DeWine filed an antitrust lawsuit against Morton and Cargill in March 2012, accusing the companies of dividing the Ohio market, agreeing not to compete with each other and inflating rock salt prices for about a decade, ending in 2010.
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The agreement will pay out $6.8 million to 848 local governments and colleges that applied for relief.
Marion County government will receive $20,502, while Marion city will receive $12,858 from the settlement.The state Department of Transportation gets $1.7 million from the settlement as Ohio’s largest single rock salt buyer.
A deal was reached this summer, but now we’ll know how much money cities and agencies across the state will get.
“When I announced this settlement in June, I indicated my intention to return a significant portion of the money to local agencies and governments that buy rock salt”, Attorney General DeWine said.
The goal of the settlement is to resolve an antitrust lawsuit against Cargill Inc. and Morton Salt Inc. over past rock salt prices.
A list of entities receiving claim checks from the rock salt settlement is available here.
In Darke County, the county engineer will receive $10,352,90. Both companies denied wrongdoing.
“We’re happy”, Miami County Engineer Paul P. Huelskamp said. It is also spending about $100,000 to construct another salt barn at the Laybourne Road facility to store up to 15,000 tons of salt.
“In the big picture, it will help a few”, Burr said.
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“We not sure if we’re going to credit them on what the purchase this year or reduce their costs”, said Geuy. “The money will go back into our general fund, which is where we fund our street department”. Beginning in the late 1990s, ODOT gave a bid preference to salt mined in Ohio that effectively locked out vendors that produced out-of-state salt. The city has budgeted $87,600 next year for salt because the city has a good supply on hand. Since 1997, Morton and Cargill have been the only two companies mining and selling commercial rock salt in Ohio.
