The uproar over a shredded utility study that was paid for by taxpayers - and possibly could have saved them billions of dollars - has cast a shadow over the Ohio Consumers' Counsel office. State officials investigating the episode should make sure taxpayers' interests were not compromised, and that safeguards are in place to make sure such public documents are not kept from the public.

At issue is a study by a Boston consultant regarding how much in plant and equipment "stranded costs" Akron-based FirstEnergy should be able to recover from ratepayers under the state's electric deregulation plan. The report was commissioned by the office of Consumers' Counsel Robert Tongren, who is charged with protecting customers from excessive utility charges.

Early this year, several media and public-interest groups filed requests with the office for documents submitted by the consultant, but were told none were available under the state's public records statutes.

But now it's come out that the draft report, for which the state paid $579,000, was destroyed in July, after Tongren's office changed an internal policy to read that such documents be kept for one year instead of two. That's outrageous.

A final report was never submitted, but newspapers in Columbus and Cleveland have reported evidence that the draft study recommended that First Energy be allowed to capture $4 billion in stranded costs. FirstEnergy asked for $8.7 billion - and got it.

Tongren says the state probably would have lost in court if it had attempted to enforce the lower figure, because its Public Utilities Commission had already endorsed the higher one. He claims consumers got a better deal by not fighting FirstEnergy.

That doesn't sound credible. But even if it is, that's no excuse for hiding the study - and the arguments in favor of the lower figure - from the public. And it's certainly no excuse for destroying the documents, which the consulting firm conveniently says it has no copies of.

How much utilities can and should recover is an issue taxpayers deserve to be informed about. It should be a matter of public debate, especially as electric deregulation, one of the largest state government reforms of the 1990s, was highly touted as a consumer-friendly measure that would dramatically lower utility bills through competition.

This episode also raises questions about what other taxpayer-funded research is being hidden and destroyed at the whim of bureaucrats.

With luck, Ohioans may get some answers soon. The Senate Public Utilities Committee is looking into the matter next week. Inspector General Tom Charles is investigating Tongren's office, and Attorney General Jim Petro launched his own investigation on Thursday.

Several consumer groups, including the Ohio Taxpayers Association and Ohio Citizen Action, have demanded Tongren's firing. We can't say that we blame them. Cutting the public out of the information loop, especially when it has paid for that information and has a right to it, is inexcusable.