Let's continue now, Billy Cunningham, the Great America. Of course, State Representative Adam Byrd, both getting in and around New Richmond, the Home of the Lions, is one of the leaders of the House of Representatives. In Columbus. Last week, Governor Mike Dwaine gave a State of the Union State of the State address, which I understand went on for about an hour and a half. Lots in there. This could be one of his last ones because he's leaving office
at the end of next year. But until then, State Representative Adam Byrd, welcome again to the Bill Cunningham Show and the State rep.
Bird.
Before we talk about the taxes, all the new taxes, Governor Dewines said he wants to raise on almost everything. I want to talk with you briefly about Ohio dog laws, which you kind of a lot of us smile when I hear that. But in my younger days I did a lot of personal injury work of those who are not bitten by dogs, I mean chewed on and almost murdered killed by dogs, including losing thumbs and fingers and
at dogs. We've had a rash of these, especially in Coleraine Township, which is the opposite side of the world from you. But a woman, an older woman, was killed. We had a little girl in Roselawn that was eaten alive by two dogs. We've had numerous other individuals in and around the tri State that have been disfigured by dogs. And I read out of a Columbus Dispatch story. I'm sure you're aware of that dogs attack about seventeen thousand people a year in Ohio. And that's the tip of
the iceberg. Because many of the dog attacks are not even report it. The actual total was double and triple that victims experienced disfigurement, death, amputations, psychological trauma, and huge medical bills. And dog owners often get a one bite rule, which is, well, your pit bull, your German shepherd can have one big bite. We'll let that go and pay a minimal fine and go out the door. What can you do to correct that? If anything, great to be.
With you today, Bill, And this is a very interesting topic. And I do command the Columbus Dispatch for running this story because it's not something that I think a lot of us know about. And if you have a dog that you're not in control of and it is assaulting other people and disfiguring and maiming that that is that should be taken care of in law. And if if current law is not adequately protecting people from unsupervised dogs, we've got to take care of that, and we've got
to amend a law. And that's why it's called the Ohio Revised Code, because we're revising it when we find out about issues that are not, you know, taking care of I know.
You're a headquartered there in Claremont County by the Front Street grille, but here in Hamilton County, we had a dog warden who was called of the scene of this vicious assault on a mother of three. Her arms were chewed off, she had her legs bitten and it looked like she went through a looked like she went through accusin art. It looked like her life. Her life is over as she knows that she has years of therapy. And when called of the scene that dog Warden said,
hamilty guy. Dog Warden said, well, I can't get the dogs because they're too vicious, And the neighbors are saying, what the hell are you saying? That's like a cop going to a bank robbery saying, well, I don't want to get involved in the bank robbery. Those robbers look too mean, so what in the hell, And I'm looking at that, I'm thinking that can't be the case. And secondly,
we need strict liability on dogs. That is how many times when I had Little Schnorff in the Peanut Head and magazine, you'd open a door, they'd run out all of a sudden, and then you chase them down to make sure they didn't get hurt. If I had a Pitbull or a Master or a German Shepherd, I'd be a lot more cautious. We need strict liability. I can't imagine Adam Bird if one of the people in Coraine Township that tried to help that mother of three save
her life and now she's maimed for life. If some neighbor, if a human being had done to her what those two dogs had done, they'd be locked up for years. How come dog owners can have dogs that do this and there's no penalty at all?
You got me all pistol you're about, I know, and I don't really feel responsible for that. But anyway, to your point, there are multiple issues here. One is the dog itself and what are we going to do about that, and are we going to continue to give them one free bite where we you know, make them bite a
second time? And then secondly, are we going to do something about the owner of the dog who doesn't properly control them and doesn't provide safety for their neighbors around a dog that you know they're they're they're not keeping on a leash, they're not controlling, and so you've got two separate issues there.
I now, secondly, I don't know if you saw this out of out of New York City, a massive new study shows that the serious mental side effects following gender affirming surgery, this story goes honesty. I'll have the report here that after studying this issue for more than fifteen years that those Americans who feel, especially if they're miners, that as a parent you have to allow hormonal treatment and then gender affirming surgery, that the mental problems after
the surgery are worse than before. Suicides after are worse than before, alcoholism drug use is worse after than before. Can you tell the American people as we sit here this a Monday afternoon, what is the status as we speak about a fourteen year old boy who believes because of the culture et cetera, that he's really a girl. And what is the what are the laws in Ohio that either stop, prohibit, or encourage parents to take a
child and go through a sexual mutilation. What is the current state of the law?
