Seven. I was six here picking about PARCD talk station.
Happy Thursday Friday Eve is what I prefer, and I always prefer having guests in the studio, and it is a wonderful thing to look across the booth here and see Secretary of State Frank LeRose in the studio to talk about a variety of different topics. Welcome man, good to see you again.
Great to be back in the Queen City at fifty five KRC and not talking to you on the phone for one here.
I know, and yeah, we've run into each other in person all the time, and I will say out loud, it's glad to see you, casual you're going running after it. And I apologize to Frank because I didn't realize who's going to be in my studio this morning. And I have my defund Politicians t shirt on.
I love it.
I'm glad, but you know, I'm in charge of campaign finance in Ohio, so we want to defund the you know, the bad ones were doing it right.
Real quick here, right out of the gate.
I know we've got other things to talk about, but I think there's probably no one of my listening audience is happy at all about this Cleveland Browns getting six hundred million dollars through bond money that we have to pay debt service on. I don't I don't understand where that come from, How that can be How in a representative government that all the Ohio taxpayers is going to be shouldering the burden for debt service so the Browns
can get their new playfield. And this this, this, this facility. It's just it's really rubbed my listeners the wrong way.
And I know I'm going to disclose something here in Cincinnati, Ohio. What a city I love. I'm a lifelong Browns fan. I grew up in Cleveland, right right, But I also am one that believes that football should be played outdoor. I think men should play football outdoors in the weather, yes, as God intended. But but further, I think that there's this national arms race as it relates to stadium funding exactly.
And I think that the thought by a lot of our legislators is, well, we're not going to unilt of early disarmy because all these other states are putting public money and public bond deals into these stadiums, and so Ohio doesn't want to be the state with shabby stadiums where we can't have big national events, where we can't attract top talent. And Lord knows the Browns need all the help they can get when it comes to attracting talent.
So again, there's two sides to this. I can see your point completely.
Yeah, multimillionaire families sometimes billionaire families, and we the taxpayers, pay for them so they can make money off of the stadiums that we build on our backs. I find the whole thing just I don't know. It's one thing that's for sure.
There's a thing that's called the model rule where if any public money goes into a stadium and that team leaves, then that money can be clawed back. I mean, if there's anything that should be rock solid, it would be that.
Well, I'll just put an exclamation point on your point that men should play football out in the weather. My view is, listen, football fields are regulated. Size have to be the exact same size. If you've got the football field and you got a place for people to sit, that's all that's needed to play the game. They could play at Knippert Stadium. They could play football field at like Elder High School. I mean, you know, I don't know.
If you're ever at the old old Brown Stadium. I was ruined from like one year old. My dad would take me to the old Cleveland Municipal Stadium, but you had to pee in a trough. Yeah, oh that was yeah, okay, yeah, you know, so remember those days and listen. Here's something that Cleveland and Cincinnati have in common as it relates
to football. The great legacy of Paul Brown, who would have been rolling in his grave seeing the pampered, the pamper millionaires that are playing football these days, you know.
Oh my god. And also the pampered millionaires who seem to have all the resources that like, for example, we have Dow Stadium upgrades here in the city of Cincinnati from Clay Course Stadium, obligated by that terrible lease deal that we approved. They put all the money into the booths, the elite booths that none of the unwashed masters are
ever going to get into. So it's like, oh, we need four hundred million dollars or two hundrellion dollars or whatever, and you know the x amount of that at large slice that is going to go to the private booths where the elite gets to watch the games, and let's face it, the unwashed masses.
And Zip Champagne towards caviats they washed.
Yeah, I'm sorry to get down that road. We had a conversation early in the program this morning about it. Let's talk about voter turnout, which was pathetic. Yeah, I mean, I know it was an off cycle election. I fully appreciate that, but you know, issue too, was there there was a reason to go out and vote. And what was it?
Ten percent?
It was just over ten percent. And this is funny because we have what we call election night operations. It's a room where we're running. We got a direct line to each of the eighty eight county boards of elections. We're pulling the numbers in from them every half hour. We're validating those numbers, we're flashing them up on the website. So we're in the in the mode, we're in the game.
And when we went over ten percent, everybody cheered, and I was so excited that we went over ten percent, and then I said, stop, team, just realize here that we're celebrating that ninety percent didn't vote. I know, but listen, when we a party, we don't want people to not come. And so we want to see high voter turnout, and so we were happy to see that it went over
ten percent because we weren't expecting much. I mean, the total number was eight hundred and sixty eighty one hundred and twenty four of our fellow Ohioans who bothered to get off their butts and participate in one of the three forms of voting we have either early voting for a whole month, or absently voting where we literally mail your ballot to your house for you, or election day voting.
