Week here already first week almost in the books, or at least halfway there. I'm being an optimist, I mean an optimist. This kind dropped yesterday during the swearing in of many city officials. In order to address a thirty two million dollar budget deficit in the coming fiscal year, Mayor after a Purevall, wants city Council to place an income tax, a payroll income tax, on the twenty twenty six ballot, meaning if you work in the city, you
will get an extra tax there. The money is going to go towards public safety and what he called disrupting poverty whatever that means, affordable housing, investment in underserved neighborhood, support for minority owned business and like Jeff Kramerding is here, council member and of course chair Budget and Finance. Happy New year, Jeff, welcome back.
Good to have you. Hope you had a good break.
I did. Happy New Year, It's great to be back.
Yeah, all right, So there's a lot going on here. I think people will immediately hear new taxes and they blosh. The big picture is compared to peer cities, hell, compared to Ohio cities, Cincinnati is still pretty good now. I'll put a asterisk next to that simply because we also have of the county taxes we have, you know, pop property taxes are driving people crazy. Right now, we're paying museum taxes, school tech and let you add it all up,
and it's a pretty good chunk of money. But the bird's eye view is that comparatively speaking among peer city, Cincinnati is still pretty good on this.
Right yeah.
I mean, just from the city and perspective, we are very good. You know, all of our most of our revenue comes from the earned tax. We're at one point eight, all of our peer cities in IRA at two point five, So there's substantially bringing in a higher tax rates than we do in the city.
Of same time, though, you look at how much people are going to pay more in property taxes and you just you feel the bite. You can look at the numbers and go, hey, that's great, but it seems like I'm paying way more than that I should be at this point. And I'm sure you're sensitive to that.
I am I I.
I understand, I understand that.
And then going to or door and talking to voters that that is a dynamic. But you have sit us that are frustrated by you know, by and by litter and by other issues. And you say, well, we've got to keep our ark tacks artificially low. But the tacks are too high, so that puts us in a.
Very difficult spot. Put it is the reality, and I understand it well.
And I think this is again the timing of this is kind of suspect too, or maybe not prime. And that is we just had the shooting of that eleven year old girl on New Year's Day at Laurel Park, and two and a half years ago we had another eleven year old boy that time murdered at the same park.
And the idea in September was, hey, we're going to appropriate all this money five point four million towards public safety, which may add to this issue of the thirty two million dollar budget episode get into a second, But the takeaway I think for residents is hold on just a second.
We were spending this money. You gave you one hundred and fifty million to put cam one hundred and fifty thousand rather to put cameras in around this park, and we haven't done that, and no one knows why, and no one knows where the money is, and there are a lot of unanswered questions I had and all beyond yesterday. She was confused by this. I'm sure you are as well. And so the optics of this, Jeff Gramerding, are that, well, great,
they're going to take more money in my paycheck. But are they actually responsible with the money that I'm giving them?
Now, that's a fair question for yes.
First, I mean, what happened to the children is just unbelievable, a terrible trategy that has to be addressed. It's important that this has been and this has been a long term conversation.
It has to be.
This conversation began with the Cincinnati Future Session when business and civic leaders came and looked at the city's budget. The report which was very thorough which people should look at as a since the Futures Commission I came out in twenty twenty four and said that there is a very real need.
The city's budget.
Is not sustainable and they recommended two earning saxes, one point five to sustained as city's budget and one o point one for housing economic development.
So this work has been ongoing.
For two years plus, from my perspective, is dragged. It needs to be picked up and needs to be at a more deliberate pace. And this conversation is not directly related to what happened to the tragic incident.
Yeah, it isn't, but I think of the minds of voters like, well, wait a minute, there's no accountability for the money that was already allocated for the cameras, and
now we've got literally have blood on hands. Is a sense, because I don't know if it would have prevented the murder of this poor girl, this child, but it's certainly not good from an optics perspective that one hundred and fifty thousand dollars supposed to go to cameras and no one knows who is responsible, why it's taking some there's just literally no answers. And then you come back saying, hey, by the way, we're gonna hit you with a payroll tax. It's not a good look.
Yeah, I understand that a coming. Once again, it's important to frame this in the big picture and what this money will go for.
Keep in mind that the futures commissioning a very small arny. That's the still a hole.
Uh, that's an existing gap in our budget. So I want to be very cautious. You know, if we're talking about a very small earnings tax, we're talking about filling that whole continuing.
Service as there is.
There's certainly no money for increased police or increased fire or increase public safety. So I mean, we just need to be very careful what we're promising to frame this very important, large debate.
Okay, so people hear this and go, all right, public safety, Yeah, we got to spend there. And disrupting poverty and neighborhood investment and affordable housing is big. But disrupting poverty and support for minority owned businesses and people deserveively. So look at it and go what talk about accountability? Where's that money going? Is it more programs?
Is it? Is it satisides?
Is it just unaccounted for cash And we're going to we're going to pay off some people basically to disrupting poverty. Going uh, okay, it's one of the root causes of violence. But I also think that that is demeaning in a sense, Jeff, because the idea is if you're poor, you're going to turn a criminal activity, and that's just simply not true. Yeah, a lot of the people who commit crimes are poor. But there's a lot of people who are below the povert lint, are close to it, that are suffering, that
don't resport to criminal activity. The idea that we have to pay people not to rob is I think that's insulting.
I agree, and I think as far as we talked about part of the earning stacks used to sell a whole and part of it will it would be looking back to since any future commission talking about economic development and housing, they proposed a point one for economic development housing. The largest bucket of money I was for housing economic development in neighborhoods like Christville and Bontel where the city of CINCINNTI does not have the resources to create the
development that we want. So I think that the development like that, proactive positive development is critical, is the foundation for of any crime, and that's what that should be the core around any earning stack. In any conversations around earning stacks increase.
Tell some member Jeff Kramert in a chair Budget and Finance talking about the proposed payroll tax that I have to have mentioned yesterday and you've got about I think sixty days to come up with a plan for this whole thing. Correct me if I'm wrong with the city. We operated without deficits through COVID, and there's federal money there too. But what's specifically changed in the past year to create this thirty two million dollar hole. The rumor is it's police overtime, it's the crime issue.
I would say that that that's not correct. Police overtime is a big factor. But you know, this is the city's budget being unbalanced is the reason I decided to run for council four years ago. This, you know, you know, going back in this is in the Futures Commission. We've been operating on about a twenty five million dollar deficit a year and a year out and we always find a way to paper overage. And this is going back, you know ten years ago now the state government cut
what is called the state and local government bucks. Heard the city Cincinnati. It hurt other cities, that hurt all the townships. In townships and cities had an make tough decisions. They had either to raise taxes or they had to cut services.
Painful, but they did.
Here in the city sin Sanni, I say, we did what we always do the cucin Sanny, we put our head in the sand. And hope the problem would go away, but it had, so this problem has continued to grow a year and every year. You mentioned the federal stimulus dollars. We get that money from Washington, which let.
Us paper it over for a couple of years. After that.
From a revenue perspective, the city has just said boom years the last couple of years, and that's let us payer over. This deficits. But the problem remains. So we can either be proactive and address it now or wait till there's a recession, which will happen at some point and the city's be looking at very very real custo and basic city services and possibly layoffs. So that's the
reason I want to get proactive. Put a proposal in front of the voters, give them all the information, put our budget out there, which I understand nobody's aware of the realities right now. We need to make voters citizens aware of that and let them make a conscientious decisions.
All right.
So London, James Johnson declared the war on poverty back in the nineteen sixties. We saw how that worked out. Yesterday the mayor aftered Puirreval said this money, the thirty two million good chunk of that is going to go to public safey, but also disrupting poverty, what does that mean?
Can talk about what disrupting poverty means to him? From my perspective, any earning sec needs books on housing, and he can out development in neighbors where there's not development occurring. To me, that would be critical to turning around his neighbors and reducing crime. That's where I'm going to be as this conversation develops, and that's where I would encourage others to be.
Yeah, that just kind of scares me because that's just like, Okay, it feels good, but what does that mean disrupting? But we're trying to disrupt and pay people not to be poor for a long time. It's not working jobs in the initiative, work seems to be a bigger issue, and certainly affordable housing fits into that as well. And I think people hear that and they're a little bit curious at the very least as to where their money's going to wind up going because it doesn't hit you in
the pocketbook. So if crime doesn't drop or we don't crush poverty, which isn't going to happen in affordable housing, has not as materializes. How are you going to measure that success? You know it, we'll put throw money at it. But it seems there's again back to the accountability issue. I think that's critical here and that seems to be a thread throughout the conversations we have, whether it's poverty or crime is we'll take the money, will spend it,
but there doesn't seem to be that much accountability. If it doesn't work out, what happens, I.
Think, well, first of all, I think people should look at the Future's Commission because I think that there is a lot in there, and I think that we'll tell people that this is a very solid foundation to begin this conversation. You know, there's some stuff in there that is probably going to be a non starter. There is definitely there is recommendations for a trash acts. There was a recommendations to sell some golf courses and green spaces. We received a lot of negative and immediate feedback on
those proposals, so we heard residents. But I think there is a lot in that people will like and will lead to positive change to the neighbor And that's me part of the conversation and how you structure it When we did the railroad sale, we promised to put all that money into trust and lock box. That's been overwhelming successful. I think everybody read that with a wise move. That money is still in a lock box protected by city ordinance and state ordans.
So if you're.
Talking about an earning sex economic development, how thing you can do it the same way. So, yes, how we do this is be very important. The accountabilities can be very important, and that's me part of the conversation that has to be part of the conversation for where's.
The line, Je crame and you're doing this right and then driving people away? If you make seventy five grand, you're going to pay something like one hundred and ten extra a year, one hundred and fifties to twenty five.
We're crunching some numbers in the newsroom and this is outlier, obviously, but someone like Hunter Green would pay an extra sixty seventy thousand dollars here because of this, is there a concern you're going to drive out the desperately needed quote unquote rich people that we often I have, well, just
tax the rich more. But what happened and as we saw in New York and other areas they move out is Kentucky Mason And are they becoming more attractive to people who are hiring income earners and what does that mean.
