Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Please to welcome back to fifty fiveKssy Morning Shore. Always good him on
the program. Americans for Prosperities.Donovan Neil, who was I guess watching
the activity in Columbus yesterday The Housewas in full on voting mode and they
passed a four point two billion dollarcapitol budget along with some other bills.
Welcome back, Donovaniel. It's alwaysa pleasure having you on the show,
Brian. Always the pleasure will bewith you. I really have a disdain
(00:24):
for US funding things like, oh, I don't know a rock and roll
Hall of Fame, pro football hallof Fame. I did the River Bend
project. I mean, I thoughtthat was like going to be a revenue
generator for the Since City Symphony orchesor whatever. But you know, there's
a shortage of tax dollars. Everytime I view a tax expenditure, I
think about I worked some part ofmy life to fund Phil on the blank,
(00:49):
and I see a million dollars inthe budget for Cleveland Women's Pro Soccer
Stadium, among all these other thingsthat I find offensive. You've been diving
through this. What's your take onthe on the on the Capitol budget?
Donowin, Yeah, well, youknow, it's unfortunate reality of the legislative
process. They you know, theydo the main operating budget, which is
a very significant amount of money,and then they come back and they do
(01:15):
the capital budget, which is allthose capital expends. A lot of things
you talked about there, and theproblem we see here that I was on
your show, uh back in thespring talking about how it was the legislation
that carried this this House Bill twoyou know, calling this legislation House Bill
two billion, that's what it wasearly in the spring. With a number
of other provisions added in, itbecame we're now calling House still four billion.
So four point two billion dollars approximatelyis put out there just yesterday that
(01:41):
taxpayers are going to have to payfor much of it finance your debt.
And you know, are are thereare a lot of valid capital expenditures that
need to occur right for for governmentsor state to operate. But what we're
calling out to are those things youmentioned, Brian, those sort of expenditures
like funding for those the Cleveland Groundsstadiums and these kinds of things out there
(02:01):
that you know, really we needto we need to recognize that every dollar
incent we spend or appropriate in acapital budget that has to come out of
some hardworking Ohiolands paycheck. That's howwe pay for that, because we have
an income tax still, Brian,they have to pay for that, or
sales tax or otherwise. We reallyneed our lawmakers in Columbus to get serious.
Won't rating and spending This capital budgetgrows everybody anym and it's the biggest
(02:24):
yet it's a huge amount of money. Yeah, since ad Open Tennis tournament's
going to get what how many millionsof dollars twenty seven and a half million
dollars for that. And I talkwas Representative Green yesterday here on the program
and she sort of defended it bysaying, well, it brings in a
whole lot of money every year,and we can't afford to lose it because
they were getting ready to take theirball and go elsewhere with it. You
(02:46):
know, from my experience and talkingto people in the know about all these
you know, stadium projects and overthe years, it is a bit of
a canard to suggest that the moneyspent on these huge, colossal venues with
all the amenities actually has the returnon investment for the local communities, like
the Paul Brow the pay Course stadium, for example. Well, it's it's
(03:07):
the same, yes, and it'sthe same problems we see in what you
know, we would call this cronyism, with this crony capitalism right where you
have these large corporations that come inand ask state governments to in local governments
to just hand over all the taxcredits, exemptions, all, you know,
basically give away the farm on theback of taxpayers, rather than recognizing
(03:30):
the reality that you know, youknow, we shouldn't have taxpayers subsidizing a
company, We shouldn't have taxpayers subsidizinga professional sports industry. We should be
using tax dollars for public purposes,roads, schools, bridges, police fire,
keeping our community safe and people ableto get where they need to go.
(03:50):
But you know, it's the that'sthe larger problem right now in both
political parties, right because keep yourmind, brand Republicans run Columbus and I'm
a big fan of our conservative friendshere. I'm a conservative myself, but
we really need to be making surethat the folks we send to Columbus are
enacting the conservative policies, the fiscalrestraint they campaign on. Otherwise you get
(04:12):
bills like this where the spending justkeeps growing and it's it's unfortunate. Well
a little fun fact you interjected there, and I don't want to gloss over
it. We're borrowing money for this. There's going to be debt service that
has to be paid, an interestbill that will become due when we borrow
the money to cover these capital projects. Well yeah, no, no,
(04:33):
that's not unusual. I want tobe clear, that's not unusual. This
is something new that they just did. But what is notable and we think
we need to be conscious of isyou know, justin just back in twenty
nineteen, twenty twenty, just acouple of years ago, you know,
we put two point two billion indebt finance. Now we're financing this.
Can you this capital budget? Membersjust voted on yesterday three point two billion.