Now again, it's hard to get people excited about what are so called off year elections, these these even these odd numbered years like twenty twenty five. Now contrast that, though to the even numbered years twenty twenty record breaking year twenty twenty two, we broke the record for agubernatorial election. Last year in twenty twenty four, we broke the all time record for early voting. So it's not that Ohioans
are not civically engaged. Ohioans care about voting. They're and they're engaged in it, and they know that it's both easy to vote and hard to cheat in our state. And they show up in record numbers when they care. The problem is getting people to care about local issues. Yeah, local elections. People get excited about presidential elections. People get excited about governor's elections, US senate races. It's hard to get people excited about the mayor's race and the city
council race and a statewide ballot issue. And it's unfortunate because listen, it matters who lives in the White House. As a soldier, I can tell you this, I leave for army duty next week, and as a reservist, it matters who my commander in chief is. But who lives in the White House is probably not as important in your daily life as who works at the courthouse and the schoolhouse and at city hall. And in twenty twenty five and years like that, that's when we make those decisions.
So you know, get off your butt and go vote.
Well, going back to the record year, the twenty twenty four election, that was a record year for early voting.
Correct and by the way, Republicans dominated early voting, which is historically unusual. We were now again we can't tell how people voted, but we could tell in the numbers leading up to election day, Republicans had out voted Democrats by over two hundred and fifty thousand, a quarter million. So we started election day up by a quarter million. No wonder we dominated on election Day. I hope that's a lesson to my fellow Republicans to continue taking advantage
of all three good options. It's like if you're a football coach, you can score points by running, passing, or kicking. You'd be foolish to only use one of those three. We need to make sure that people vote whichever way is convenient for them. But they got to vote.
Well, what percentage of eligible islands voted in the presidential election? Generally, like if you had ten percent in Ohio for the off cycle election, we just went through.
Yeah, it's always north of fifty. I mean sometimes we get into the sixties and seventies. I tell the story about when I was serving in Iraq. This is go back to two thousand and five. They had their first real election. They'd had the BS elections where Saddam Hussein got one hundred percent of the vote. Everybody knew that it was nonsense, but I was there as a soldier to see their first real election.
So the purple fingers and.
I tell the story. People were being threatened though these Islamist groups from backed by Iran. We're telling people that it was un Islamic to vote. That's a lie. They were saying that if they saw that purple ink on your finger, they would cut your finger off. And so when those Iraqis held that purple finger in the air, it might as well have been another finger. They were saying, I'm not afraid of you. And so that election we saw over seventy percent. I always joke that listen, nobody's
threatening to cut fingers off in a while. No, and we almost never get over seventy percent. But again, it shows you that free people can make a difference when they go out to vote, and we need to not take that right for granted here.
Well, and to those people who are upset about the six hundred million dollars just referred to, that was my retort, which is, you know it isn't illegal. Necessarily. Elected officials are always picking the winners and losers in terms of where our taxpayers go. It's the ballot box is how you hold them accountable.
Every vote is determined by those who show up. And I always laugh when I encounter protesters that don't vote, like you're missing, like you're going to wave a picket sign, you're gonna go out there and protest, but you're not going to vote. You're missing the most important part of the process. We're continue with Secretary of State frankle Rose in studio. We'll talk a little bit about qualified community
and his run for State Auditor. Frank LeRose dot com is where you can get the info about Frank.
Maybe help them out. Oh look, there's a donate button right up in the upper right end corner. Stick around and'll be right back.
First.
Plump type plumbing, it's always plumbing done right. They know you deserve better and they deliver on that. Superior customer service for my friends at Plum type Plumbing, of course licensed plumbers. They don't charge a service fee, and they provide free estimates, and of course they have an A plus of the better business bar some pump problem plumb type plumbing, no problem for them. Tankless water heaters, you know plum Tit happens to be the Tri States number
one installer for tankless water heaters. Go tankless for energy savings. Size they're they're very very small, size of a suitcase is what I basically say, compared to your giant water heater tank, so if you're gonna have to replace it, do it. They also last longer than the traditional tank, so multiple reasons go tankless, and if you do, go tankless with plum type plumbing also trenchless sewer line repair replacement. Don't have to dig up the law for all your
plumbing needs. A plus the BBB as I mentioned five one, three, seven, two seven, eighty four eighty three, five one three seven two seven Tight online plumtight dot com.
This is fifty five KRC an iHeartRadio station.
Made for this mountain. Exhibit.
Timy the channel line first one to one forecast today, partly cloudy day, warm, humid, late afternoon evening storms kicking in probably around seven pm. They saying or forecasting anyway, eighty five for the high today, overnight low sixty eight with a few storms possible tomorrow in the South. We're going to get some storms in the afternoon and evening storms are likely starting around five pm, with wind gus tornadoes and torrential downpours possibility.
