Official In Ohio Power Plant Scandal Released From Prison

Matt Borges, the former chairman of the Ohio Republican Party, has been released two years into his five-year sentence from the Federal Prison Camp in Morgantown.

Borges was convicted in 2023 in the House Bill 6 scandal, in which utility executives paid $61 million in bribes to top state officials in Ohio in exchange for a power plant bailout.

Those plants include the Ohio Valley Electric Corporation coal plants in Ohio and Indiana. 

Appalachian Power and Mon Power customers, and others in the region, are still paying for the plants’ losses on their electricity bills, adding up to tens of millions of dollars a year.

Ohio repealed the coal plant bailout earlier this year. Michigan regulators decided that electricity customers there should not be on the hook for the plants’ losses.

Ohio’s former house speaker, Larry Householder, remains in federal custody in a 20-year prison sentence for his role in the scandal.

According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Borges is now under the supervision of the residential reentry management field office in Cincinnati.

Two former First Energy executives, including former CEO Chuck Jones, await trial in January.

The former chairman of the Public Utility Commission of Ohio, Sam Randazzo, died by suicide last year.