Sure, Bill, And you know you bring up the word gender affirming care that phrase right there, I reject that because there's nothing affirming or caring about mutilating the body of a young person. And so you've got to really question parents who are willing to take their child down that path. And when you talk about suicide issues, Bill, you know other increased suicide issues reflective of this of it. Yes,
but that's because of what you just said. Because after they have gone through the process of chemical castration or actual physical removal a part of their body that they have deep from regret and remorse, and they you know, there's no going back from it at that point, and so you ask, what can we do in Ohio. Bill,
We've already done something. We've had Hostile sixty eight. And you may recall that that your friend Governor Juwaian detoed that bill and then we had to come back as a state legislature and come back and override his vetot and establish and restore the safety of our under eighteen aged people here in Ohio. Now you can still go get you can go get the surgery or get the chemical castration at age nineteen or age eighteen, but we don't allow that in Ohio anymore if you're underage.
And so, if you're twenty years old and you've been listening to the popular culture and you suddenly want to go from Bruce Jenner to Missus Jenner and you're over the age of eighteen, you can do it. In fact, I would say, look, if that's what you want to do with your own body, no other other bodies involved, unlike abortion. If you want to go through gender affirming care, get hormonal treatment, et cetera, have at it. It's your body. Go ahead, but know that this massive study. Let me
share with you a couple of findings. One massive study of more than one hundred and five thousand who had
gender affirming surgery found some disturbing trends. Published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine of the AMA track to one hundred and seven thousand patients age eighteen and older with gender dysphoria, researchers assessed their mental health two years after the surgery and found the transgender person suffer from quote heightened psychological distress, including depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, partially due to stigma and the lack of gender affirmation. Twenty five
percent face more depression. There was eleven point five percent more suicides, which is said, and similar trends were examined for males and females. Alcoholism rates want up, drug use one up. In other words, going through the process is worse than not going through it. So maybe there's something at stake here other than one's genitalia. It could be a mental disorder.
What do you think, Well, you know, you bring up gender dysphoria, and I believe the studies show that if you were experiencing gender dysphoria, that the natural cure for that is to go through adolescents, to allow your body and your hormones to go through life naturally normally. And as you age and as you change through those formative adolescent years and the hormones start flowing, that your gender dysphoria issues that you previously experienced are naturally going to
go away. But to your point, if you're twenty one and you still want to do this. I'm sorry if you're eighteen and you still want to mutilate parts of your body. I believe we should allow adults to make those kinds of decisions for themselves. I don't think it's the right one to make, but the law in Ohio allows an eighteen year old to make that. Well.
Sweden a liberal haven. Sweden National Board of Health and Welfare sets guidelines for care determined earlier this year that the risks of puberty blockers and treatments with hormones quote
currently outweigh the possible benefits for miners. Therefore it will be ceased, and the NHS in England, which is in the midst of an independent review of gender identity services, recently said there is scares and inconclusive evidence for support of clinical decision making for miners with gender dysphor you.
They stopped it two and so we're about ten years behind these so called advanced countries in Sweden, England that I've tried this beginning about twenty five years ago, and they're telling us it's not working.
Now.
If you're in California, a representative Adam Bird, or you're in Chicago, Illinois, or Boston Massachusetts. Guess what, it's a free fire zone. In fact, parents have told me Adam Bird that if my sixteen year old wants to become a different gender, I'd rather have a living son than a dead daughter, which is a nice phrase untethered to reality. However, the doctor might say has got to be done, the children's hospital might say it should be done. The government
will pay for it. And so if you're in one of these blue areas, you're in a difficult situation. Correct as a child. And in California, if the child goes to school and starts identifying by a different gender and wear's different clothing at school, the school can't tell the parent what's happening at school. So if you're in a blue area, what the hell do you do?
So you go You got to get out, Billy, You got to get to a red state because they are not going to protect children the way the state Wihio protects them. And recall also bill that in Ohio you as a if you're a teacher, you cannot hide the gender transporia conversation that you might be having with a student from the parent. If you have it one time, you know you can have a one time. But if you talk more than once about it too, in any kind of counseling session, you have to tell the parents.
And you cannot call someone's boy or girl by an opposite gender name at school without letting the parents know. So we have a lot of protections here. This is a protective state. We care about children, we care about the family, and we're not going to allow those kinds of things to happen. We have a restroom bill in Ohio that says you have to go if you're a male, you got to go in the male restroom, if you're a female, you got to go in the female restroom.
And so we're going to protect the family, protect kids, and these blue states aren't doing it right now, Billy, And if I was recommending to a parent, get out of there before they try to take your child away from you. Now.
Lastly, on tax increases, the governor proposed lots of new taxes last week in the State of the State Address, including on cigarettes booze, and he wants to double the tax on marijuana, which will drive too many into the dark market. One of the best things that's happening now with marijuana. There's about five to eight thousand people working otherwise weren't working in the marijuana, the processing, the growing,
and in the storefronts, et cetera. You also have about a billion dollars this year in twenty twenty five coming out of the pockets of drug dealers and going into the pockets of the people of the state of Ohio. The governor wants to double that tax. Is that going to fly?