For this Yeah, I think there's there's two points. First of all, the business community I believe in the city is very sensitive that are and for business leaders like Tim Spence, it's a third to come together and say, yes, this modest tax increase, this modest earning SAX increase makes sense. I think that says a lot when business leaders say this makes sense, we need this development, we need some
more money. So that was the first thing. I think having the business community involved at the outset without politicians is critically important. And secondly, I'll point out, as we discussed at the outset, that our earning SAX is much lower than any of our city. So, uh, you know, using that logic, every everybody's choosing Cincinnati over.
Columbus and Cleveland.
Even with these increases, this takes me much lower than the other cities, so we'll still be winning compared to our other peers, right.
Yeah, honesty.
That's fair too, is that you know, business is moving out, and that's what the concern is. We've seen some high profile businesses move and it might be because of crime, but this just adds another reason to do that.
That's the scary part for you guys.
Yeah, I agree with you. You don't like to raise taxes. That's a factor. But I think, uh, having a safe, vivor liberal city is going to be more important for businesses and equally important for potential employees than a sect. But that's only part of the conversation looking forward. I don't want to wet over that and say it's not a factor. It's definitely got to be part of the conversation as we've perceived the next couple of months.
Yeah, is the is the timing on this a little bit sus in the sense that hey, you just got re elected, things are going, and now we're going to hit you with this tax literally days. That's the same day that everyone is has been sworn in. Uh, then you want to get this going within sixty days.
So the reports came out in the spring of twenty twenty four. There was a conversation about going about into twenty four two years ago. There is a conversation about going to about in twenty twenty five last year when we are on the ballot and there is never enough consensus to do that, which is fine, this has to be done right, but you know, raising taxes, talking about taxes is there's never going to be a perfect time.
So at some point of the city we're going to have to decide to do this, be bold and aggressive and.
Put something before the voters.
You know as a politician that this is not going to be popular, This is not going to be this is not going to be a fun conversation. I realized that I knew what I was getting into, but it's one that the city.
Has to have.
So I am not wedded into going in the spring or the fall. But you know, I will point out that this is now drug on for two years. I want to get it right. And if there's hard conversations went on, if people around the table really look at this, that's fine.
But if we're.
Just waiting for the sake of waiting, then I think that's unacceptable.
One of the things the Futures Commission call FORER was a trash collection fee. It's never been done. Resalizing the water works. That's going to require voter approval, obviously, and those are difficult politically because it just feels like you know, he here's another tax. One of those go on the belt because voters might might ask reasonably, why should we approve a tax increase, wanting to try other revenue options.
The Futures Commission recommended.
Yeah, so there's a lot of recommendations.
As I said, I mean, I will not lie. The trash check received a lot of negative feedback. So you know, I've noted that waterworks. You know, that's very complex. It's going to take a lot of stepths. That's not a tax, but some sort of regionalizing water works and so it's not solely under the city. You know, that's complex, but there's no reason we should not start that conversation. You know, these are again difficult conversations, but you know we're here
to have difficult conversations. So I say, think, I know that before this conversation, people are going to want to know that many things are ongoing, including looking at water, including looking into the pension system Solvent. The Office of Strategic Growth definitely was a focused point of the Futures Commission that has not been done. I would expect there to be quick progress on that front before this thing get gets to the mental because that's one a critical
item that was in the Future Commission. There are other items in there that are equally important that we're going to have to have progress.
On and make this work.
Yeah, and the Future Commission did the report. You got sixty days to put something together per the mayor to get it to voters. Hopefully it becomes more clear, because we honestly deserve to know what disrupting poverty means. And you know, neighborhood investment and support for businesses and that those are all vague and there's got to be more specifics to that whole thing. Otherwise it just feels like, Hey, you're asking for money and there's going to be no accountability.
Hopefully you can get that address.
Jeff Cramerting share a budget and finance with the City of Cincinnati councilmember. Thanks again of the time, appreciate it.
Oh, it's great. Great to be with your listeners.
See well, thanks, We've got to get a news update in and I know it's coming at you in all directions. The big picture, of course, is yeah, these city taxes are relatively low compared to other cities in Ohio and certainly peer cities, so there's room there, but no one wants to pay more taxes, and especially you know with property taxes and the county digging into your pocket a little bit more. You know, you start talking about now I gotta pay for trash, I gotta pay for this.
That it all adds up, even though the technical it's not, you know, it's just another tax. I don't care what they call it, but it just feels that way, and perception, of course is reality. Saloney seven hundred wlw selony here seven hundred WLW Welcome to it. I just said, this is a that's kind of funny thing in where's this? In Wales? They they've had an issue now for the last number of years where like random shoes start walking ushing up on shore and you go, okay, that's from
a obviously a shipping container or something. The shoes are from the Victorian era. About that like Victorian era's shoes because they have the cobbled nails in the bottom, and they identify the spever and then and they just like occasionally I'll find some more shoes. They have no idea where they're coming from, and a lot of the shoes actually are in good condition. Now figure that one out. You know, typically you see that, and this is kind
of maybe a little bit gory. On the West coast example, they'll find shoes, like, you know, fairly newer models and the like, and there will sometimes be like a toe in there. They go, well, what the hell hat well, you know, by someone may have jumped off a bridge or died or whatever. And what happens is the sea critters when we call them sea critters around here, by the way, that's what they're known as sea critters, because you know, I'm also a marine biologists with technical name
is seacretter. They'll just eat everything down and not get inside the shoe, and that would happen. So yeah, that's kind of gory, right, But there are other times where you have a storm or something, a cargo ship sinks, a cargo container falls over during a storm, and eventually it starts rusting and the you know, things will start leaking out. I think we have like some i know, some toys or dolls or something like that that they found. Is kind of creepy, but okay, that is fairly recent.
You know, salt water and steel, it's not going to take that long to eat through that. However, you're something going well over one hundred years. All of a sudden you look at it, go wow, these are you know, and they're in pretty good shape. It's just the weirdest thing. And they can't figure out where they're coming from or why, but they just continue to occasionally wash up and got a pair of you know, ancient shoes that are right there.
Someone look like they're in pretty good shape. Actually, believe it or not. Welcome to dry January. By the way,
This is dry January. And the kids love them some dry Januaries, and that is not you know, some people experiment they going, hey, you know, I party too hard over the holidays, and I got to back it off a little bit here, and you know, start because it doesn't make you feel all that good if you are drinking every day, and so you have there are some people who wet januine where maybe it's just you know, one day a week or a weekend or whatever it
might be, whatever works for you. But I think it's kind of quaint because you know, we just had and I'm going to try to get somebody on from rhein Geist here tomorrow to talk about this because Michael Why just banned the CBD infused you know, beverages for the state of Ohio, which I think is a bad totalitarian, nanny state, non traditional Republican kind of move, because clearly many Ohioans want the beverage and the governor said no and gave really no reason as to why he was
going to line Item veto that whole thing, which is causing a lot of distillers and in this case brewers to pull their hair out because you're starting to lose market share.
I don't know if you know this or not, and this was kind of news to me.
I know that you know drinking is an I wouldn't say it's frowned upon, which sounds kind of, you know, pro clutchy, But I don't know if you knew the numbers behind this, And this is just it goes to show you how things change in America. That we are now at a ninety year ninety year low for alcohol consumption. Ninety years, you'd have to go back to the late nineteen thirties to find drinking levels at the levels they
are right now. And it's especially big among younger people too Gen Zers, and now right now we don't know because they're too young. But Gen Alpha, the alpha generation behind them. Even there's an indication and being again that this trend may continue, it's unpresent. You have an entire generation. Gen Z is our huge generation, entire generation that's just not interested in drinking. And it's not primarily about health
for them. They just are not interested because they're finding their social connections and stress relief and entertainment doesn't have
to include alcohol in ways that previous generations didn't. And I'd imagine it has to do with the digital connection right where you're on your device, you're on a gaming headset, VR, whatever it might be, and you really don't need to drink to socialize out that they can have a good time without that, which is the dream of many, many, many teetotalers for sure that this day was coming, but it is. The problem is what happens to the alcohol industry. I mean, we are right here in the heart of
Bourbon country. What happens in twenty years if this trend continues, You're going to see a lot of distillers wind up closing, merging, whatever it might be. And I would say the same,
we're kind of like at peak microbrewery right now. Local breweries are facing a just a huge challenge right now with the economic environment, especially with the notion that you know, the next generation of drinkers aren't drinking, and we've seen just unprecedented numbers, huge generational shift away from alcohol, and I think it's you know, there's a lot of fact I mentioned social media, but I also think too that the non alcoholic alternatives out there are just so big
right now, the mocktails, if you will, but also the fact that now years ago, I remember when oduleS first came out with oduels was like the first non alcohol beartic and you try and went, yeah, you kind of i'd have worse tasting alcohol beers, but it's not like, Wow, I really crave an o'duels. But the technology has changed so much that there's so many products out there. Heineken but particularly I try to guin Us. I think it's ginn a.
Zero and it was really good. I mean it.
You know, there's a little bit of a taste difference, but not not in a bad way. And if they're able to do that, and then you're like, Okay, well I was drinking for the taste before, but also the buzz i can do that, and maybe you know, I'll do an edible or something like that and just drink no alcoholic beverages and still feel better about myself because there's a huge health consciousness element to this as well. But also the decisould scare the rest of us too.
As we talk you of debate over affordability. And of course you know Amy Acting by the way, just named David Pepper, Cincinnati's David Pepper, a long time Democrat, is her running mate and the gubatorial race against Vivek Ramaswami. And I look at this and go, okay, well, you know the battle's gonna be over in the present. Saying no, everything is affordable, it's just a lie. It's a myth.
You know what.