(04:56):
We're growing the amount of debt we'refinancing. And I don't I don't
know if folks are paying attention.Thanks to a lot of what Washington See
is doing these days, our economyis not very you know, it's pretty
fragile right now. There are alot of concerns out there. And start
financing debt, uh, you know, tax revenues could take a hit if
if Biden manages to steer our economyinto a into a tail spin, and
(05:20):
you know, you're putting a lotof risk out there. We should be
paying for these things with cash,right if we do have extra tax dollars.
Let's have that debate. Let's havethat discussion, and let's fund programs
with the revenue that we have,not to not put it on the backs
of the future generations. Imagine thatactually being able to pay for what you
decide you're going to buy. Huh, let's pause. We'll bring Donovan back
(05:42):
and some other notable line items inthe Capitol budget as well as other bills
have passed yesterday, Donna in particularto you, Donovan O'Neil. In the
Capitol budget in particular, you know, I not nothing in particular. I
think we'll go you know, we'llgo through line items as we go forward.
The Black Eye Institute does a greatjob with its Piglet booklet of calling
out a lot of these kind ofpork barrel spending projects that we have here
(06:05):
in the state. But you know, I call your listeners on this piece
of legislation, the Capital budget inparticular, is you know, talk to
your talk to your representatives, encouragetheir fiscal restraint. Remind him every dollar
day spend in Columbus is a dollarcoming out of your paycheck for taxes to
fund those projects. And we reallyneed to do more fiscal restraint and Columbus
(06:26):
when it comes to spending. Butthere's other things they did yesterday, Brian.
There's the Modal legislation. If we'vegot some time to chapter about that
too, please. Well, I'vebeen on your show before talking about raising
the alarm a few times about Houspillseventy nine, Housepil seventy nine. It's
the it's known as an energy it'san energy efficiency mandate though it's introduced actually
by Southwest Ohio Zone Bill site.Yeah, and what's this. What what
(06:51):
this legislation does is it creates anew energy efficiency mandate program. One of
the few good things that happened inHouse Bill six, the nuclear Energy bailout
bill that was written with scandal,was eliminating energy efficiency mandates that were imposed
under former Governor Ted Strickland and Democratswhen they when they had control of the
(07:13):
Ohio House over fourteen years ago.Well, these are back, they're coming
back, and the House managed topass on a very slim vote fifty or
forty five to move it out ofthe House and send it over the Senate.
And you know the problem here,Brian is and you who've probably some
of your listeners probably heard the songdanced before. I'm sure you have.
(07:33):
It was a minority of Republicans joiningwith a majority of Democrats to pass this
legislation. We've got Republicans super majorityin Columbus and they managed to pass this
thing out. And we really needfolks to be paying attention to this and
reaching out to their senators to stopthis legislation. That'll be a fee on
their utility bills and additional costs evenif they managed to op out of this
(07:56):
program. Yeah, it's a dollarfifty every month as described to pay utilities
for rebates and discounts on smart onsmart thermostats, energy efficiency, energy efficient
appliances, and other things to helpreduce electricity use. So I'm giving Duke
Energy a buck fifty every month sothat they can give a discount to someone
(08:18):
else on one of these devices.It seems to me to be well a
bureau bureaucratic nightmare, and that thatbuck fifty is going to be consumed in
the process. But if there's somethingout there that's going to save me money.
They claim that smart thermostats, forexample, can lower my bill between
ten and fifteen percent. I haven'tsented to go out and buy one of
those damn things myself. Well that'sright. Well, you know, we've
(08:43):
been experiencing a heat way, right, so hopefully all of us have been
you know, smart and sort ofconserving energy and just you know, you
just kind of do those things becauseyou know, nobody wants the acro run
all the time. But one ofthe things that these programs would allow energy
companies to do would be too whenthey install the smart thermostat, be able
to control your AC. So ifyou know, we hit these ninety plus
(09:03):
days and the energy companies say,well, look we're gonna we need to
control the load on the on thegrid. We're going to turn your heat,
your air up. We're not goingto let you keep it at seventy
anymore, Brian, You've got tomove it to seventy two or seventy three,
and there's not a lot you cando about it. Those kinds,
those are the kind of invasive programsthat legislation like this will introduces should it
(09:26):
be signed by the governor. Notonly that people who even opt out.
