The thing about House Bill 6 is not everyone has to pay for it.

Many rural and urban areas, it turns out, are exempt from the legislation's new surcharges on electric bills.

Also known as Ohio's nuclear bailout bill, HB6 will provide about $150 million a year to Akron's FirstEnergy Solutions' Perry and Davis-Besse nuclear plants in Ohio. It will also provide subsidies to Ohio Valley Electric Corp.'s coal-fired plants in Ohio and Indiana.

Those nuclear subsidies will cost residential ratepayers an extra 85 cents per month beginning in 2020. However, some commercial and industrial customers will reportedly pay up to $2,400 per month. Meanwhile, the OVEC subsidies will result in residential customers paying up to $1.50 extra per month, with commercial and industrial customers forking over up to $1,500 a month in new charges.

The legislation's recent passage was controversial, with some Republicans opposed to the GOP-sponsored measure on economic grounds, while Democrats opposed its provisions gutting Ohio's renewable-energy standards.

One sticking point was the cost, which many said will put Ohio at an economic disadvantage against other states with which it competes for business and industrial plant locations.

Those costs, however, apparently won't be borne by everyone. Municipal power companies and rural electric co-ops are exempt from HB6 and their customers won't have to pay the subsidies, their members and associations say.

On Aug. 28, the city of Hudson — where some residents get their power from Hudson Public Power and others get their electrons from FirstEnergy Corp. — put out an announcement clarifying that Hudson Public Power customers would not be impacted by HB6.

The city told residents on Facebook and its website that "as the result of continuous pushback from American Muncipal Power (AMP) and its member communities, the surcharge does not apply to public power companies. Therefore, Hudson Public Power customers will not be required to pay the monthly surcharge. Hudson residents that are served by FirstEnergy and are not Hudson Public Power customers will be required to pay the monthly surcharge."

The city is correct, said Mike Bierne, vice president of external affairs for the Ohio Municipal Electric Association, the state lobbying arm for the American Municipal Power trade group.

"We are not subject to those charges, and our ratepayers are not subject to those charges," Bierne said.

That's because, he explained, municipal power companies aren't regulated by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, or the state legislature.

"From our perspective, we have home-rule protection that effectively prohibits the legislature from imposing these fees on us," Bierne said.

AMP is shielding a significant portion of the state from the new fees, too. The organization has 80 Ohio municipalities among its members, and they serve about 400,000 customers who won't be impacted by HB6, Bierne said.

Also protected from HB6's charges are about 380,000 other Ohio electric customers who are served by rural electric co-ops, which also have home rule to keep legislatures and the PUCO from imposing the charges.

"We are not regulated. That's the whole co-op business model: We're self-regulated," said Patrick Higgins, director of communications for Ohio's Electric Cooperative, the industry's trade group here.

But that's where the common ground and shared interest of the groups seems to end.

While Higgins said the rural co-ops supported HB6, Bierne said the municipal power companies did not.

Bierne said his group opposed HB6 because it will drastically cut and eventually eliminate subsidies that support renewable-energy projects, such as wind, solar and hydro-generation facilities in which cities have invested.

Some cities won't be affected, but others that invested heavily in renewables will be hit hard, Bierne noted, so his group doesn't see the passage of HB6 as a good thing, or even something likely to give municipal power providers a leg up over their corporate competitors.

Meanwhile, the rural co-ops were not as heavily invested in renewables, but they do collectively hold a stake in OVEC, which will receive subsidies from HB6. That may also explain why many rural GOP legislators supported the bill.

"We supported it. We were quiet about it, but we did support it," Higgins said. "We own 18% of the Ohio Valley Electric Corp, and HB6 allows the consortium of investors who own OVEC to recoup operating expenses."

That includes HB6 subsidies for OVEC's plant in Indiana, he noted, which would be paid for by Ohioans.

Hudson said it put out its announcement mostly to clarify the issue for residents, but said anything that allows the city to offer lower electric rates helps its economy.

"Any time we can offer lower utility costs, it is an economic development advantage," said Hudson spokeswoman Jody Roberts in an email. "We are pleased that we did not have to pass along that FirstEnergy surcharge to Hudson Public Power customers. It is confusing for residents since some are on FirstEnergy, while others are on Hudson Public Power. We put out information so people understand if they receive a surcharge, that it's a FirstEnergy charge. Hudson Public Power customers will not see the surcharge on their bills."

Neither Higgins nor Bierne said they expect to see a big windfall for their members in the form of economic development.

"It's really not going to be a factor for us in terms of economic development, I think," Higgins said, noting that rural areas have other disadvantages to contend with, such as the extra miles of transmission line necessary to reach their spread-out customer base.

Bierne said most municipalities won't see a net gain even if they escape HB6 surcharges, because they'll lose a similar if not larger amount as renewable subsidies disappear. More than 70 of AMP's Ohio members will lose renewable subsidies, he pointed out, but the impact on them individually will vary widely.

"Each one of them has a different level of participation in these renewable projects," Bierne said.

But there's also a hidden effect, said Ohio State University professor and economist Edward "Ned" Hill, a former dean of Cleveland State University's Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs who testified against HB6.

Hill said that while it's significant some ratepayers don't have to pay the surcharges, "more importantly, the cost they would have borne gets shifted onto everyone else."

That means the difference between what exempted customers and the rest of state residents pay is likely to increase as HB6 takes effect and further cost-shifting takes place to make up for any shortfalls, such as losses at subsidized utilities. If that happens, those costs are likely to be shifted to small and medium-sized businesses, because rates for residential and large industrial customers are capped by HB6, Hill said.

"There's a lot of rulemaking left to do, and there's going to be cost-shifting … and it could all get shifted onto small-to-midsized businesses," Hill said. "If someone's exempted, there are most costs to shift."

Another reason exempted communities aren't likely to suddenly become stars of economic development is that their rates were typically already higher than those served by investor-owned utilities in the state, said Matt Brakey, president of Chagrin Falls' Brakey Energy and a consultant to big industrial power users in the region.

"AMP Ohio has made some pretty poor power-purchase decisions, which has resulted in above-market prices," Brakey said.

Meanwhile, he added, HB6 will give savings to all ratepayers by eliminating renewable subsidies.

"Actually, HB6 should provide a net decrease in rates for most customers. While there will indeed be new charges associated with HB6, charges that fall off the bill should more than offset the new costs," Brakey said.

There's still considerable controversy over HB6, and Hill said the disclosure that its costs are being unevenly borne only adds to claims that the legislation is little more than "crony capitalism."

Whether that affects public opinion might be important, too.

An effort to overturn the legislation via referendum is underway, and its ballot language was recently approved by the state for the ballot in 2020.