Who know not a darn thing other than you know, singing and dancing on stage Clay Travis and Buck Sexton. Today at noon on fifty five KRC the Talk Station to shiveto six year fifty five carse the Talk Station. Happy Wednesday, of course, Jode Jennita Paulton at the bottom of the hour. In the meantime, I am so pleased to welcome with a fifty five KRC Morning Show state Representative Jennifer Gross to talk about the battle for Ohio House Speaker as well as a big rally it's going
on today and Columbus. Jennifer Gross, Welcome to the fifty five CARSCIT Morning Show. Its You're a pleasure to have you on today.
Thank you, Brian, I always appreciating with you. Good morning.
Oh it's always my pleasure to have you on. I'm sorry. I regularly refer to the state of Columbus in terms of politics since Republicans dominate everything, it's like hurting cats. You just kind of wonder, why do we have any wrinkles in anything in Columbus. If we want to get something sort of along the lines of you know, traditional Republican policy in place, you think it'd be just a no brainer, put a bill up and voted, and let's
move on. But it's never the case, and this topic right here House Speaker takes us back to the blue twenty two and of course the Conservatives wanted Derek Maren and interestingly enough, for whatever reasons, backroom deal was dealt. In twenty two, Republicans joined along with the Democrats to elect House Speaker Jason Stevens Well. He says, he announced Monday he is not seeking reelection, leaving the post wide open. Do you know who's planning on running for this spot?
Is it going to be a contested race? Are we going to see this play out again along the lines that we saw before.
Jennifer Gross Well, I can promise you that when we are done with our vote today, which is at five pm, that we will walk out unified. And one body, well, that's now great, we do. But Brian, I would tell you that, yes, there is another candidate who has stepped into the race to His name is Tim Barhorst, and he is a freshman right now, but he has experience in healthcare. He's a solid conservative, obviously the new horse in the race. But I think I remember as a freshman.
I had no choice. Speaker Cup was the only choice, and is that really a choice. Some of us thought about just voting no just because we had no choice. I love the fact that Tim is giving us a choice. And I believe, honestly, Brian, that this is a great example of a representative republic. This race isn't about postcards that were mailed out where everybody's so excited the election is over because there are no more phone calls and
texts and postcards. But this one is literally a vote between your representative and who is going to lead the people's House. And to me, competition makes us stronger. And so I'm happy to see timbar Horse run and get into the race. I again feel that competition makes us stronger. And the best thing that Jason Stevens has done in the last two years was his announcement on Monday. So
I'm really you know, I'm really proud. Well, I'm proud that that that we have people that have courage to step in and I think that the people of Ohio.
Uh I would hope that the people of Ohio would see this as these people are fighting to lead and to leave their house, that this house means so much to the people of Ohio that these people are willing to step in and both men have courage and honor, and I do believe that no matter which one wins, that we will we will unite, which is what I want it all along, right two years ago when Derek won. Yeah you so, Yeah. I think it's going to be great. And competition makes us stronger.
Well, it also fosters and encourages debate and discussion over the merits of each side. As a candidate, and you mentioned Tim Barhurst as someone who will provide that springboard, and he mentioned he's obviously a good guy. But the other contenders is Matt Hoffman, correct.
Correct, correct, who's a very diplomatic man in the middle of I think nine children. So obviously he's great at building teams and working with cats as you were saying, and hurting cats and so, but also has many, many years in Columbus, whereas Tim's the newcomer. Some people may want someone who's very well connected in Columbus. Another person may want more of that Trump candidate, shall we say, or someone who is not as connected to the city
Center Square here in Columbus. I'm actually in Columbus right now. But yeah, so I think it's great. Competition makes us stronger. I truly believe that we are going to be a unit and a unified body, and a look forward to where we move into the next General Assembly. However, I do hope, and I don't want to lead into your next topic without your permission, but I do hope that we get to take care of and work on the property taxes, yes, keep, as well as possibly the income tax.
And you did anticipate where I wanted to go. But let me just summarize what I think I'm hearing from you, And I know you are not endorsing either guy, whether it's a bar Horse or Huffman. What you're saying to me, it sounds like we are going to be in good hands regardless of who we come out with, and that the Republicans aren't going to be in this sort of state of disarray that happened when Jason Stevens effectively couped
Todd Derek Marrin. But at least in that particular contest, there were some pretty profound differences between maren and Stevens, at least that I recall. I mean that is that an accurate summary that I just gave there.
True, Okay, true, and I would I would say that one is, in my opinion, of course, better than the other for various reasons.
Okay, but.
I would encourage all people that are represented by a Republican because this is a Republican vote tonight. It's sort of a gentleman vote. We do it. It's anonymous vote, so no one knows how you vote. We vote behind
closed doors. But by participating in the process, you have given your word that when the winner wins, no matter whether it's thirty three to thirty two, because we have sixty five Republicans voting, if everybody's in attendance, if it's thirty three to thirty two, the one with thirty three
votes is the speaker. And that's what happened last time. Yeah, Derek one by like two votes, and the other side decided that that wasn't fair and then went and twenty two Republicans then bonded with thirty two Democrats and elected essentially a speaker that was elected by the Democrats.
