporate corruption scandals. Rubin's lobbying firm, the CJR Group, collected $300,000 from FirstEnergy between 2018 and 2019, the outlet reports, the same period the company was fighting to pass and protect a ratepayer-funded bailout.
A Board Chairman With a Lobbying Past
Gov. Mike DeWine elevated Rubin to chairman of the JobsOhio board in September 2023, according to Ohio Capital Journal's reporting, years after Rubin had represented FirstEnergy's interests in Columbus. The timeline matters because JobsOhio, the privatized nonprofit that runs Ohio's economic development efforts, has its own financial history with FirstEnergy — one that predates the criminal scandal but has drawn renewed scrutiny because of it.
JobsOhio gave FirstEnergy a nearly $12 million loan in 2015 to help clean up the retired R.E. Burger coal-fired power plant in Belmont County, tied to a proposed petrochemical plant that never received a final investment commitment. Two years later, JobsOhio forgave that loan anyway, the outlet's earlier reporting shows. The nonprofit has funneled more than $2 billion in proceeds from its state liquor-franchise arrangement into grants and loans for private businesses, including FirstEnergy, and it operates largely exempt from Ohio's open meetings and records laws.
The Dinner That Preceded a Bribe Negotiation
On Dec. 18, 2018, DeWine and then-Lt. Gov. Jon Husted attended a dinner meeting with FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones and Vice President Michael Dowling, with Rubin also present, per the Ohio Capital Journal's account. The dinner's topic included Sam Randazzo's suitability to become the state's top utility regulator. Rubin reportedly advised the FirstEnergy executives not to tell DeWine that they were heading straight from that dinner to meet Randazzo, and the executives later met with Randazzo at his German Village condo that same night — where, according to prosecutors, the $4.3 million bribe FirstEnergy ultimately paid him was negotiated.
FirstEnergy later admitted paying Randazzo $4.3 million in exchange for official regulatory favors before his appointment as chairman of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, the same reporting states. Randazzo has since been charged criminally in connection with the scandal and is credited with helping write the ratepayer bailout legislation that DeWine ultimately signed into law. Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, the scheme's central figure, is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence, while FirstEnergy's former top executives face a second state criminal trial after an earlier one ended in a hung jury.
Millions in Dark Money and a Utility Bailout
FirstEnergy paid more than $60 million through 501(c)(4) dark-money groups in 2018 and 2019 to pass and protect a $1.3 billion ratepayer bailout, and separately funneled $25 million through a dark-money group started by one of its own lobbyists, according to Ohio Capital Journal. The company also contributed $1 million in dark money in 2017 to an independent political group supporting Husted, who backed the bailout that DeWine signed. That spending fit a broader pattern documented at the time: cleveland.com reported that FirstEnergy and its allies had spent millions since 2017 on campaign contributions, lobbying, public relations and advertising aimed at Ohio politicians, including nearly $2.7 million paid to lobbyists and PR firms by FirstEnergy Solutions between March and December 2018 alone.
The same reporting found FirstEnergy and its affiliates gave roughly $1.17 million to Ohio candidates and parties since January 2017, including $159,000 split among more than a dozen House candidates who backed Householder's 2018 bid for speaker. FirstEnergy hired Rubin's CJR Group in February 2019, cleveland.com noted at the time, describing him as a member of DeWine's informal kitchen cabinet. House Bill 6, the legislation at the center of the scandal, proposed adding fees to Ohio electric bills to raise $300 million for clean energy, including $150 million earmarked for the Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear plants.
Federal Fraud Findings and the Case Ahead
FirstEnergy has already entered a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice, paying a $230 million criminal penalty and admitting it funneled $60 million into a nonprofit secretly controlled by Householder. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission separately found that FirstEnergy failed to disclose material information to investors about its role in the corruption scheme and failed to maintain adequate internal accounting controls over certain dark-money payments and related-party transactions. The federal civil case now moving toward Rubin's deposition stems from that same core allegation: that FirstEnergy defrauded its own investors by concealing the scheme, an allegation the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit described in its own opinion on the litigation.
Rubin, who Ohio Capital Journal reports has dozens of lobbying clients beyond FirstEnergy, is now positioned at the intersection of that federal case and the state's economic development apparatus. His depositions this week will add his firsthand account to a record that already includes the 2018 dinner, the same-night meeting with Randazzo, and years of dark-money spending — all of it unfolding years before he took the chairman's seat at JobsOhio in 2023.