Eighty two to the high tomorrow overnight low sixty two.
The rain I'll move out. We'll have a dry day on Saturday, partly cloudy with the highest seventy three sixty three. Right now, let's get a traffic update, Chuck.
From the UC UP Triumphings Center.
You see health hands Expert traumacare focusing non prevention, treating injuries and supporting long term recovery and rehabilitation. Learn more had UC help dot com. Highway traffic settling down a bit all rex on inbound seventy four now clear, delayser gone to northbound seventy five.
You're off and on the brakes.
From Buttermilk to Kyle's southbound slows a bit out of Lackland. Chuck Ingram on fifty five krs the talk station.
Sevent eighteen to fifty five KRCD talk station Happy Friday. E Frank Lero, Secretary of State, Reach for now soon to be State Auditor if he gets his way running for State Auditor. Frank Lorose dot com where you find Frank Frank. I got to ask you, man before we get the qualified immunity in your comments on that. That's an amendment that's being circulated ballot and issuative out there, and I know you're responsible for the language and you just approved the least the language of the heading.
We approved it as one as one issue, so there's a multi step process.
I cheer. Is really called the ballot board.
Okay, By way of explanation, I'm talking about pivoting over to the amendment of the constitution that would remove property tax. And I wanted to gauge your reaction on that because I'm not sure how things would work out if it passed, and I'm guessing it probably would if it's actually on the ballot. So let's even take a step back. And I kind of editorialized on this yesterday when I was chairing the ballot board to look at it and approve whether it should be one issue or separate issues on
the ballot. We're leaning too far into direct democracy right now. In Ohio.
We are a representative republic. It has served us well for two hundred years. We do not want to govern via constitutional amendment. Legislation should be done in the state House and the state Senate. It should not be done by constitutional amendment. Now, listen, I believe that property tax is entirely too high. When your mortgage payment is more than half of it is your property tax, something's wrong.
Right.
It feels like you are and how about seniors on a fixed income. They've paid off that mortgage, they burned that note already, and now it feels like they're renting their property from the state government, from the local government. Too high, property taxes are too high. This may not be the way to fix it, though, right, and so I think that things like putting a cap on it, revisiting a thing called the homestead exemption that provides property
tax relief for seniors. And something I'm going to focus on as the state auditor is who the heck's spending all this money at the local level and are they accountable and are they efficient? Really, the State Auditor's Office could be o DOGE, Ohio Department of Government Efficiency. And you know, if you're not happy with your county commissioners, you know who to vote out. If you're not happy
with your city, you know who to vote out. But how about the local housing authority, how about the planning commission? How about the park district? Who do you hold accountable for that kind of stuff?
Well, and we keep voting to have those levies replaced or increased or continuing resolution. I know it's on the backs of the people who show up to vote, but a large chunk of the property taxes is schools. Yeah, and the Ohio Supreme Court declared two decades ago that our funding mechanism for schools in the state of Ohio is unconstitutional. And yet here we are ty years later, still doing it the same way. Now someone had called in because I'm a lawyer, this was a mystery to me,
and how it will be characterized as a complaint. Isn't there some mechanism we could refuse to pay our property taxes because the Supreme Court has declared it unconstitutional at least that portion of taxes.
That's like the sovereign citizens said, say, I don't need a license plate. That doesn't work. But here's the thing that what you're talking about is the thing from God. I was a high school student when this happened, the d'olf decision, and what it was based on is school facilities. The first draft decision was all about you had these little Appalachian schools with dirt floors, and then you had these suburban schools that were beautiful, and there was disparity
between that. Honestly, that part has been largely fixed through a thing that the Ohio state government calls the school Facilities Commission. You noticed a lot of nice schools built over the last few decades in Ohio.
Maybe some of them too, nice.
College university level stuff exactly, But that was the School Facilities Commission. So we've largely fixed the disparity in school buildings. Now what happens inside of those is still a problem, right, And we know that your zip code has a lot to do with what quality of schools you have. And I think, honestly, this is why school choice is so important. I think the school choice is the civil rights issue
of our era. Amen, no kid. If we believe in a meritocracy, we do that any kid should be able to grow up and make something of themselves and live up to their God given potential. It has to start with good schools for any kid. By the way, this was one of our founding ideals when the Northwest Ordinance created this thing that we now call Ohio. Right public schools was a revolutionary idea that didn't exist, And so you know, we need to have good schools and property
tax is currently part of the mix. Now here's the problem too, though. If you get rid of property taxes, are you relying entirely on state level taxation. You don't have local taxation because guess what, the people that are paying are making the decisions. So if you want to have local control over your schools, you need to have some level of local funding as well.
