WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE... The Plain Dealer reports this morning that everything you suspected about your official "consumer advocate" in Columbus is true:

Former Ohio Consumers' Counsel Rob Tongren "deliberately concealed from the public" a consultant's findings that might have slashed electric bills in FirstEnergy territory, a state investigation has found.

Tongren's senior staff members, meanwhile, appeared to have urged the consultant - Boston-based LaCapra Associates - in a series of e-mails "to destroy their own records of the report and the underlying work product," says the report, which was released Tuesday.

It also says Tongren, who has since resigned from his job representing utility customers, accepted meals, refreshments and golf outings from utilities 71 times between 1999 and 2003. He failed to properly report more than $1,000 in gifts.

Tongren also was reported to have paid his own way, or gotten in free, to dozens of events at which utility executives and lobbyists were present, including an excursion to the Fiesta Bowl in 2003 on Columbia Gas' jet.

Tongren's replacement, Janine Migden, has taken some flak for her stint as an Enron lobbyist. But among the people who applied, she was probably a pretty good pick. She started her law career as a paralegal at the OCC back in the '80s, when Bill Spratley, the original Consumers' Counsel, was still making an effort to act like a genuine consumer advocate. And as lawyer for Hahn Loeser in recent years, she's been something of a green power activist, serving on the board of Green Energy Ohio among other things.

Frankly, anything's got to be better than Tongren. For a little update on what lies in store for Migden -- and northeast Ohio utility consumers -- see Ohio Citizen Action's clips today.