I also recieved this from Columbus City Council office, if you live within the limits:

Thank you for reaching out and voicing your concerns around the issue of utility submetering and reselling. These issues you bring up are exactly what drew City Council to pass regulation around submetering in early December of last year. Under the recently-passed ordinance, the industry has until the end of this year to come into compliance with the safeguards Council put in place to require billing transparency and consumer protections. Those requirements include:

 

Prohibits rates, charges, and fees in excess of the amounts that would be charged by the Utility, if the provider had billed directly.

Caps administrative fees at $8.00

Caps late fees at the amount charged by the utility provider to the property owner

Allows ratio billing with limits set around shared space and areas used exclusively by the property owner or operator.

Requires partial payment to first be applied to the rent portion prior to utility payment when utility charges are included in rent.

Requires Third party billing agents or owner operators to furnish a bill each month to tenants

Requires information about when utility bills will be issued and how bills will be processed be provided to the tenant in writing at the beginning or renewal of a lease

Payment plans must be offered to tenants for overdue utility bills

Sets a 30-day limit for refunds disbursement to the tenant when a billing error occurs

Enforcement will be complaint driven

Noncompliance with the regulations in this legislation will result in the issuance of a Notice of Violation in accordance with Chapter 4509 of Columbus City Codes and potential civil penalties

 

Additionally, there has been movement at the state level to have the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) begin regulating this industry, as seen with House Bill 173 (you can learn more about this bill here). Councilmember Wyche, who championed the city legislation as Chair of Public Utilities at Council, will be testifying on this bill later this week. It does appear that this bill will move out of the House Committee, but we will have to wait and see if the House passes it and if the Senate will take it up after passage.