You know when it comes No one's gonna tell you about your personal finances. You know, if you feel the pinch about the economy and you think, you know that you have to tighten your belt because prices are high for stuff, then that's the reality no one's gonna send. No one is going to tell you otherwise you know your personal economic condition. Some people, you know, the stock
market could take even more. And even though we're seeing record highs right now and really not feel the pinch, right you can iay, I've got to pay a couple of bucks extra for hamburger.
You're not gonna fail. And there are people out there like that.
But generally speaking, people feel squeezed, and that is also true with gen Z. Right now the financial twenty percent, two out of ten say I just can't afford to drink on the regular. Every once in a while, maybe I might have a glass of something that's buy and large. I'm not doing that. So we have a historic decline
and alcohol consumption in this country. Fifty four percent Americans fifty four percent drink alcohol in twenty twenty three, So three years ago, I would say two years ago, uh, sixty two percent went from sixty two to fifty four, sixty two and twenty twenty three, fifty eight and twenty twenty four and fifty four.
Now in.
The end of twenty twenty five, and at this trend, you're going to see this, you know, the numbers go down in a ten year period, easily double digits, right, That's that's incredible.
The largest single dip and drinking.
We're seeing a ninety year low as far as alcohol goes, and forty four percent of Americans plan to drink less this year.
Largely young people are driving this.
I think the cutoff is going to be the cutoff obviously would be millennials, especially the older millennials. And you wonder that you look around, you see all these you know, microbreweries, and you know, in the day and agent, we know about restaurant and beverage, restaurant and food.
I mean, restaurants generally don't hang around long.
I mean, look at Taste of Belgium right, just filing bankruptcy protection in that place. I mean just a couple years ago, it's absolutely booming, multiple locations all over, and now they've they've completely taken that model down, and so tastes and interest change rather quickly in that sector for sure.
So you know, looking ten twenty years out is damn near an impossibility of what the public is going demand because we're very fickle of what we want to put in our mouths or drink for that matter, drink or eat, So we just don't know one order.
But it makes it wonder like, what is the bar?
See what's it going to look like in twenty years if that, if that trend persists, are you gonna just see bars closing left after right, because no one is doing that anymore, or are you going to see all you know, non alcoholic joints open up, which you already have to some degree where you're gonna be able to open a quote unquote bar and not even have a liquor license because no one's drinking alcohol. And if that's the case, you go, well, why the hell would you.
Go to a bar?
I don't know, there's still the social element there among those who do drink. By the way, in that drinking number, only twenty three percent had a drink in the past twenty fours. That's a record low. Man, there's still twenty twenty three percent of people still having a drink a day. See, that just seems weird. That seems really weird to me. You know, back in the day, people would drink a lot of al and liquor and spirits because the drinking water is unsafe.
Well, we don't have that problem.
We haven't had that problem in like forever pretty much for almost everyone listening, I would say, and so yeah, you would get your ration of you know, if you're in the military, you get a ration of ale simply because the alcohol kill all the nasties off and you know it that that water was at least pure. But you know, according to people cabinet one drink a day, that's that's still pretty high. I would think, say it's more than it's been more than a week since their
last drink. That's the highest number since two thousand and the average number of drinks the lowest since nineteen ninety six. It was three point eight and twenty twenty four or now down below to two point eight right now, and that number continues to drop. That is that's absolutely amazing. So you know, you talk about dried January, it's dry January. It seems like it's dry January through December, and maybe
that is the one big month world young vibrary. You know again is against at you from you know, having a beer at a ballgame or at a picnic or something like that, a cookout barbecue. Okay, yeah, probably not, but it certainly is interesting dynamic. If you break it down by generation, and that is a percent planning to drink less this year. Gen z as I mentioned far and away sixty five percent, but millennial is about sixty
percent plan to drink less this year. Forty nine percent gen xers baby boomers plan to drink more thirty Only thirty percent say of baby boomers. Are older generations say that, but my generation about we're about fifty to fifty right now planning. I'm not planning and drinking more or less. I just drink when I want to. And I know some people are hung up about drinking. Some people, you know, want to keep it clean and pure and pick their spots.
Other people may be predisposed to alcoholism or just don't like the way it makes you feel. I get that, But yeah, I don't have all the thing of vices in my life. One of them is not alcohol necessarily. I like having a good bourbon or beer or whatever. I'll go where the vibe takes me. But I don't really schedule out my drinking, and like.
By half of us do that. I guess as well too.
Among different races, Nonspanic whites down eleven points. People of color studied about fifty percent, and that is the lowest of all groups. And I guess it gets back to that affordability issue, I would think anyway. So but but despite that, you know, there's still, as I said, there's alternatives out there. I think that's the other thing. You've got the super premium well tequilas and bourbons and things like that. You're going to see that grow, Actually, I don't.
I the new trend is tequila. I guess eight percent projected growth in tequila. I don't know if that's at the expensive bourbon I'm not quite sure. Ready to drink cocktails that's up like twenty percent. So the pre mixed cans, if you will, what is it?
Cutwater?
I think they do a lot. And there's companies do that. Some of are goods, some of them are not good,
like anything else. Ready to serve as our eight and alcoholic beer though nine alcoholic beer is up twenty two percent, but the overall category of beer is down a half more than a half percent and dollar sales and so you're seeing a huge shift here when it comes to drinking that younger generations are prioritizing physical, mental health and savings as well, and a lot of social media influencers are promoting alcohol free lifestyles because you know, it's all
about looking good, and I guess part of looking good would be feeling good too. But that changes certainly the landscape of everything we've come to know when it comes to how we live here, that's for sure. That's sure coming up at ten o seven. His name is Ken Kochinelli Eno. If you know this, it's kind of wonky, but I think good for the first week back here
to talk about this and the election integrity project. Governor Dewin just signed in the law Senate bill, I think two ninety three out to get my note on that one, I believe two nine to three, which would allow us. Now it's going to essentially what it's going to do is if your ballot doesn't get in by election day, it doesn't count.
And there's a case both ways for this.
But Ken Is said he's the guy who was behind this movement and is going to take a little bit of victory lap coming up at six this morning here on the Big One, seven hundred WLW in the Scots Loan Show. Later on Julie Bouki's here of course as well. And also talked to Steven eyed Is back about mental
health care laws. And you know, we were just discussing yesterday the Rodney Hinton case and it's determined that the court is determined and the experts are determined that he is not going to face the death penalty because he was legally insane. I guess at the time that he murdered the deputy. I don't know if I totally agree with that logic there myself, but nonetheless, we have not seen the death penalty used effectively in a long time, so it's kind of a mood point to say we
have a death penalty doesn't really matter. Life in prison seems to be the best you can do, and at least we hopefully there's hope that he will never see the light of day again, and that would be the dream of many, including the family of Larry Henderson and others, if not the community. But the idea that some people go in and get treatment in prison, that we know that not to be true, and you wonder if stronger And this is not to make a vicar of the
murderer of Larry Henderson, not at all. But you know, the best way to stop talking about these horrific things and these acts is is to secure the problem. And for a lot of people it's mental health. I mean, look at this, this kid who broke into a kid he's twenty six, looks like he's ten. He's twenty six. Here the kid who smashed the windows at Jade Vanson's house. His mom was on the news last night. Seemed like a well adjusted, normal lady, I guess. And you know, again,
mental health certainly knows no socioekon boundaries. You could be rich, it could be poor, black, white, doesn't matter if people have metal health issues in this country, as you know, and it probably is struck in some way, shape or form anyone listening, whether it's a family, friend, neighbor, cowork or something like that.
It's scary.
And her son was, you know, when he was on his meds or as he was doing well, he was thriving, I guess, and this is one of the times where he wasn't. Took a hammer and did twenty eight thousand dollars for the damage to jd Vance's house. And she said, now it wasn't political law. It could have been any house, as a lawyer said, political haw. It could have been any house, could have been Anybody's just happened. He picked the wrong house. And jd Vance is because that's going
to carry a whole bunch of federal charges. He's looking at decades in prison for that act, which I don't know if the judge throws that at him.
Or not.
I'm not quite sure. But again it's back to the mental health issue, and that's probably true. That's true with him, it's true a lot of folks, including Rodney Hinton. But you wonder, you know, if we simply got we got away from that whole thing where we would take people maybe like that where they should be on. I don't know about the Jdvans guy, but in this case with Hinton, we know that he is suffering from a very serious mental illness in bipolar disorder, you know, schizophrenia, things like
that that need serious, serious medication. But if you don't take your meds, and you can't force someone to take their meds, what's the alternative. Well, we have all these people on the street. You add in the homeless as well. It's a huge problem. You know, if we just simply bring back the institutions to house folks like this where they could literally make sure they're on their medication and post a dangerous society, maybe things like this don't happen
in the future. They will, but maybe not to the extreme that we see that. Anyway, there're two stories just you know, in the last week or in the last couple of days, for example to illustrate that. So we'll get into that. At about eleven oh seven this morning, I get a news update, and as I said, Ken Couchinelli's here changing election law. Excuse me a little bit in Ohio. We'll do that next year. Seven hundred WW Cincinnati to Manican.
It's scott'sone show on seven hundred WLW. It is Ohio Senate built two ninety three, and that's going to set new restrictions for absentee balloting voting in Ohio. Number of things, a climate, improves efficiency, voter confidence, and it would basically what happens in Ohio have four days after election day to have your vote counted.
This would change that.
I think thirty seven other states I believe, have that right now, where if the ballot is not received at the Board of Elections by election day itself, it's it's invalid. And that is part of Senate Buil two ninety three, which has now been signed by the governor. Ken Kuchenelli's a former Trump's staffer and former Attorney General of Virginia and he's with the Election Transparency Initiative joins the show this morning.
Ken.
How are you.
I'm doing well, he's changed his name.