I don't see it, Billy. I don't know. If you watched the governor state of the State of draft yesterday, Basically he spent about one hundred minutes outlining his priorities and his budget, and there were a couple of times where he got very tepid applause. And that would include additional taxes on cigarettes, additional taxes on marijuana and online gaming, and so doubling many of those taxes. And you know, most Republicans, most conservative leaning people, aren't big on the
issue of increasing taxes. And and even though you know, personally I am, I'm not a fan of cigarettes, especially because they are you know, they shorten people's lives, and they they they put people on Medicaid, and there's all kinds of things that are that go along with cigarette use, but still I'm not going to support it. I don't believe Republicans in the Ohio House are going to support any kind of tax increase for these things.
Well, he's talking about a one percent tax increase in marijuana, and I don't drink, I don't use cigarettes, never had pot in my life, and I don't gamble online. Line those up. This is so called the sins In other words, we're going to punish you for sinful behavior. Does Ohio have a revenue problem? What does Ohio have a spending problem to increase all these taxes? Which is it do we have Do we spend too much or collect too little in tax.
Well? I think that we always are concerned about efficiency, and of course Ohio we're we're we are. We have to we have to spend what we take in. We can't spend more like the federal government can can. And so the issue of taxing, we we we have reduced taxes over the last two general assemblies built. We've reduced
income taxes for the state of Ohio. And right now, I believe our priorities are property taxes, and our property taxes are going our skyrocketing because property valuations are skyrocketing, and we've got to do something about that to the
best of our ability. I do think that skyrocketing property valuations are going to go down because as we experience the trump UH years, the trump UH the budget, I think that that he is going to take care of inflation pressures, and when that drops, I think property valuations will drop and will ease some of this. But in the short term, we that's got to be our new renewed focus in in Columbus. We've taken care of some
income taxes by dropping them. It's time to bring some property tax really to ohiolands, and we need to do that quickly.
You know, there's probably a lot of Claremont County residents on a fixed income that make less than fifty thousand dollars a year. Their house is worth less than a half a million, probably a lot less than a half million.
And I heard one of your colleagues said there should be either no property tax or very little if you have less than fifty thousand dollars in income and your house is worth one hundred thousand dollars a year and you're in a situation where we have skyrocketing property expenses. Is that happening in Claremont County.
By the way, Oh my goodness, Bill, yes it is. We had one of the highest increases in property valuations in the state of Ohio. It was like forty three percent a year ago. And so that is very painful to grandma and grandpa. You know, you've brought up people of low income, how about people of no income or retired income, and we're asking these people to pay skyrocketing property taxes through opall of their own And you may recall back in the presidential election that Kamala Harris talked
about unrealized capital gains tax. That's essentially what we do in Ohio with our property taxes. Bill, if your house, if you purchased a house for one hundred thousand dollars and now it's value at two hundred thousand dollars, we're going to tax you on your property at two hundred thousand, even though you've not technically realized any kind of game there. And that's something that's got to stop.
Well, hopefully, if the governor doesn't maintains this and wants to double the tax on the so called sins, that you and the legislature can overrule him, like you did on the transgender care. I think Children's Hospital in Cincinnati, by the way, is complying with state law, which is a positive right.
It is, And I believe you're right. I believe that they are complying. I believe that hospitals all over the Ohio are doing that. Could they be referring to people to out of state? That they could be And you've made mention of blue states that are doing these things, and I suspect there might be some referrals to their clients to go out of state, but I don't believe it's happening here. And and so you know, you got you got governments want on your show all the time.
Maybe you should mention to him about your opposition to some of these tax increases.
I will do that next week for the week there after, getting ready for Reds baseball coming up a week from Thursday. But Adam Bird, you're the best out there. I want to buy you a hotty Toddy maybe some chicken wings at Front Street Grille at some point this summer.
Hey, you know, I think Governor Dwaine's going to be in town for Reds opening Day. Maybe you can interviewing live or that's something like that.
That's it.
He loves to come to Red's opening day.
Yeah, I'm gonna pin him to the wall on this one. No, we don't have a revenue problem. We have collect enough money. We have a spending problem in Ohio. That's why. But Vake Ramaswami's gonna bring dose to Ohio. By the way, thirty seconds remaining. Do you like the Vike Ramaswami or David Joes for governor?
Like them both? Bill, I don't like tough primaries. These are both good conservative men that have that have been conservative warriors and there's a lot to like about both of them. And you know, once got to Trump endorsement. One's been elected four times statewide and has has defending conservative values across the state of Ohio multiple times as attorney general. So you know that's where we're at. It's going to be a tough primary for sure.
And Adam Bird, God bless you and God bless America. Adam Byrd, thank you very much for coming on the Bill Cunningham Show. Thank you, Stake Rep.
Thank you. Great to be with you, sir, love being with the great American.
God bless America. Thank you. Let's continue with more news coming up next at your Home of the Reds. Getting ready for Reds Baseball a week from Thursday on news Radio seven hundred WLW