Optics on that were just horrific, and they lived this day all right. Moving along, you wanted to dive on into it, and so do I homeowners rally and protests taking place today in Columbus. This is a serious problem. We hear about in Hamilton County all the time. When the triennial or whatever assessment came out, some people's property
taxes went up by thirty percent. There are seniors out there that could barely manage the situation under the earlier property tax and now face of the bill they can't afford. Now they're talking about, you know, throwing money to help people afford their taxes, which seems crazy. You got taxes going into government and then government what giving people money back to help pay the government. I mean, this circuitous nonsense of effort to try to deal with the problem.
And the problem is the taxes are too damn high. What can we do about it?
Jennifer Gross, Well, we have h Jr. Six Now, this bill is written currently, should have been on the ballot in November, but unfortunately our House has not. Sorry, I'm getting a call coming in probably about the Speaker's vote. The dates on this bill should have been. It should have This would go to the ballot for all Ohioans to vote to put into the constitution that your property taxes can never increase more than four percent from the previous year. It's still an increase, but it is only
four percent. And like you said, many people had large, large valuation increases that resulted in much larger tax increases. This bill. The other interesting thing if people want to read it and just look at the Ohio House and pull it up HJR. Number six, line number fifty one, is interesting because it says it will revert back to
your values in twenty twenty two. That's really brilliant because it does awagh with two years of the inflationary prices and recessionary type of our economy that's been under Biden, so it resets a little bit. And this would have taken effect January one, twenty twenty five, so that was if it had gone. This is a ballot initiative, so this there are two ways that people can get aboot initiative. We as we know, we just had Issue one that
was defeated and that was a citizen led initiative. This is a legislator led initiative, so we can put something directly on the ballot saying hey, we want you to vote on this and tell us what you want.
Yeah.
The other thing is that our tax commissioner. Property tax commissioner is a non elected, elected bureaucrat. So as we went for the people to her and said, hey, we can't do this, she refused to change. And my county, Butler County, was hard hit in many areas ross Westchester, Fairfield. Oh, you were all hit, very very hard.
Oh yeah, well, it's interesting. It seems to me that the value of a home in any given moment really isn't reflective of the taxation that's levied on it. You know, you have X amount of dollars you need to fund whatever that our real estate tax is paid for. Okay, one year the world goes upside down COVID nineteen. Everybody's buying up real estate literally everywhere, driving the pies through the roof. That didn't change the spending of government generally
that much. Doesn't this ultimately end up in a massive windfall that shouldn't even have occurred.
You know, you would think so. But like my pretty tax, sixty five percent goes to the schools. So remember that when and then the rest it's like local government and all the levees we vote on. Every time we vote on a levee, and we increase the levee, or we have a new levee, we are increasing our property tax. None of your local property tax comes to the state, so it all stays locally, and all of your levees, your schools, and your local government, whether it's a city
government or township. So it really depends. That's why who you vote for for your mayor and for your township trustees is so vitally important because they make decisions as to you know, how they're going to spend your money and those types and whether they request a levee. Also, they are the ones who have to, you know, put that on there. So it's really the levee system is frustrating to me because I've lived in states I was military, and I've lived in states with no levee system. But
it is in It is ingrained in our constitution. It has been in our state for you know, over a century.
Fund I haint the interrupt because roma's out of time. I needed to go answer all your phone cloths about the vote. But the school funding mechanism through the property text wasn't that declared unconstitutional by the High Supreme Court like twenty years ago, and yet here we are never been changed.
You know, I'm not well versed on that, but I have had people talk to me in that regard. I think, you know, I think that we do need to watch I you know, I'm not gonna, you know, disparage my schools. I have some great schools, but I but I do believe that, you know, with our influx of immigration, and those are refugees because they are made legal by the federal government. That's why we can't kick them out because
they're technically legal. As they're coming in, the demand and the requirements on our school buildings and things that are is increasing. But remember, those people don't pay taxes because
they don't own homes. So it falls on the homeowner everye time, the whole entire local community in so many ways, not always, I mean some of the highway and all of that comes from the Department of Transportation and our transportation budget, but we the homeowner because I'm a homeowner, you know, and the homeowner bears the brunt every single time a levee's passed, whether they vote on it or not, and every single time a recession occurs and your values
go up, your paying. So now as we're having an influx of refugees, they will be paying too, and then there's a demand on medicaid, so then you start increasing the expenses at the state level, and that hits the middle class in our homeowners. So I've always been a fierce fighter for we need to spend within our means and not spend up to what we keep taxing the taxpayer. We can say to you and we are balancing the budget.
But if you give me five billion, then I say I spent five billion, but I really only needed three. I can still say to you I stayed within the budget and I had a balanced budget.
Yes you can, and no, that doesn't make it right. Today's day, stop the theft of equity. Eleven am Capital Building right there in Columbus. Join the crowd and support of this this measure, and Jennifer Griss, I cannot thank you enough for telling my listeners all about it today and giving us a glimmer of hope. I'm only trying to anticipate what the naysayers will be arguing against this, but we'll have time to do that down the road. Stay well and good luck with a vote today. I'm
glad to hear there's going to be well. A vote and unanimity, at least in the aftermath. In Columbus, Jennifer, take care and have a wonderful day.
Thank you, Brian, have a wonderful day.
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That's not gonna happen on my watch.
RFK the Department of.
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