You can well, for one, particularly as the postal service gets worse and worse instead of better and better, the logic of ending elections on election day becomes clearer and clearer. You know, you can go back twenty years to Jimmy Carter and James Baker. They had a bipartisan commission that they found that the most the form of voting, most
subject of fraud and problems was mail in voting. And if you cut it off on election day, not only do you find out who won your elections on election day instead of the having the four day waiting period in which so much conspiracy theories take place from both sides. By the way, that you also have voters whose ballots are showing up earlier who if they make mistakes, can actually cure them. You can't cure them mistake after election day. You can only cure it before election day.
So this would.
Also lead to fixing more mistakenly cast ballots, something that doesn't get talked about very much. And as you noted, it's thirty four other states that really end elections on election day and at Election Transparency Initiative, as our name implies, we believe transparency is critical to the confidence in elections, and when you drag elections out past election day when you don't need to, that confidence begins to drop pretty precipitously, and that has real effects on whether people show up
in the first place and turnout. And so we think Center Built two ninety three would be a tremendous improvement. And also, by the way, establishes cleaning up of the voter rolls every month. And as I mentioned, you can fix You can fix mistake and ballots before the election that you can't fix after the election. It's not legal.
Isn't that the burden though on the voter and consequestion? How many people are actually going back and realizing they made a mistake. What are the numbers on that?
So it isn't that the people realized they made a mistake. That the clerks get to process the ballots before election day and they find that voters made a mistake and they can contact the voter and if they can come in and fix the mistake, for example, they didn't fulfill the requirements of the envelope the ballot has to come in, they can fix those things. And obviously all of us who want it to be easy to vote and hard to cheat. Want people to be able to fix those mistakes.
So I don't know the exact numbers in Ohio. I do know that curing is allowed and that your clerks do what they can to make sure the people who've made those sorts of errors get the chance to fix them. So they can't do it on or after election day. On election day, they just don't have the manpower. After election day, it's too late.
Keny also said that you know this is about the mass slower and selver mail service, but just still punishes people though, because if mail service is slow beyond their control and they still don't get in by election day, that's even worse instead of that four day grace period that they would give you. And consequently, it doesn't that disproportionately impact rural voters with slower mail service, or the
disabled or elderly voters, working class vote or something like that. Yeah, at the same time, there's an exemption here that allows that four days to stand. For soldiers who are serving overseas, why just exempt them?
Well, because for several reasons, One, they have no choice but to vote by mail, whereas for most people who use voting by mail in Ohio, they do have the choice one and two.
They're coming longer.
Distances because they're overseas and deployed, So there's some rationale to it.
I would tell you.
What if what if you work overseas well?
Those folks are left in the same posture before and after CENTEFIL two ninety three, that four day stays for both military and and resident overseas voters.
Gotcha, okay, so it applies to them.
I don't know this thing is then you find out who who wins on election night.
That's a big deal. I mean, think about.
Look, I'll point to Florida. Florida is the third largest state, and people on both sides of the aisle continue to be amazed that an hour after the polls closed in Florida they throw six million votes up on the board. How do they do that? They do that because votes have in before election day that they've processed, right, and so they can have them counted during election day and be ready to put that up. And both sides appreciate that that takes an awful lot of the guests words
suspicion out of the process of ballot processing. A lot of it and I would also note in Virginia, you know my most Democrats, so I'm a Republican. So people
might think, well, some must be some Republican. Well, the director of Elections and the most Democrat voting district in Virginia, Petersburg, Virginia, has for years been recommending to people in her city that they not ever mail about it ever, that they do anything they can to bring it in in person or voting person because of how many every single election, no matter how early they mailed them, just never show up. And that's been that's been years in the making.
So look this, but this is not about that.
This is about I don't really care about those states. I care about where I live Ohio.
And work, but the postals. But but the reasons for it are universal. The reasons for it are universal. And I use Florida as an example because it's such an enormous state and yet they managed to process all those ballots by an hour after the post close. And and look you've got You've got tens hundreds of thousands of people voting by mail. And if they they're not stupid, I don't assume they're stupid. I know Mike Dwain. We
serve as Attorney's General together. I know he doesn't think people in Ohio stupid, and they're going to shift forward. They're voting, if they're male voters, to make the deadline. They're not dumb, they're smart. And they're also going to by doing that, get the opportunity in the in the event they make mistakes on their ballot to be able
to correct those. So this is going to get more votes in the ballot box, some of which the estimate I understand out of Ohio's around the thousand that would otherwise be uncounted because of the estates and how they're filed, will have the opportunity to get cured.
And you know.
That's that's not a big number.
But we've had races to seven by a thousand in Virginia and where you know.
We've had close ones here in Ohio. Absolutely. Ken Kuchinelli's here on the show on seven hundred WLW. He's with the Election Transparency Commission, and Mike the Wine just signed the law sentate Bill two ninety three that would aid any transparency of election spending. To look at this thing, and one of the caveats would be to eliminate the four day gray spiard after elections. To have your ballot count, it have to be in and counted prior to election
polls closing for that to occur. And it's kind of a that's kind of a minor point, but I guess you have thing too, would be well, if the election were that close, and we've had, as you said, close elections, and the way as divide as we are in this country, will have even more close elections, I guess in the near future. But if that's the case, wouldn't I just automatically trigger a recount? So it puts everything on hold.
Anyway, when you have elections that are within the margin of the recount, of course that happens, but that doesn't even determined until you've got your ballots in and their counting, and you can know that election night if you have all your ballots in and I say all your ballots in. Of course, we've already talked about military and overseas voters still get the four days, but the proportion of the balloting that comes from those folks is extremely small, extremely small.
And let's say that the majority, the vast majority of those votes are already in by election day, So with the other votes not lingering after election, it's the tune of tens or hundreds of thousands of votes, you know immediately if you're heading into a recount situation. And I would say, look, we've seen the hyperbole that flies around
after elections from both sides. You can look at Stacy Abrams and Georgia in twenty eighteen, you can look at how people felt about the twenty twenty outcome, and this trace is back all the way really to Bush v. Gore in two thousand, right in some aspects of those complaints are often legitimate and some aren't. And you mentioned
this bill does a couple of small things. Elections are made up of hundreds of small things, and this bill would help clean up and clean up Ohio elections, firm them up, and make them more transparent on election day when people expect, whether you and I think it's reasonable or not, when people expect to know the outcome, and you know, matching the process to citizens expectations is a way to build confidence in the outcome of the election,
no matter who wins. And that's that's a major goal for the Election Transparency Initiative.
But that's also Ken that's also kind of undermined when you have people that are talking about how, you know, if you lose the election. Let's talk about what Trump did last time, right he lost the election, I was you know, was stolen basically, and we still have the Mipellow guy out there that's pretty much lost everything and he's still banging the drum for this stuff.
It's never been proven.
I think that underminds it more than things like this, don't you.
This is what legislators and governors can do to build the confidence up, and they have to work with how their process really works. They don't get to just say whatever they want. And you can use the twenty twenty example. I started with Stacy Abrams. We can go back all the way to two thousand and the Bush vy Gore and this has been both sides of the aisle at various points in time. Hillary Clinton didn't concede she lost.
Perry mccaulloff didn't conceive that Hillary Clinton lost, you know, for years and years, and suddenly that was treason when Donald Trump wouldn't wouldn't took the same approach. So you know, this bill treats everybody the same. It changes the rules before the election in a way that voters can understand. Again, we respect intelligence voters and we expect them to respond
to the changes in the process. And the more states that start doing this when it is presidential elections at state the only elections that cross state lines, then we'll know the answers to the answer to who the next president is more quickly and will eliminate the paranoia period between election day and when ballots are finally counted.
Is that I mean, is their census might be mooting sent because I know that the court I think Fifth Circuit ruled Mississippi's grace period violator federal law right because election includes receipt of ballots that only applies in three states. The Supreme Court yet to rule on this. So is this here in Ohio can preemptively elinating voter access based on speculation about what Scotus might do? And if Supreme Court rules the other way, then do we need to we have to under the law?
Should we wait till it's till's still rules?
First of all, this bill doesn't eliminate voter access. It improves voter access. You seem to assume that no one will adjust.
Well, you could just it's easy to fix us and just go, hey, you know what, here's kind of like Christmas shopping. Here's when you're shipping gifts, or like Amazon says, okay, here's the drop that if you want your package arrive before Christmas. Uh, it's well average. We could do the same thing and not eat a bill, isn't it. I mean you're just telling people to vote earlier.
No, well, to do what you propose is still require a bill, but for your listeners benefit, you're correct. The Fifth Federal Circuit, which is Mississippi and Louisiana, ruled recently that in federal elections, so even year elections happening in November, because they can only rule on federal law and federal elections, that the election must end on election day, meaning all ballots must be received by election day. That's the Fifth Circus interpretation of federal law that has been appealed to
the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has taken the case. We don't know how that case will come out, but you are correct for federal elections that if the Supreme Court upholds the Fifth Circuit, then all even year elections are going to end on election day. And what you and I are talking about is going to become the law. Well, it will have been acknowledged as having been the law,
but not enforced across the country. So it doesn't mean it applies to all your state elections or any that you may have in the spring at local and so forth, those kinds of things. But it would apply to federal elections, which will be the even year November election.
Ken Kuchinelli at the Election Transparency Initial, appreciate you answered my questions.
Sure, glad to do it all the best of you be well.
Thanks again, And that is the law signed by the governor right now. So it's going to change a little bit, a little bit. Anyway, I've got to get a news update in run a little bit behind. What do we got on the way here? How about Julie Bouki our career shurpas. She is coming up next on the show, some career advice for you from the woman herself. That's next after news on the Home of the Red seven hundred W wellw.
Helping you put the big P in profession. Here's our career, sir, Julie Bauki. First one of.
The new year, where our good friend at Julie Bauki and we today's our anniversary who we've been together the most marriages?
Last Yeah, twelve years ago we had our first regularly scheduled segment. Not that we hadn't talked before then. This is our anniversary of our of our regularly scheduled segments. Yeah, so happy adversary.
Happy adversary to you. Yeah, I'm not quite sure. Twelve. What is twelve? I think is cement? I think I'm not sure it is.
