COLUMBUS, Ohio – Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said Monday he ordered subpoenas probing the origins of public comments sent to state regulators urging fracking in state parks – letters whose purported authors say they didn’t knowingly allow anyone to use their names.
Yost’s investigative steps, shared in an interview, come on the heels of an investigation from Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer that identified 38 people who disputed writing letters sent in their name. The authors included an older blind woman and the mother of a 9-year-old girl whose name appeared on the troves of pro-fracking submissions, which urge the state to “responsibly” lease rights to minerals under Salt Fork State Park and other protected lands.
Yost said his office is still working out specifics of the subpoenas, but the goal is to assess what happened behind the scenes that led to form letters drafted by the pro-oil and gas Consumer Energy Alliance being submitted to state regulators. The form letter appears more than 1,000 times in a state database, and dozens of Ohioans say they didn’t knowingly authorize their names to be used on them.
He said there are potential violations of law, should the allegations of “misattributed identities” prove true. But more importantly, Yost said, people’s names appearing on public comments they don’t believe in violates their right to their identities, and a government’s right to meaningful democratic processes like fielding comments from the public. If it’s not already illegal, he said, lawmakers ought to consider “guardrails” to protect the state’s interests.
“Whether this is a criminal act or not is less the point than, this can’t be good for participatory democracy,” he said. “This can’t be the way things work. Because then everything would be an illusion.”
Gov. Mike DeWine said he’d take into “consideration” the idea of stripping from the record the hundreds of clone letters that match those that were contested. But he later added that simply taking the contested letters down at the request of those who say they didn’t authorize them is “about all we can do.”
The Consumer Energy Alliance said it didn’t apply anyone’s name to its form letter without permission. Rather, per spokesman Bryson Hull, it finds people on marketing sites like “win.click2win4life.com” and from there prompts them to agree to allow their name to be used.
DeWine cautioned that some more explicit buy-in would be prudent.
“I would just say to groups, no matter what side you’re on, on any particular issue, you know, you ought to really get the permission – specific permission from people and tell them they’re actually sending a letter, not just expressing an opinion,” he said.
In a statement earlier Monday, he said the alliance has told state regulators it will withdraw the name of anyone “who feels their name was submitted erroneously, or who changed their mind after the fact.” He said the CEA explained in detail to the OGLMC how it verifies identities on its form letters before submitting them.
“CEA is communicating with the relevant Ohio authorities to bring full clarity to the situation, since the allegations are provably not true,” he said.
By Monday evening, the Consumer Energy Alliance posted a statement on its website in response to Yost’s remarks. The statement generally tracks with previous remarks, saying the CEA carefully tracks the “digital chain of custody” of comments it submits. In a letter to Yost, CEA President David Holt said his organization would cooperate with an investigation and asked for a meeting with the attorney general to “clear the air on the matter.”
“The public comment process is an essential part of participatory democracy and a complete airing of the facts in this situation and others like it is merited,” Holt said in a prepared statement.
Yost’s comments about ordering subpoenas came after the ranking Ohio House Democrat, Minority Leader Allison Russo, said that public comments ought to reflect “actual input” from the public. She sent letters to Yost and Ohio Department of Natural Resources Director Mary Mertz urging an investigation about “fake letters” sent by “scammers and out-of-state groups” trying to rig the leasing process.
She asked that all state land leasing decisions be delayed, and that the OGLMC verify the public comments in the record.
“Allowing the OGLMC approval process to be overrun by potential fraud is unacceptable, and the Attorney General’s Office, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), and the commission should not passively stand by and await individuals to discover their names and other personal information were used to author fake public comments,” she said in a statement.
Roxanne Groff, a steering committee member of Save Ohio Parks, a grassroots organization that formed to oppose fracking in state parks enabled by a new state law, said in a statement that her organization noticed “anomalies” with hundreds of pro-fracking comments and brought it to the commission’s attention two months ago. And emails obtained by public records request show three people whose names appeared on public comments denying ever authorizing them as early as Aug. 5.
“The Commission must strike these comments from the record,” Groff said. “Anything less makes a mockery of the public engagement process.”
Molly Jo Stanley, the Southeast Ohio regional director for the Ohio Environmental Council, said the organization advocated for administrative rules allowing for transparency and public comments to ensure Ohioans have a fair say on the fate of state lands.
“But we did not imagine their voices could be drowned out by hundreds of allegedly fake comments coordinated by out-of-state oil and gas interests. This is unacceptable,” she said. “The OEC and Save Ohio Parks call on the Commission to halt decision-making on all leasing nominations until these comments are investigated and the public record is corrected.”
Yost declined to comment on what the OGLMC should do as far as stripping comments from the record or delaying its processes. However, he said public officials look to public comments for different facts, perspectives and impacts of a given policy, not as a quasi-straw poll.
“It’s not, ‘What do all y’all think?’ and majority rules,” he said.
Andy Chow, a spokesman for the ODNR, reiterated that the commission is aware of “concerns” surrounding some of the public comments, and that it will delete anyone who feels their name was used without knowing permission.
He offered no comment on how someone whose name was used without consent could know as much, and he did not address the requests from environmentalists to slow decision making on leasing mineral rights on the first state lands. However, he hinted at technical changes to the comment submission process.
“The commission is determined to follow the statute as it carries out the land leasing process as required by Ohio Revised Code,” he said. “That includes administering an open public comments period that does not infringe on Ohio law or First Amendment rights. Meanwhile, the commission is currently working on creating a public comments portal where people can directly submit their comments to the website with additional authentication tools.”
Jake Zuckerman covers state politics and policy for Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer.