Bill cunning and the Great America, and welcome this Monday afternoon. The Tri State Reds Baseball kicks off about six oh five tonight. But the Red Sox, believe it or not, the Red Sox have a losing record, and the Reds have won five of the past six series. Is look hotter than a firecracker, and we'll see what happens. They have three games in Boston, then they're often have three games in Philly, and they come home next week getting ready for the All Star break, and have seven games
and home against weak opponents. But nonetheless, the Reds are with a rocket right now, one of the best teams in baseball, which I find hard to believe on June thirtieth, but that's the case. But until then, the Speaker of the House in columbuses, of course, Matt Huffman from Allen County, Alama, home with the q P Burger and so much more. And Speaker of Huffman, welcome again to the Bill Cunningham Show.
And I asked you off the air. We do have white smoke over the Capitol, but there's also a possibility of the governor vetoing parts of this which you can override. With sixty and twenty house in the Senate. But one thing in Cincinnati which is bigger than Montana is the Bengals and the Browns now living in Lima. I'm not sure you care a lot about Bengals and Browns football. You probably care more about about the legacy of Leonard
Rush and also Ohio State. But there's a lot of concern here that you're treating the Cleveland Browns differently by giving them the hundreds of millions of dollars from unplaying funds, while the Bengal deal, which is an loi, is not yet signed, but it's a promise to sign. So can you tell the American people this Monday afternoon what is the status of the Bengals deal and the Browns deal and why one deal was approved the other other one
wasn't unclaimed funds, etc. That was used. Instead of an additional tax on gaming many ways to fund it, you came up with the unplaying funds. Explained the deal to the American people.
Well, first, the Bengals do have an opportunity to take advantage of this fund, these unclaimed funds, as as do other sports and cultural facilit There's an entire track of things that people can do that that entities can do qualify and the Bengals can do that, as could the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, and maybe some day the Symphony, Reds or fill in your favorite entity, so there will be a way for the Bengals to qualify like this there The Browns organ or the Browns program, of course, was
much different I think than probably any entity for a long time in that they they're putting in a couple of billion dollars of private money. But there is a there is an entire scheme in place for the Bengals to take advantage of this, and you know, I do think that this is the best way to do this. I didn't want to raise taxes the bond uh provisions that we use so often in other areas. We did that six hundred million dollars for the Brent Spence Bridge
transportation capital budgets we have. We always have billions of dollars and bonds out there, but that would have added about an extra three hundred and thirty million dollars onto the costs of the taxpayer. The unclaimed funds is simply money that is sitting accumulating interest. We can't spend the interest. And the interesting thing about this one has about four
point eight billion dollars. It's collecting about one hundred and ninety million in interest every year, and in non interest income it collected five hundred and twenty four million dollars only paid out one hundred and forty five The amount of money that's coming to this fund has skyrocketed over the past ten to fifteen years. I think the reason is people are losing their money on the internet place and it eventually gets turned into the state, so it's
a good way to do it. We of course ensure that the Browns, the Bengals, and anyone else taking advantage of this money will create enough new revenue to pay the fund back. The Browns can't get the money or anybody else until they show the Tax Department and they show Office of Budget and Management that the project is viable and that the fund will recover its money.
As far as the LOI that was signed, Alesia Reese County Commissioner and she served in the legislature for a long time maybe when you were there, has set on our air repeatedly, there's no deal that there's an LOI, letter of intent and now the lawyers get together, the George Vincent types who's brilliant in Densmore and Alex trent Tefilu who works at Densmore gets together along with the Bengal lawyers. And the Bengal lawyers are undefeated, untied, unscored on hell. Mike Brown takes the I R S to
tax court and beats the IRS and tax court. So these sets of lawyers are making one thousand bucks an hour and they're going to hash it out. Well, once they hash it out and say, okay, we really have a deal, there was a lot of a lot of confetti and a drinking the champagne and were screaming, hollering and shouting about a week ago, we got a deal, we got a deal. In reality, there's not a deal. There's an understanding in the future to maybe get a deal.
But if the deal is signed, you're saying that the Bengals had the capability of getting that missing three hundred and fifty million dollars out of the state quote the unplaying funds. But the deal has got to be a real deal, has got to be examined and has got to be the model rule. Can you explain to the American people, Speaker Huffman, the model rule that has to be applied. If this Bengals take money, does that solidify
them in Cincinnati? They say it's eleven years. They say it used to be a thirty year, now it's eleven. Can you explain that to the American people?