Yeah, well it doesn't feel like a day over fifteen anyway, Julius here, she's our career Shirpa on the Sconslan Show on seven hundred WLW, and we always talk career related stuff. I saw this over the holidays and wanted to bring it up because I think it's intriguing that there are a number of states right now that have something called a pay transparency law.
Can you talk about that?
Yeah, nineteen out of twenty states have what they call a pay transparency law. And what it means different things in different states, but in general, what it means is the company's over a certain amount of employees, and again that number varies by stakes must share or advertise when they advertise a job they must say here's the salary range for the jobs. And then in some states when you post an internal job, you also have to you have to make salary ranges available of your organization for
your employees as well. Now, most people who worked in any sort of company of any size are pretty used to the idea of salary ranges and pay bands or whatever they call you know, whatever they call them. Where you are, it gives you a feel for where you land in that pay band. So it gives you a feel for what your potential is within that pay band. What's the highest, what's the lowest, what's the mid range?
Ahl old HR jockeys are very very aware of this, and it's just this is one of those things that I look at and say, why wouldn't you have pay transparency? Why wouldn't you want people to know what the pay range is for their role? And the only reason I've ever thought of is it's if you want to keep it hidden and pay people as little as you can. And that generally happens a lot of times when there is we do the stance when we interview, well, what is what's the salary range for the vision of what
are you currently making what are you looking for? What's the salary range posission? And it's not It is just doesn't. Yeah, it doesn't create trust or transparency. And if you are not proud of the way that you are that you are paying your people and where you sit in the market to other competitors for that talent, then maybe you should do something about that instead of trying to fool people who there's so much conversation now about salaries between people.
It's not the taboo topic it used to be. That they're going to find out anyway. If you can't justify it for the market and for what you're trying to do in your organization and make that a part of an interview or a conversation, I'm not sure what we're trying to do here. I don't think that I don't think that bodes well for your future with the potential employee.
Yeah, and I again, because business is trying to save every penny they can. That's a negotiation, you know, if you're buying same buy the same thing with buying a car. The car dealer has a number, You have a number, but you kind of got an idea how much the car of the actual resale the real shore retail price of the car is and you negotiate around that. You really don't have that on the job. What about things like open door that have kind of leveled of playing fill. How accurate is that stuff?
It's pretty good, Blackdoor.
I think you're talking about glasto. What did I say?
It's pretty good?
You know, I think you have else.
I think you have to take anything you see online with a grain of salt. One of the things that really is helpful from an employee standpoint is that because people are so well connected online, you can go out and read, you can talk to people who used to work there, talk to people work there now. But what you can also do is you can take a look at what other companies are paying. So if you're a claim to adjust sure at a company and you say, well, wait a minute, I wonder, am I I've been here
a long time? Am I being paid fairly to market? That's what you should be comparing yourself to, not the other, Yes, to the other claims adjusters that you know, but also what is the market paying. I think for all of us, because we now know that we're very much in a tactical relationship with our employers, which means that two weeks pay for two weeks work and then we renegotiate. It's
much more tactical than relational. I think you owe it to yourself to take your product to the market, and what I mean by that is through the product and by taking to the market, at least do some research if I were to leave here, and what would I get? Because who happens sloany? Which is just and this is where people find out and they just you know, just it's just horrible. Is that I've been doing this for
ten years. You just hired somebody to do the same job, sit next to me, and you're having me train them, and you're paying meet them more than me. What So that also has to be a look at what what kind of equity do you have? What's in the salary equity? Is it performance based, is it value based? And what do you have inside your company? And how do you feel about that? Internal people have to take a look at what is our what's our what are our salaries
look like? Internally? Are we taking care of our long service high performers or are we doing me I'm just going to hope they don't find out.
Method Yeah, and I think our organization is obviously reluctant to change that. That's driving this too as well. It's the pay transparency issue right now. So what nineteen or twenty states have it? By the way, I guess like Novada, New York has a Maryland, Illinois and Minnesota obviously, uh in Ohio, I know that Toledo and Cincinnati also have limited pay transparency ordinances. Anyway, I don't know how you can unforce that specifically in the city but state wide
to be a different issue entirely. But I guess this is, you know, the genius is in the details with how you do this whole thing. The idea here is to close the pay gap, but one employees just find new ways to keep those disparities through bonuses, their equity or different types of conversation because because what happens is there are people that are big, big performers, and guess what, you want to keep those people employed with you, and you're going to try and do that. What if that
exceeds the window that you had posted. So it's again, it's such a it's such a fluid thing that I don't know how this work. If it's it's actually going to do what's intended to do. Let's put it that way.
Yeah, And unfortunately, inside a lot of organizations, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. And there isn't that internal look. It's just always been and traditional leadership was just I'm going to call it traditional management. So the leadership has always been pat me on the head and I'll tell you when you're ready for a raise. And you don't need to know that stuff. Yeah, they do.
There is each individual, it's their career and they have every right to and have as much information as makes sense. Do they have the right to know what everybody else makes of course not, but they If you can develop a culture with trust and transparency that people in general believe that you are, that you are treating them billy in the market and compared to their peers for your performance and experience level, you will have a very very engaged employee who will be very very happy to help
recruit other great employees to you. And so it's it's this let's let's keep everybody in the dark approach. That doesn't work anymore because the market is saying otherwise, and people are talking about their salaries and they're talking about what they pay, what each company pays, and so if you're sitting in Ohio or a state without a salary transparency law, people that live here can go look at job postings all over country and they can get a good feel for, in general, what the market rate is
for their skills. And so even if you don't have it in Ohio, technology helps us really figure out what we're worth now this and then you know, if you find out that, you could leave. And I've had clients do this where they say they go back to their to their employer and say, you know, hey, look I just got approached by another company, or I just got this, or I just got that, and I'm finding that there are lots of companies out there who would love to hire me or double what I'm making now, or ten
percent more than i'm making now. It's a risk to have that conversation, and you have to really have your data. But if you're not a strong performer, that's a double risky question. That's a double risky conversation because that could turn into there's the door, right, and so you know you have to be really careful. But if you don't advocate for yourself, no one else will just don't ever in conversations emotionally. You want to go in armed with
information at make it a business proposition. Yeah, you know, Val.
Yeah, And I think that's true.
Again, it's incumbent upon you to try and get the best deal possible for you with the information that you have. I don't know if mandating pay transparency is going to do that, because I mean, if you look at wage growth, for example, is there a concern that that's just transparency thing? Pay transparency issue that's been mandated by some governments and states and it's catching on now, so almost half states have some sort of law on the books involving pay
transparency and a scale for what your job pays. I think a couple of things. Number one is we're always changing jobs. People in school today are training for jobs that are yet to be created, so that that's a whole new twist there because we just change and pivot so quickly because of the nature of capitalism and our economy. Yesterday's job isn't guaranteed, and tomorrow's job we don't know
what it is, but it'll be something. And I think there's an issue that this could suppress those wages if if now you're anchored to these ranges rather than competing aggressively.
Yes, absolutely, you know it's an internal look. Organizations have to do an internal look at pay equity, but also they need to do compensation surveys. Either compare themselves to the people or i'm sorry, the organizations against which they compete for talent. And that's really important. You've got to make sure you're comparing apples to Apple. And it's not enough to say, well, you know, there aren't many jobs out there, so nobody's going to leave because they're turnover
so low. Oh, believe me, when things pick up as they always do, your best people are the ones that will have those opportunities. And is it worth it? Is your employee relations strategy just simply I don't know, I think my people are too lazy to go find something else or you know, I mean that has a terrible way to have an engaged workforce that's bringing their best skills every day.
And that's probably the rule rather than the exception that that kind And it's like, hey, listen, you know what I got. We got to figure out a way how to get to ten percent profit this quarter?
Right?
You know that means throwing bodies out the window and paying people less. We're going to do that because I got to hit my numbers. That's how the generally, that's how the system is built. And then of course, you know what about highly compensated employees where their pay exceeds the posted range because the job title is always changing or whatever. You know, how do you how do you retain and attract top tailent at that level?
Yeah, and so there you will find in a lot of organizations. You will find that there are people that have been there for a very long time and have continued to be promoted to be given more pay in terms of balery, and their pay is higher than the
value they bring to these organizations. And that is what That is a real tough one because when you start to get into we're paying for longevity and service versus performance and value, then you will get to that position where you have people who are way, way, way higher than they should be. And I've been in situations in each R where we've had to say, look, here's the situation. You can either take on more responsibility or we can freeze your pay. We can keep you where you are.
Show that in the market, data show that they are paid very well, in fact overpaid. And just this that I have thirty years experience just doesn't fly anymore because how much of that experience, as I always say, is still relevant and of value. Today institutional knowledge is only worth so much.
There's some Julie BUCKI some demanding and I don't know if there's just in other states. Is that like they really want to be very transparent about pay. That with pay transparency, that the law should be expanded beyond job postings to require disclosure of employees' actual pay. And I think of that going well, okay, now everyone knows what
everyone else is making, is completely transparent. I couldn't imagine the line at the HR director's door of people coming to bitch and moan because someone else is making fifty cents more or you know, I mean one of those things you're gonna be You're gonna be putting fire without all the time. That's all you're gonna do is start to Again. You can get too granular in this, and I think that the lawmakers are suggesting that are they're insane, is what they are.
No, that's right, because they've been I guess into price the issues. Yeah, and there's so many elements that go into what someone said, and then you start getting into well, you know, I do half a Fred's.
Job, right right, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, no, so that's I think that's that's ridiculous, right.
I don't think that's going to do much to close the alleged pay gap that there as well. But I mean a lot of this is incumbent upon the person seeking the job. You should know what your value is, what the what the dynamic for that position pays, what part of the country. And obviously, if you live in West Virginia and doing a job and you move to midtown Manhattan, you're going to be making a lot more more and vice versa because of the nature where you live.
All those things have to come into play as well, and it's upon you to determine what your value is, and then you know whether the what they offer you is acceptable. You know, there's always been bait and switches where you're not, well, we're not sure with the job, and then you know you've put all the time in the interview and you find out that well, this doubt's paying peanuts and I wasted my time.
So there's that side of.
It, Yes, exactly, and that's so important. Why wouldn't you give your hiring give a range and then people can decide can I operate in that range or can I not? And then when you are asked employer, you're entering your acts about salary, even if they say what were you
making in your last role? My advice is to always talk about what salary you're seeking in this current role, because there are times when people have been in industries that didn't give in, that didn't give a raise for five years, and so they are truly behind market, and
so people shouldn't be vitalized for that. And so I always say say something like, based on my market research and other you know, and other search that I've done, it seems that the pay for my level of experience is sixty five to seventy five, even if you're sitting there making fifty eight, because you know, you work for a company that pays really low. So it's really about
market value. It's not necessarily just about what you were making in your last job, because that's what that's what increases. The gap is when you stay down because you are constantly you start low and then even the raise isn't going to get you up to where up to where you want to be, because you're starting with one foot, you know, not one foot behind the line there.
Yeah, as the case may be, so is your would your advice be to just leave the thing the way it is?
Right now?
Do we need these portray pay transfer? I mean you kind of have it in the in the public sector obviously because it's public money. But the private sector feels different to me. And they all adage about you know, women make less than math. Well, there's a lot of reasons behind that math as well. I mean, the whole idea that you're paying someone less simply because of their gender is you know, I'm sure there's still some holdouts, some people that believe that, and as they die off,
you know, those those values change. But by and large, you know, if I ran a company said wow, I can pay a woman a third less for doing this job, I wouldn't hire a guy.
I just hire all women.
Then they're gonna rise.
Well no, I'm just.
Saying, yeah, yeah, it's like I pay you based on what you bring to the table, what your experiences are and the like.
You know, so as it should be.
Yeah, yeah, but pay transparency, that's where it's at in twenty twenty, we hit the wrong button. Now, Sorry, I had to cut Julie off because I had to mention this real quick, Julian, My apology. Southbound seventy five right now, between Mitchell and the seventy four split, it is absolutely stopped.
There's a jackknife truck.
I mean literally, I'm looking an image of a semi here and it is completely perpendicular to the highway and they've got some three or four toe trucks there right now trying to move that thing. So everything is stoped. Southbound seventy five between Mitchell and the sevi four split is completely shut down right now. So if you're headed that way, you want to avoid that area. Details coming up in news that's about six seven minutes away here on seven hundred WLW.
Do you want to be an American idiot? Got flown back on seven hundred WLW.
One of the big, big problems we have with critical mental health in this country, specifically OHIOI and in Kentucky is that healthcare is it's really hard to find a bed if you're in a mental health crisis. And Ohio Governor Mike de Wins, matter of fact said that over ninety percent of the state's psychiatric beds now are being occupied by people referred to or demanded by the courts
to have a mental competency test. And the problem with that, obviously then is that if you are someone who is not involved in criminal activity and forced by a court to have a psychiatric exam or a psychiatric stay, you can't find a place to get treatment yourself. And it's, as I said, not new. It's just not unique to Ohio, with happening all over the country. And Steve and I is here with the Manhattan Institute. They're a think tank and came out of the new way to maybe approach
this subject and fix it. Although it seems like you guys come up a lot of great ideas, Steven, and the government is reluctant to take those good ideas and do anything with them. But you gotta keep trying, Steve, and welcome are you.
I'm great, Thanks for having me, Scott.
This topic of mental health care in prisons, I think it's pertinent today now more than ever because of what's happening to Rodney Hitt and of course accused of murdering Deputy Larry Henderson in May after his son was shot legally and lawfully by police officers because of committing a couple of felonies. And you hear about how now he's going to be found not guilty reason of insanity. He's going to face life in prison. And that is the reality.
The family has accepted it reluctantly, and I think the public has reluctantly. But what is likely that someone like that gets the kind of treatment they need.
Yeah, we have a very large population of people with serious mental illness, both in jails and in prisons. It's a problem that's been with us with that for a couple decades now. But many people trace that problem back to when the States decided to shut down the state asylum programs and we saw basically a shift from psychiatric institutions to correctional institutions. We hoped that the people would leave the psychiatric institutions find better care and community settings.
We now know that didn't happen. So now we're trying to do this kind of humpty dumpy act of pick up the pieces and figure out what to do both on the correctional front and on the mental health funt.
Yeah, and I'm going to here, well, you know Reagan and when he was president, closed all the mental health out well. And they actually started back in the nineteen fifties. They started doing this because they thought that was best practices back in the nineteen fifties.
Correct.
Yeah, there are many things going on there, but excessive hopes about psychiatric drugs. There's a lot of cost shifting going on too. The states saw in a way that they could shift costs to the federal government. A lot of the costs now actually are born by counties because county are the ones who run jails, and guess where all these mentally is to kill people are confined. And that's why it's really important that we have leadership from the gubernatorial level.
Yeah, well, jails are obviously temporary holding before you go off to prison or maybe you stay in jail at the sentences less than a year, and so jails are instead of the same purpose. But our prisons and we're talking federal prison state prisons versus your county jail. I can't imagine county jails are well equipped to handle the mentally ill.
No, there's a lot of flux, it's a lot of it's a kind of chaotic place. Prison people are in for longer. But prison is not better than a mental hospital, which I would say would be a better place for a lot of these people. Constitutionally is difficult for just kind of difficult to transfer someone from a prison to
a mental hospital. But if we talk more about like investing upstream in mental hospitals, like it sounds like Governor Dwine is doing, then we would put people like in the right system and the system that would be better for them. That it's a mental health system, not correctional.
System, and it can't be a good outcome. I mean, to begin with, I'm sure the rate of people are incarcerated must be disproportional to the share of the general population, because if you think about your own treated mental health issues, not always, but generally that leads to crime some way more serious, some self harm, but nonetheless criminal activity.
Yeah, serious mention illness. It's about we would say fifty five to six percent for the general adult population, but then around fifteen to twenty percent for the incarcerated population. So it's a rate like three to four times as high as a general adult population. And everything is worse for seriously mentally ill people incarcerated, that is, they're victimized
of higher rates. They get put in solitary confinement at high rates, then they recitibate as a higher rate, so it's all worse when they get kind of caught up in that system.
And Steve and I, why do I have a sense that is going to cost us, like anything in America more money in the long run. Rather than addressing the problem early on and fixing with mental health beds, we chose to incarcerate and care feed and house the mentally ill, and then when we allot them out there probably worse. And so this costs us more in the long run. I'm guessing.
Yeah, there's a lot of physcal buck passing between you know, state governments and federal governments and counties and private health systems, but it's the CONTs just well enormously. So it's at a certain point somebody just says, look, this is going this is an expensive population. We need invest upfront, upstream, and that means investing in mental health systems. That's the only responsible way to a bridge problem.
Gotcha, Steven, I's here from the Manhattan Institute and Governor Mike DeWine commenting that over ninety percent of the state psychiatric beds are occupied by people who are being sent by the courts for a mental competency hold. Kind of like what's happening with that kid in Marymont now getting a second although I think he's in juvenile custody. I'm not sure how that works with that, but nonetheless, I think you get my point. And now there's no room.
There is no room literally in state beds for people who aren't convicted or aren't facing a serious crime for that matter. Too, and we talked about the differently jails in prison. You also talk too, Stephen about the funding. This stuff is funded on mainlant of county budgets. How does it work?
So Medicaid insurance can't be used to pay for healthcare in side correctional institutions. Okay, so it's just has to come out of general revenue. Yeah, general state revenues in the case of brisons, and general county revenues in the case of local jails. And this was never a business that counties were in. I mean, I mean providing healthcare for people with very serious problems. I mean, especially if you're talking about rural counties. You know, most jails are
pretty small. You know, if you got to jail with like fifty two one hundred people, Like, what realistically can you do, especially if you're based in the county that may not have one psychiatrist for the community in general. You know, you're talking about kind of a nurse coming by a couple of days a week, dropping off some meds, you know, hoping for the best. It's not a fiscally
a very well arranged system. And that's why, you know, to emphasize it's really important that there's leadership at the state level. If we're going to fix this, should we.
Go back to the model that it once was pre nineteen fifties, sixty seventies, eighties, and that would be institutionalizing and mass institutional and because you could have a hospital only have a hospital for six people, but some are I guess retirement communities. We have all over the place right for people who are of above a certain age that are moving to another stage of life. We have all these niches of care depending on what it is you need and what you require where you're looking for.
And yet we pretend we don't need that when it comes to mental health. Why don't we just you know, and not there's an emphasis to do it, but it seems like we should be building big facilities for people.
Who have mental health issues.
And I'll point out too, since we're talking about Rodney Hinton here in this case that he's pleaded not guilty. Reason with sanity, they found him incompetent to Stan Toronto's charge is probably life in prison. But here's a man who's diagnosed with a bipolar disorder and did not take his medication as prescribed. If you put someone in group housing in a place like this, you can mandate that they take their not only they're segregated from side, but
also you make sure they're on their edge. You can't do that when you're out on your own.
Yeah, a couple of things there. Well, First of all, you may don't even need to build new facilities. You probably still have these state campuses. Then you could increase their capacity. Like you said, they're being used for a certain purpose, maybe they could be used for other purposes.
There's also this question of mostly everyone would agree, first of all, that the pendulum has slung way too far, Like okay, like people were abused back in the nineteen fifties, but it's a different world now, and we've just cut way too many beds. We need more beds at least than we have now, whether we're bringing back the old days or not. Secondly, we got to talk about where
the beds are going to be. So there are private health system private hospitals to do some kind of psychiatric care, but they really want to do that on kind of like a short term basis, stabilize people just enough, like get them their meds and then they're out. If you want to talk about care that's going to last like an intermediate term, a longer term, and that's probably what
we're talking about. For people very serious chronic problems on the state government, those state programs are the most appropriate intervention, and so I think that's what we have to be moving back towards. There are a lot of people who are not ready to it that the Democrats aren't ready from a civilivererties perspective. On the Republican side, it's going to because it's going to cost a lot of money.
