Ohio Elections Commission fines group just $400 after not reporting $25 million in donations and expenditures

The Ohio Elections Commission has decided that a committee that previously failed to report the millions of dollars it raised to repeal the controversial House Bill 6 will pay only $400 in fines.

According to Cleveland.com, Ohioans Against Corporate Bailouts formed in July 2019, shortly after House Bill 6 passed. The law created a $1 billion bailout for two nuclear power plants, which were funded by new fees on Ohioans’ utility bills.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose said that the committee raised almost $13 million to put a referendum on the ballot to stop the bill from becoming law. Even though the effort failed, some parts of the law were repealed after former House Speaker Larry Householder was sent to federal prison for accepting bribes to pass the bill.

“ANOTHER WEAK SLAP ON THE WRIST! My office took a campaign committee to the Ohio Elections Commission BACK IN 2020 for failing to report more than $25 million in donations and expenditures!” LaRose wrote. “Fine should’ve easily been more than $100,000 based on years of no accountability. Today, OEC issued a pathetic $400 fine.”

ANOTHER WEAK SLAP ON THE WRIST! My office took a campaign committee to the Ohio Elections Commission BACK IN 2020 for failing to report more than $25 million in donations and expeditures! Fine should've easily been more than $100,000 based on years of no accountability. Today,…

— Frank LaRose (@FrankLaRose) December 4, 2025

LaRose’s office referred the case of the group failing to file its required campaign-finance reports to the OEC in January 2020.

The commission found a violation in August 2020 and set a $25-per-day fine. By the time the committee finally filed its report on Dec. 1, 2025, the group would’ve needed to pay about $53,000.

Republican Gov. Mike DeWine signed House Bill 6 in 2019, which led to what’s commonly called the “largest bribery scheme in Ohio history.” The fallout has cast a pall over Ohio politics since its passage.

Federal prosecutors eventually charged former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, R-Glenford, and others. The feds said the former House speaker and his enterprise conspired to violate racketeering laws and received millions of dollars in bribes.

A federal appeals court subsequently upheld Householder’s conviction.

Meanwhile, LaRose has pushed for voter integrity, a pressing issue in the state ahead of the 2026 elections. One of the things that LaRose’s office did was train and deploy “Ohio’s first AI-powered election administration assistant,” which LaRose claimed would “provide immediate around-the-clock availability to election officials in all 88 counties.”

LaRose also previously issued a directive to all 88 county boards of elections on Nov. 21 after the Ohio Redistricting Commission unanimously adopted a new bipartisan Congressional District Map. LaRose also announced that Ohio has formalized a long-term agreement with the federal government that would enable the state to access federal records to verify whether a person seeking to vote is an American citizen, thus preventing non-citizens from voting.