Sure so. But just to be clear, the amount of money that the Bengals and again anybody else building large facilities like this get, they would have to come and apply to the state for that fund and make sure that the taxes would pay back ultimately the money to the fund. And that's going to be dependent on whatever deal it is that the Bengals or the city, or the county or the NFL or whoever bring us to
the state. They can convince them, hey, look, state, now, whether it's three hundred and fifty or two hundred and fifty or whatever it is, based on what's in the statue. Then someone will say, Okay, we're convinced that the folks at the Office of Budget Management, we're convinced we're going to get our money back. Here's the money, and here's all the parameters. But until there's an agreement, no one can say, oh, we're going to get this, or we're
going to get that. We basically modified the Medel rule to say that, you know what the state legislature's interested in is the state of Ohio. And in this particular case, this new facility in Cuyahoga County is built about one mile outside of the city limits. Brook Park is actually about the city of Cleveland. I don't think that was ever intended to do that now. I don't think the Browns are going to move to Akron or Bima, although
that would be great. But what essentially does is prevent not just penalizes, but prevents teams who have signed agreements and taken state money from leaving the state of Ohio. And again, you know that's essentially what the new rule is because you know before it was Cleveland donate. Well, they can build this new facility there and it essentially serves the same population. And again, the state of Ohio is what we care about, not necessarily the lines in a particular county.
So if and when the LOI becomes a real deal, it'll be eight thousand pages long. The lawyers will get their cut of the deal. It's going to be signed, seal them, delivered, at that point the Hamleting County with the Bengals, and I guess the NFL applied to this
fund to get three or four hundred million dollars. And if that happens, that's like the guarantee that the Bengals threat to move, which the Browns have done one time they go went to Baltimore, and Mike Brown one point showed up in Baltimore when the negotiations are going on. So if Ohio has put up this money, and this might be three to six months down the road, Speaker Matt Heffman, and they take the money, then it's going to be very difficult for the Bengals to leave. Is that fair to say?
That's absolutely fair to say. Yeah, yeah, And again the state isn't sitting here saying how can we give this money away or how can we make these deals individual communities. I mentioned the Columbus Symphony Orchestra because they have plans
for a two hundred million dollar facility. They're not maybe Columbus, Franklin County other people can raise that money, but you know, that's that's money that potentially they can apply for the fund and not just mega facilities, you know, like the Browns or the ones that we were just talking about. But but but other facilities which you know, are going to course enhance our lifestyle and a lot of people
want to come here and live. You know, this facility in Cleveland is going to be, you know, state of the art. And I think you know, I think you and I agree that if the Bengals renovation happens, that it's going to be great for downtown wonder by the way, I'm a Reds fan, well I may.
And at this point, part of the deal, which isn't done, I want to say as loud as I can, there is no deal between the county, the state, and the Bengals for the renovations. It's a promise to get an agreement down the road, which we hope happens. But also the Bengals are giving up a lot of control over the entire riverfront. That was stupid to give them control in the first place. It also opens up other events
like Beyonce or maybe Taylor Swift to come back. And it opens up the ability of this new commission in Hamilton County to say, Okay, we're going to use pay Corpse Stadium more. All that's good stuff will see what happens. Secondly, my friends in public education say you're screwing public education by this forty percent carryover. Can you maybe, in one paragraph explain why you're not screwing public education to put those fears to rest.
Well, first of all, public education is being funded an additional seven hundred million dollars through this budget. I had a reporter asked me last week. He said, what would you say to the people who are set with you for cutting funding to public education? And I said, I would tell them that they have been misinformed and they should be upset with anyone, including news outlets, that are telling them that in fact, public education is being cut. So here's what we're trying to do. There's a lot
of we've got real problems with backating property tax. There are a lot of folks who are eliminated completely that may be on the ballot next year. And essentially what we've done is say, look, there are a lot of public school districts, not all of them, who are carrying over, who are getting tax money both from the state and local property and not spending it. They're spending a lot. You look at the amount of money, for example, that
the Columbus Public schools are spending per child. They had a forty six percent carryover about four hundred million dollars that they didn't spend, And there are a lot of other school districts just like that. Of course, Columbus Public is way above average in terms of how much it's spent. There are other school districts like Bluffton in the Great Town of Bluffton, Ohio and Island County they only spend twelve thousand dollars per kid. The average statewide is sixteen thousand,
three hundred. Go check your local school districts, see how much they're spending.
For twenty three thousand, the Cincinnai twenty three thousand.
Well there you go. Now, I don't know what the carryover for Cincinnati is, but if it's more than forty percent, we're simply saying the school districts, like I know, Columbus Orange School District, several others around the state. Look, all we're asking is at least return the money that you're
not spending. We're not saying go back and get rid of you know, building wellness managers, which one of the school districts recently, someone told me they hired all the other you know things that school it appears that public school districts spend money on, but no other, no other governmental entity is spending the kinds of things that they're doing.