Sometimes they're not ready. But you know, in my work, I try to make the case that like, look, as you alluded to earlier, this is already costing us top lots of money. Let's figure out what's the most responsible way to spend money, because we're going to be you know, it's going to be a big build no matter what.
Yeah, I guess if you're progressive, you probably look at the whole you know, very anti mass incarceration that we lead the free world and in prisoners and the like, and we've got to end that whole thing.
That's a big social plan.
And also the fact that you know, they pursued policy that went after policymakers to close jails. On top of that, I mean, look what they're doing in New York with Rikers Island. Not that that's a you know, that's not a carnival. Certainly it's a horrible, horrible place. But you know, closing the prison doesn't make the problem go away, like closing the mental institution doesn't make the problem go away.
Right.
That's the parallels are very eerie. Like if you know anything about the whole history of shutting down the state asylums, the hopes there were and the disappointment that followed, that's exactly what's going on with this movement to quote abolished jails. And those voices are very influential in some places. There are places in America, where you have a local jail that was to build decades and decades ago, it's falling apart.
It needs to be replaced. But because there's this idea that no, no, no, no, we don't want to do jails anymore, the people who are still being confined to those places are really suffering because you know, responsible policy makers are just not letting their voices be heard.
Well, the people inside suffer, which makes the problem worse, gives them more bag to go.
See, you see, this is why you gotta close it.
It's falling apart and it's dangerous, and okay, great, we close it like Rikers Island or any other prison that's closed to And what do we do. We're not making anymore because of the outcry, and so look at the rise and you know, assaults and stuff like that. Un least here in Cincinnati too.
Now.
Granted the overall crime numbers are going down, but still we've got to segregate bad people from the rest of society. The idea that we will close prisons with that there will be no impact on societies foolish, right.
And you also another thing to have, it's just abandonment. I mean, you put people out of the community. And what does that means. I mean, nobody is responsible for them, right. You know, they're homeless, they're disconnected from their families, their living lives of great instability to get mixed up in drugs. They get victimized. Out in Los Angeles where it was last week, you see a lot of that. And that's a place in particular of much like Rikers Island. They
need a nicer jail, they need a new jail. They need to fix the jail that's falling apart. But they can't bring themselves around to that idea before essentially ideological reasons. It's history repeating itself.
Yeah, so we close the jails.
The other side, and this would be those who are conservative that you want more punishment, you want tougher restrictions, you want three strikes and you're out, which which can and can't be helpful. But both these two things are at odds against each other, which is why the system's broken.
Right.
But we have a lot of crime going on. I mean, crime is not in a good place. We need safer communities. I mean, I don't know what to say, Like crime is a bad thing. It's bad things to happen to a business individual. You know, the trauma. You know, people will live a incident for the rest of their lives. We need safer communities. We're not where we need to be in terms of crime on multiple fronts across the nation, and I'm sorry, incarceration is probably going to have to
be part of that solution. Police certainly are, So what do we mean by that. Let's talk about licum or modern, more therapeutic form of incarceration to the extent that that is possible or at least provide for better people while they have to be locked up. But I think we need to just reconcile ourselves to the idea that we're going to need jails and we're going to need incarceration if we win to face after this crime problem.
Stephen on that too.
If we could just take the population of the mentally ill out of the nation's prisons and county jails and alike and institutionalize them to get the treatment that they need and maybe up to a degree, the criminally violent. I think that there are people out there who are sociopaths that yeah, that's a mental health condition, but doesn't mean you should not be in prison. You should be because you're a danger to yourself and others around you
for the long term. Maybe there's a distinction there and to what puts you into a mental prison, hospital or a mental institution versus a prison. But just getting that population by and large out of prisons, what does that do.
Well?
They Yeah, I mean if you're talking about transferring them to, for example, a psychiatric institution, they would still be confined, but they would be inside of an agency whose goal is mental health treatment. Is the correctional institution's goal mental health treatment, Well, not exactly. I mean, if it has to be, it has to figure out something, put something together maybe, but it would really be better if that population were in the care of the mental health system
for it, like essentially good government reasons. Also on the correctional side of things, like you know, you do have people who.
Are just bad.
They're not mad. You know that they prey on the mentally ill. They're a tough enough nut to crack, and so on the correctional side of things, it would be easier if they could just focus on them. Needs to be let's get all mixed up. I mean, people, you make a lot about the idea that well, they're just sick. They just need to be out and given healthcare, out
into society, and that's how we'll stabilize them. That creates a lot of confusion as to what type of population you're dealing with, because in some cases, these really are dangerous people. As you say, yes they have a secret serious psychiatric illness, they're also dangerous. So they're going to
have to be confined. That means a different type of custodial institution, right, but a certain type of custodial institution, one with a more psychiatric outlook that's a better suited to their needs.
Well, for example, in our newsroom here at seven hundred w LW. Steven, we have multiple scanners and play scanners fire, and you hear all the time that somebody's not they're off their medication. You know, you can't trust someone who's mental ill to continue to take their medication. That is something that has to be administered to them. And when you're out and left to your own devices, it's a lethal it can be a lethal combination.
And that's happened a lot real quick.
Here.
What how do we fix this?
Well, so, first of all, look invest more in upstream solutions. We need to reckon. Republicans need to reconcile themselves the idea that we probably need to spend more through for example, the Medicaid program. It's a very expensive budget busting program, but that is going to need to be part of the solution. More money spent on these upstream psychiatric solutions. And on the inside, you need more involved in my
state government in the jail based systems. The jail based systems don't have the resources, they sometimes don't even have
the know how the personnel to serve this population. You are in the near term going to still have people with serious psychiatric illnesses can find the jails in prisons, So we need to face up to that and make sure that we have the resources and personnel in this place is to stabilize them and make what's going to be, you know, a challenging situation at least a little bit more manageable and a little bit more enlightened than the situation we've got.
Now.
Yeah, yeah, I think that's that's probably true.
But you know why these political analyies battling over their turf and planning their flag, and of course we have governs that don't have enough resources and are fighting over for O Repenny and so that's why we can't get the needle to move, and the end result as we all suffer as a society, in individuals and families as well. It's sad, but hopefully at some point we'll have clear heads that wind up being our overlords. That solved this problem. Steve and I thanks so much for joining the show.
From the Manhattan Institute. You can read more there all the best.
I really enjoyed it. Thanks for having me, Stuf Care.
Yeah, this is an absolve Rodney hitting from doing what he did. But you know, you go back and look kind of like the cameras at the park, right, we had a kid killed two and a half years ago and the camera's supposed to go up, but didn't.
We got another eleven year old dead.
I don't know if this would have stopped the murder of Larry Henderson and other scourge is a society and the like. But you know, if you're refusing to take your medication and a serious mental health issue like bipolar, schizophrene or anything of that, a handful of them, then there should be some institutionalization going on, but we don't have the facilities to do that. We've got a news update in about four minutes. It's a Scott Sloan show
seven High Wild. There we go, New Year's resolution, more snorts.
Sarah Relasi's here from the Kid Chris Show one on two seven e v M.
Of the social media perspective on everything sport and Cincinnati.
There is some of the new year with the snorts report.
Yes, there are so many things trending with Cincinnati sports right now.
Not really snort worthy, though.
Is anything good? Gimme let's let this because it's a new year. What do you give me something positive from Cincinnati sports? There's no positive? What's positive? The Reds are gonna be terrible. We got Reds fast haupping up. The Bengals are terrible. They're tearing the state. They're remodeling the stadium. They need to remodel their front office. We've got the Cats. Can't win Xavier? What what give me a post?
Wait?
Why are we putting so much money into the Duke Energy? What is it called now? The Cincinnati Convention Someday Energy Center?
Don't that's not what the article said.
Sure, I'm just gonna call it that forever, okay, because its energy? So the Riverfront stadium.
But I'm like, shouldn't we put more money into our defense.
Again?
We're gonna start with the positive though, real quick.
Miami University's men's basketball team is sixteen O baby. Here we go, Sarah, And by the way, happy New Year. I've not seen you since last year.
Hold on, hold that thought a second.
So we've been doing this segment for a few years now, and I believe this is the first time she's mentioned Miami.
University basketball because it's that bad.
We've got to go to Oxford to go, well, there's something we can hang our hat on all the way.
In cozy Oxford, my alma mater. You'll be checking out a game there on the thirty first.
Are you going to go watch the bear Cats?
We're definitely not going to go do that. And here Wes Miller have another meltdown on our airwaves. I guess that's what was trending on social media when I woke up this morning, going off on Dan Ward.
I like, of all the people hiding off on Dan, I don't know if it was going off on him.
There's a little sketchy. I don't like the tone that he took with Dan. I'm like, you'd be nice to our guy.
Well, it's also the problem I have with coaches in general is you know, the sportsman asking me these questions and they got you know, they got to get all hard ass and like it's us against the world. Yeah, because you suck.
It's like, don't be darky and say that.
I don't like that the whole us against the world, the world.
Then why am I buying your tickets?
He just jeans to me, why am I beying your merch Right, He's like, no, leading into your fan base, don't alienate them.
But as you know, it doesn't matter who the coaches are in Cincinnati, we are going to hang on to them.
The coaches show is the dumbest thing.
It doesn't matter what the record is.
I guess in Baltimore it matters because they let go of their night to that guy.
Tom is going to be the greatest.
Meanwhile, we've got everybody in the AFC North cutting coaches except in Sincenata.
What about you stay another year.
You've got to get one more time.
Duke Tobin's been here since the Truman administration, before football was even the thing.
So speaking of our guy, Duke Tobin, he is going to be holding a press conference this Friday, A rare press conference. Oh my god, Friday at one o'clock. I will be sad. Here's my take on it. Let the fans at it for about thirty minutes, go on Facebook Live and answer questions.
