Rep. Brennan Responds to Latest Submetering Dispute: "It's Time to Protect Ohio Consumers with Real Utility Oversight"

COLUMBUS — State Rep. Sean Patrick Brennan (D-Parma) today, in response to renewed legal battles between American Electric Power (AEP) Ohio and Nationwide Energy Partners (NEP), and following recent Ohio Supreme Court oral arguments in Wingo v. NEP, issued the following statement urging the Ohio General Assembly to take action on his bipartisan legislation House Bill (HB) 265, to regulate submetering companies as public utilities:

“Ohioans living in apartments and multi-family homes deserve the same consumer protections, utility rights, and fair billing practices as everyone else. But for too long, large submetering companies like NEP have operated in a legal gray area—performing all the functions of an electric utility while avoiding the regulations that protect real customers.

The Ohio Supreme Court made clear in Wingo v. NEP that the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) must apply the actual law—not outdated precedent or administrative tests—to determine when a company is acting as a public utility. Yet despite that ruling, PUCO continues to look the other way while companies like NEP act as unregulated utilities in everything but name.

What’s happening here is clear: tenants are paying NEP directly for electric service, NEP builds and maintains the electrical infrastructure, sets the rates, handles billing, manages disconnections, and even profits off the arrangement through landlord kickbacks. That is not ‘facilitating service’—that is running a private utility with none of the obligations or oversight real utilities face.

HB 265 - the bipartisan bill that I have sponsored with Rep. Tex Fischer (R- Boardman) fixes this. It simply says that if you walk, talk, and bill like a utility, then you must be treated like one under Ohio law. Our legislation ensures that submetering companies offering essential services to tenants are held to the same standards as public utilities: fair rates, transparent billing, consumer protections, and regulatory accountability.

The Court’s skepticism during this month’s oral arguments only reinforces what so many Ohioans already know: this is a loophole that needs to be closed.

I call on my colleagues in the Ohio General Assembly—Republican and Democrat—to pass our bill without delay. Because utility service isn’t a luxury. It’s a necessity. And no Ohioan should be left in the dark—literally or legally—because of clever contract language or regulatory indifference.”