Yeah, no question about it. It complicates matters just I mean, beyond my comprehension, And sometimes I think, how would this all work?
You wouldn't design it this way. If you were going to start today to design a state, you just wouldn't build it this way. But we're stuck with some legacy issues that we need to work through.
Yeah, And on school choice, Indiana has had demonstrably great luck with the school choice. They've expanded it, but it's proven benefits for the students. The numbers have gone up, the reading scores are now in the top ten, their math stores are now in the top ten. And it wasn't always that way. So I think we should embrace that model and run with it.
We've gone a long way on school choice, We've got further to go. Yes we do, Yes, we do real quick.
On qualified immunity, as qualified immunity men, and speaking of ballot initiatives, the police do enjoy qualified immunity for the job that they are doing.
What's your take on the measure itself. Yeah, terrible idea. Imagine anario where in a completely justifiable use of force, so bad guy pulls a gun, police officer shoots bad guy, bad guy dies, bad guy's family if this past could then personally sue that police officer for pain and suffering and lost wages and what even a completely justifiable situation. And now nobody's going to want to be a police officer. If your personal assets, your home, your personal wages could
be taken away to compensate some bad guy's family. It's a crazy idea and it's something that really, if it makes the ballot, Ohioan should roundly reject it in the name of public safety and standing with police. Now, let me be clear, ninety nine point nine percent of the time the men and women in law enforcement do the right thing. On that fraction of a percent. When they don't, they'll face justice for it. They need to write and
their consequences. But qualified getting rid of qualified immunity is a kooky idea.
I agree completely. It's tough enough getting police who are getting citizens to consider into law enforcement these days, and for someone out there screaming go well, if there's nothing wrong, it was justifiable shooting, then there's no way that could be found liable. There's a thing called legal expenses, and having to lawyer up and pay that lawyer four or five hundred dollars for every hour work is an insurmountable
challenge in and of itself. Most people can't afford that kind of money, and to foist that upon law enforcement officers, it's just going to be a horrific thing. So, Frank LeRose, a comment on your run for state Auditor, just a real brief before we part company this morning.
Yeah.
So the auditor has two job, catching crooks that engage in public corruption. Anybody that would break the public trust by taking tax dollars and put in their own pocket needs to be in jail. That happens, unfortunately. I'll do that as Auditor of state. The other thing is government efficiency. The auditor can come into any of six thousand different local and state government offices and find out if they're running as smoothly as they should.
Think about it.
As Ohio doje, That's how I plan to use it to shake the waste out of local and state government. I'm excited about this.
I've got quite a few listens out there right now probably screaming the word medicaid at the rate because I know we got some problems during the state of Highway.
Row abuse all of that. Yeah, and our current auditor, Keith Faber, has has gone a long way. He's done an audit of the state medicaid system. But now it's time that we implement some of those things. By the way, this is why I'm excited for our next governor, who I believe is going to be Vi Vake Ramaswami. I think he's the man that's got the courage to actually fix the stuff that the auditor finds wrong.
Boy, he have the backing of the Ohio Republican Party too. Was it vote sixty sixty to three or something like.
That to tell you what, Yeah, he is a good man.
You're seeing a consolidation early because he's a visionary leader that actually has the courage to get things done. I describe it as you know in the military, you've got leaders you have to follow because they've got more rank. This is that rare leader that you want to follow. And I was the first one back him. Yeah, I was the first one to back him. I'm out on the campaign trail with him all the time, and I think he's got the potential to be the most transformative governor of our generation.
I share your belief in that, I truly do. Frank Lrose has been a real pleasure. Thanks for stopping in the studio this morning, folks, stick around. Coming up, Tim Keller, founder of the US Diabetes Carry is going to help educate the public about ending the diabetes epidemic we have in America, and it is a substantial one. First, if you're buying a new home, your refinancial existing mortgage, you know you need to talk to is Suzette Loew's a
camp with Cross Country Mortgage. I don't care what state you're sitting in. She can help you nationwide. She's licensing all fifty states, plus my friends in Puerto Rico, and she'll get back with you quickly.
You'll love working with her.
She's just a real wonderful lady, excellent a customer service and has more than thirty five years in the mortgage business. And she's working for you access to multiple multiple broke mortgages out there. She's always going to get you great rates at a low cost. And again with that Smile on her Face service with a Smile five one three three one three fifty one seventy six. That's three one three fifty one seventy six online or to send her
an email. Suzette dot lows camp spelled Los E Kamp Szet dot Low's camp at CCM dot com, fifty five
KRC dot com