Doing it? Going to write it to an Ama asked me anything.
Yeah, I don't want the Bengals media in there. I don't want this. I don't want this interview to be weak.
I need the real fans that are in the stands, that have had season tickets for twenty plus years to ask Duke whatever they need to get at their checks.
God, the questions are going to be you know, so don't built Dennison seven hundred ww So, I mean, you know, you could talk about you know, talk about some of the good what what you know?
What about the draft?
Nobody wants to lose their crew.
But I want yeah, very so bad. Yeah, because they well they'll pull there.
That's so weak as like, well, you asked a tough question, you'll have your credential pulled.
So I went on to social media and I said, hey, if you dude, you got to read the responses. Take fifteen to twenty minutes out of your day because that's how many responses are on this post. Go check out my post and read all of the comments from people because I asked him iselif if you could ask Duke Tobin one thing at this press or on Friday, what would you ask? A lot of these are not really appropriate for the airwaves. No, just take some time away
from work today and go check out the response. But a lot of people asking Duke are wanting to ask Duke, hey, what are you going to do when the stadium is empty this upcoming season?
Because everyone's so mad?
Yeah, yeah, our season ticket holders.
This is like, this is like some big event, like Duke Tobin is going to be here from ten to ten to ten fifteen. Answering the tough question from the Cincinnati medias like, you know, we just look at Tennessee, right. Their ownership put this whole plan together to the state, to the fans and saying here's what the plan is. This is what we're doing. The statement we got from Mike Brown was what we're keeping. We're giving to the coach.
And general statement that you could ever.
We trust these guys men, We trust them. You got to the super Bowl once in twenty eight years.
And we need to stop talking about that Super Bowl enough that was light.
Years ago, which also looking like that was an outlier. Like literally, I.
Can talk about the big red machine from fifty years ago.
Right, there's no dynasty there is, Like it feels like at this point now you stumbled into that is what it looks like.
Dunt dunk dum and Joe Burrow being very careful with his words and that final press conference after the game on Sunday when they asked him about you know, what do you think is needed in the off season, Like what are the changes you want to see?
Joe is a great leader. He's not going to throw anyone under the bus.
Oh he's not.
Anyway, they got the tenth pick. We'll see what they do because we know that they're so good at drafting. It's just like a vicious circle around here.
What if they don't make the playoffs next year?
Four years in a row. We got problems.
That's fine to get you know what we are We need a little more time.
Well, just extend Zach for another couple of years.
Right now, they're renovating pay court. They need to renovate the front office is what they need to do.
Take that money from the convention center whatever you're doing, the money and just.
Fix it down.
You got fixed.
The Brown family has enough money. We're good.
He's a what is it, He's one of the top five riches people. It's in the track.
We need to give them more money. Yeah, no, you don't.
You need to get your head out of your ass and do something you haven't done in a few years. It's like when you went lean into free agency. That worked out for you and then we got away from that. Why well, we got more problems.
We got, we got, we got. I understand that as you should be. All Bengals fans should be very frustrated with what's going on. You should hate that they ended the season at six and eleven, the season losing to the Browns.
I mean, come on, man, but they're not helping themselves when the perception is they don't care about the fans, and did they do.
This look at the snowy seats.
We don't care about the fans.
We care about the fans, and apparently over the weekend.
Or we do in the stadium, isn't that good? Well yeah, but we're paying for that.
Correct.
Somebody told me over the weekend, someone that has club seats that the club level area, the ac was or the heat was out, so it was very cold in there.
Yeah, so that wasn't fit exactly.
We got more problems though, Cam Taylor Britt doing some time in jail and straight to the off season to the Hamilton County jail.
I guess reckless driving, running some stop lights.
In this time, having like two thousand miles an hour up and down Vine Street.
What are you doing?
Chelsea's sick over at Local twelve has all of the details. She was the one media person in that room yesterday when Cam Taylor Britt was at the home.
She brings that same attitude to the Duke Tobin thing, Yeah, can we get Chelsea sick to the press or on Friday.
She's all over it.
But yeah, these charges go all the way back to June, and then he was cited again in September not having a valid license.
I mean, it's crazy.
What do you doing?
Go through your mind?
It's like you can't celebrate, you should have your stuff to go.
But it's also like I don't need to get a license. What what the hell you think? What are you doing?
Why are you running red lights? Fans are out and about. This was right after a game. I don't understand his whole purpose behind this, but yeah, so his mugshot is trending all over social media today.
So apparently getting a driver's lives not only the only responsibility.
Shirk so.
Not the best examples for our young kiddos that look up to the Bengals players here.
He's not gonna be back anyway.
I don't think so. I think I'm done with CTB. Yeah, I've seen enough.
I've seen enough. We don't want to say anymore. There's like three guys I keep on. I think that's it.
Please bring back Dalton Reisner. That's something that's trending on social media. Dalton really wants to stick at the angles. I would like to see that happened for him as well. So Joe Burrow on social media, this is trending. He posted on Instagram.
Yesterday a big carousel of photos, some being throughout the season, him being injured, and then his Joker costume from Halloween, and he captioned it twenty twenty five was dot adversity?
Yes it was, Yes it was.
So go check out Joe's posts and all the comments they do not disappoint Bengals fans are so funny. A lot of girls asking him to marry them, you know, the same old salele God. It's like, why are we taking advantage of Emo Joe? Like Jo, Well, he doesn't want you, Okay, he doesn't watch six and eleven. All this man cares about is football. Okay, that brain, fashion and fossils. I guess that's what he gifted his O line this year for Christmas.
Fossils. Last year was the samuraized Swords. Yeah, now they got rocks.
I think Bengals have enough fossils.
We got to and that's the problem. Like we got.
Ladies are great, Joe, marry me, marry me.
Here's some rocks.
Mean, while Pat Mahomes is like based on personalized rolex.
Was you marry Joe?
Based on some of the stuff he wears for his pregame fit, you could double your wardrobe, ladies.
I'll wear the sweatsuits.
Those are some nice sweatsuits, T shirt and shirts I you did cozy in the would.
Come in and it's just like they look like I don't care.
They really did not care. This year.
I wasn't blown away with the fashion by you can't be flashy when you're six and a line.
Focus on that nonsense.
Wear the suits when you go undefeated, when you can win a few games in a row.
Okay, will you walk with a little swagger now, with your tail the two of your legs.
Let's move on.
I think I'll to wear work shirts with their name out like they were in a garage, you know, And it's just just as Joe or like bowling shirts something. It looks like I'm going to work.
We're going to move on to ruds because we are less than eighty days away until opening down what until all the fun starts up again? Okay, I don't know, get excited about Sunshine, about Sunshine, Tito warm Weather, Ellie Day, La Cruz not coming to Reds Fest. They released all the names of the people that are going to be there. He's not on that list, and I would like to know why. I don't know why either, And what's he doing? Why can't he be there?
Winter ball? I don't know what.
I have seen him playing some ball out in Arizona, but it's like, hello, get on a plane, you can make it in three hours. I think everybody should have to be there. I think it's a volunteered thing. Guess what Allie said, no pay right, minimum wage, minimum effort, SAT just raised minimum.
The players are coming though, Yeah, we'll.
See a lot of those guys, broadcasters things like that. So it all starts Friday night and then all day Saturday. Saturday is also the Reds Poker Tournament benefiting the Reds Community Fund. I will be playing in that thing, and I'm very excited about it. I'm sorry if I'm at your table, like, imagine being so excited that you're gonna have like a Reds player at your table and it's right me.
Yeah, I wouldn't do that. You know you should.
You should just say wait, why don't we just why don't we just start them and say changing the format there it's going to be strip poker.
Oh stop, nobody wants to see that. Come on, let's keep it. But can you imagine these.
Former former Reds players taking our shirts off.
I feel bad for the people that have to get me at their table, Like, I'm sorry to disappoint. I know you spent like two hundred dollars to play in this journey and you're hoping that like a legit celebrity is at your table.
For Red Strip Poker.
That's a whole nother website that that has nothing to do with me.
See Sarah's only fans anyway.
Anyways, that's what's trending on social media.
You're also cringing, So you know I'm going to talk more about Please don't Red strip poker.
Please don't, because I'm thinking about the dudes in that room and no.
Gapper Wado Gapper takes us know what this something that.
I want to find out in twenty twenty six? What exactly is Gapper? Is he a bear? Is he a bird? Is he a combo?
Like a Philly fanatic?
It's like it's it's really weird Jilly fanatic at the Bristol Speedway thing.
And he's odd, a little creepy, is a little creepy, all right.
Apparently the dude that plays him as creepy, So explain some things.
Hey, I used to be the Easter Bunny at Trike County Mall. I understand it. You gotta have a little creep about creep Yeah, exactly. You gotta be a little weird.
All right.
So there's not that respect.
Bengals.
We got the Reds and we have Miami university killing it with basketball and the EHL strike is over.
So last like three days.
It was three days, and I guess they'll eventually make up those games. Not sure when those makeup games will be announced. But glad that cycling hockey is bad.
Well I tell you watching it's that there's a chant and it had that going on for a period of time a few weeks.
That might have been the end of the Yeah, so glad that those guys are going to get exactly what they were striking about.
Treatment. Yay, Miami, let's go red hooks baby sixteen to no.
You know it's bad.
When we got to go to Oxford for sports, nobody cares about Miami until they did. They're good, right, It's like, you know, I've always cared XU. It's like, yeah, they well what about Miami.
Oh yeah, they've your place tonight. They're in Milwaukee.
If if the wheels fall off Miami with you, hope they don't, But then what do you do you owe?
You you go to Dayton.
This is this is when we just look forward to Opening day, NonStop countdowns.
Yeah, nothing like this New Year's depression to go on here with our sports teams because there's no just no good news.
Miami, Miami.
That's it, all right, Sarah at least trying to make sure you go to a reds dot com and the REDS Community Fund sign up for Sarah Stripto.
It's just regular poker.
Spread the rumors you're a poker with Sarah seven