A former lawyer for FirstEnergy said he wasn’t sure why the company agreed to pay Sam Randazzo hundreds of thousands of dollars each year for five years.
Mark Hayden formerly worked as an attorney at FirstEnergy Services Co., a subsidiary of the Akron-based electric utility, supporting the parent company’s former FirstEnergy Solutions power generation subsidiary.
Hayden testified Feb. 9 that he held “a number of concerns” in the 2010s about an agreement that FirstEnergy Services Company had with Sam Randazzo, who at the time was a prominent attorney in the energy space. Later, in 2019, Randazzo became chair of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, a state regulatory agency.
Ex-FirstEnergy Senior Vice President Michael Dowling and former FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones are accused of bribing Randazzo in their ongoing criminal trial. Randazzo was a defendant in the case before he died in 2024.
For a time, Hayden said, he approved the monthly FirstEnergy Services payments to Sustainability Funding Alliance of Ohio, a shell company that Randazzo owned and controlled.
Testifying as a witness for the prosecution, Hayden said he, Dowling and others at FirstEnergy who worked with Randazzo knew about what the utility called a consulting agreement with Randazzo.
Hayden, who objected to being photographed or recorded in court, said he had numerous issues with the agreement.
For one, Hayden said Randazzo appeared to have a conflict of interest. The utility paid Randazzo at least $25,000 per month while Randazzo represented energy trade group Industrial Energy Users of Ohio, which purchased electricity and generally had different interests than FirstEnergy, Hayden said.
Additionally, Hayden said, the background and purpose of the agreement was not clear to him.
And Hayden said Randazzo would reach out to employees of FirstEnergy Solutions “as an attorney, knowing that those individuals were represented by counsel.”
The defense contends that the consulting agreement was a legal settlement between FirstEnergy and Industrial Energy Users of Ohio.
In his opening statement on Feb. 3, Assistant Ohio Attorney General Matthew Meyer called the consulting agreement a “magic paper” that the defendants used to create a distraction and conceal the flow of FirstEnergy funds.
Meyer asked Hayden if he had ever seen a settlement in any other context that’s called a “consulting agreement.”
Hayden said no.
Witness: Agreement terms appeared to ‘mean almost absolutely nothing’
Meyer asked Hayden to review a document, and Meyer asked Hayden if the document defined the scope of work for the consulting agreement.
“It has words next to the word ‘work,'” Hayden said.
Hayden added, “It’s so ambiguous, such as to mean almost absolutely nothing … I don’t know what that scope of work means.”
George Stamboulidis, an attorney for Jones, said Jan. 10 that two FirstEnergy executives — not the defendants — met with Randazzo twice a month without Hayden.
Stamboulidis asked Hayden if learning that information would surprise him.
“If they met with him twice a month, yes,” Hayden said.
Dowling called Randazzo’s insertion into FirstEnergy affairs ‘a problem’
In an email exchange between Hayden and Dowling presented as a trial exhibit, Hayden expressed his frustration to Dowling about Randazzo’s involvement in FirstEnergy affairs.
Dowling said in an email to Hayden that “this has been a problem for more than a decade and probably longer.”
Stamboulidis asked Hayden if Dowling’s statement was in response to Hayden’s concern about Randazzo being a consultant for FirstEnergy Solutions.
Hayden said he was generally concerned about the relationship that Randazzo had with the company.
The witness said he raised his issues about Randazzo to “as many people as I possibly could” at FirstEnergy.
Meyer then asked Hayden what happened to the witness’s career.
Hayden said his responsibilities at FirstEnergy lessened, to include removal from invoice approvals and from the department in which he was working.
Meyer then asked Hayden if he was “separated” from the company, and Hayden said yes.
Patrick Williams covers growth and development for the Akron Beacon Journal. He can be reached by email at pwilliams@gannett.com or on X @pwilliamsOH. Sign up for the Beacon Journal’s business and consumer newsletter, “What’s The Deal?”
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Former FirstEnergy lawyer says he was troubled by Randazzo agreement
Reporting by Patrick Williams, Akron Beacon Journal / Akron Beacon Journal
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