And all we're saying is, can you keep spending as much money as as your local school board wants to do that, but if you have extra money that you're not using, at least return that to the taxpayer. And so we have school districts that are sixty eighty one hundred, one hundred and fifty percent carryovers, and in fact, the recommendation by school business officials is carry over at least twenty five percent. Now they're not going to put that in their talking points that they're going to send to
Bill cunning In. So we have to do something about property taxes, because what are these schools going to do If this goes on the ballot next year and pass it.
It's going to pay it happens, it's going to pass. I had one of your cohorts on who said, look, it's either property tax, income tax, or sales tax. And people hate all of them. The least hate full, I guess, is sales tax. You pay a little bit, but one of your Cohorts said to me, the property taxes eliminated, that means the sales tax in each county would have to be about twenty percent and income taxes would double a triple. And you haven't had to confront this yet.
But as the main guy in Columbus, what do you do if property taxes are voted down? In other words, you can't use them. They don't exist anymore. What's the sales tax and income tax look like?
Well, I don't think that there's going to suddenly be a push to double income tax and sales tax. What we have are talent, and I've mentioned this last time was one thousands of local taxing entities, and you know, people are willing to pay that apparently, but we may not be able to afford six hundred plus school districts and several hundred cities, townships and villages and all of
the things that we pay for right now. And I think that if this passes next year, we're going to have to look at a restructuring of local government and how we do it. Now. Everybody wants to have their own local school, everybody wants their own police and fire department. You have to figure out how to pay for that. But if this thing passes next year, then what we're talking about in this budget is peanuts. People will be saying, where do I sign up for that plan that we
had last year. I think that there is substantial property textually, if not just in the carryovers situation, but there's a whole number of other things. We're eliminating emergency leveles, renewal levees with increases, substitute levees, combined levees, all things that most of the public don't know about. They just end up saying, well, I'm for the kids, so I'm going to go to the.
School, and they always pass.
Yeah, you're not.
You're in Allen County. In Hamlton County, we have mentally retarded my I use that term because it's in the statute. We have senior citizen levee, we have a zoo levee, we have the library level, we have the engine level. We got all these levees. We have eleven special levees that always win. Matt Heffan, and no point does anyone
ever vote against any of them. Because you got poor, hungred kids have to be fed, and the property tax is completely out of control, especially in Hamlin County, and you give us a shot to vote that down, we're going.
To do it. Yeah. Look there's the other, you know, sort of improvement center. This. If the school district has more than a one hundred percent general fund carryover, they're prohibited from going to the ballot. The school district can't increase tax revenues, which is some of the things that happen. They shift the purpose of the inside melage without they have to do it with the public meeting. And these are all sort of strange words to most people, right,
but this is how suddenly your taxes go up. You didn't vote for it, there wasn't a public meeting. Oh my gosh, how did that happen? So, you know, the other thing will happen. And it may not happen in the Cincinnati Public schools, but in many places, people are going to show up at their school board and say, hey, wait a minute. You suddenly have this operating extra operating money and you put it into the permanent improvement fund, and now I don't get a tax cut because of that. Well,
well we're going to build a new building. Well I would have liked to remodel my bathroom with that extra tax money. So there really needs to be a local involvement in what these taxes are. And you know, I'm just as guilty as there I think. You know, my local school ever comes up, I vote for it in the park and all of those things. But you know, there are a lot of people, of course paying these taxes that don't get to vote, and there are a lot of people who don't pay the taxes who do
get to vote. And the question really needs to be what is it that we can do to make sure I think the current question is what do we do to ensure the public that next year's potential ballot initiative isn't necessary, that we've made the changes in this budget, and if folks aren't convinced, then we are looking at local government armageddon next year.
It will be armageddon. But nonetheless, I like the Tony Benders, rich and famous, my producer. He likes the two point seventy five percent cap on high income Americans so they pay less money in state taxes, which I like to a little bit. But Matt Huffman, we're going to have on the governor Tuesday or Wednesday. He's got till midnight tonight to veto line out in veto, it can be overruled. But you told me off the air. Depends what the issue is. You're not sure yet what's going to be vetoed,
what's not. Then you get back together. The pow wow happens Tuesday and Wednesday, override the veto and the way we go. But Speaker of the House, Matt Huffman, once again, thanks for setting the record strait, especially about the Browns and Bengals. And you continue to have a great day, and thank you, mister speaker.
All right, thanks Bill, God bless thank you, very.
God bless all. Let's continue with more. There you have it. So until there's a deal, is there a deal with the Bengals. Watching the media, we got a deal. In reality, there's no deal. Bill Cunningham, News Radio seven hundred WLW