So let's say you want to optout and not pay that dollar fifty a
month fee for the program. Youjust don't want to do it. There's
a mechanism in the bill called lossrevenue generation. Lost revenue generation. What
that means is when energy efficiency programscome into play, and you would hope
(09:48):
to see if they're working, energydemand go down, which means money paid
to Duke Energy goes down because you'renot consuming as much energy. Right,
Well, you think Duke Energy andtheir sharehold want that to happen. They
want to lose money because of theprogram they force us to implement. No
so they can go to gougo withthis lost revenue generation mechanism and get that
(10:11):
money back through a fee they taxback onto your bill. So the utility
companies lose no money. The ratepayersshoulder the full burden. And at the
end of the day, we maymaybe if expectations meet the mark, and
rarely do they in government involved.When governments involved in these programs, maybe
(10:33):
we save a little bit of energy, shave a half to maybe a percent
off of our demand on the grid. Our argument would be increased supplies put
more energy production on the grid,rather than trying to force people to adopt
these energy efficiency programs that they're justfrankly not interested in. Well, and
that was going to be my pointearlier. Wait a second. If there's
(10:54):
if the grid is being taxed,in other words, it can't handle the
amount of load that's being played done, then the grid is insufficient. They
shouldn't be able to shut off myelectricity or or or curb my my use
of any particular electric you'd be usingproduct. That's that's just they But and
that's the direction we're gone. Imean, you know, with everybody getting
(11:16):
electric vehicles like they want us todo, that's even just going to be
more attacks on the grid and moreof an opportunity to shut it down because
they can't handle the load. Thisis insanity, it is well and in
that and that's our argument, rightis let's go have the debate about how
do we get more We're sitting ona landmine of a gold mine of natural
(11:37):
gas under Ohio. What are wedoing to hold the federal government accountable to
unleash that production to get more energyproduction online. That's what we need to
be focused on, bringing more energyproduction online, creating abundance of energy.
Let's increase the supply to not onlyto exceed demand and bring down costs rather
than just try to work on themargins and ultimately have the rate pay as
(12:00):
in the state of Ohio, shoulderthe burden of the utility companies. Well
forty part company Donavan not just soit must observe that they did pass a
bill eighty seven to ten that justrelabels nuclear energy as green energy, which
thus allows it to pass. Iguess religious muster among the environmentalists when it
(12:20):
is the perfect solution to all ofour problems. Well, so that's a
good thing. I'm a fan ofall of the above, Nagy, you
know, getting but this is thesilliness, right, Like we have to
figure out how to label things different, I know, so they can qualify
for tax credits, so we canbring it online. Why aren't we just
getting that energy online? Why can'twe just get the nuclear energy on line
(12:43):
power the country and regain energy dominancein the world. Once again, it's
it's mine, but you know this, it is, it is It's frustrating
mind boggling and very Orwellian, allrolled up into one big, nice packet.
Donovan and Neil, Americans for Prosperity. Appreciate you joining the pro to
highlight the insanity. I look forwardto having you back on real soon,
(13:03):
my friend. Best of health youand everybody at a FP talk to you
then. Thanks brother. Seven fortynine fifty five Kosty Talk Station. Cindy,
hang on, I'll take your callright out of the gate we get
back. I want to mention though, first uh OHC, my cancer doctors,
the good doctors at OHC. I'mglad that I was surrounded by those
wonderful physicians.
Please to welcome back to fifty fiveKssy Morning Shore. Always good him on
the program. Americans for Prosperities.Donovan Neil, who was I guess watching
the activity in Columbus yesterday The Housewas in full on voting mode and they
passed a four point two billion dollarcapitol budget along with some other bills.
Welcome back, Donovaniel. It's alwaysa pleasure having you on the show,
Brian. Always the pleasure will bewith you. I really have a disdain
(00:24):
for US funding things like, oh, I don't know a rock and roll
Hall of Fame, pro football hallof Fame. I did the River Bend
project. I mean, I thoughtthat was like going to be a revenue
generator for the Since City Symphony orchesor whatever. But you know, there's
a shortage of tax dollars. Everytime I view a tax expenditure, I
think about I worked some part ofmy life to fund Phil on the blank,
(00:49):
and I see a million dollars inthe budget for Cleveland Women's Pro Soccer
Stadium, among all these other thingsthat I find offensive. You've been diving
through this. What's your take onthe on the on the Capitol budget?
Donowin, Yeah, well, youknow, it's unfortunate reality of the legislative
process. They you know, theydo the main operating budget, which is
a very significant amount of money,and then they come back and they do
(01:15):
the capital budget, which is allthose capital expends. A lot of things
you talked about there, and theproblem we see here that I was on
your show, uh back in thespring talking about how it was the legislation
that carried this this House Bill twoyou know, calling this legislation House Bill
two billion, that's what it wasearly in the spring. With a number
of other provisions added in, itbecame we're now calling House still four billion.
So four point two billion dollars approximatelyis put out there just yesterday that
(01:41):
taxpayers are going to have to payfor much of it finance your debt.
And you know, are are thereare a lot of valid capital expenditures that
need to occur right for for governmentsor state to operate. But what we're
calling out to are those things youmentioned, Brian, those sort of expenditures
like funding for those the Cleveland Groundsstadiums and these kinds of things out there
(02:01):
that you know, really we needto we need to recognize that every dollar
incent we spend or appropriate in acapital budget that has to come out of
some hardworking Ohiolands paycheck. That's howwe pay for that, because we have
an income tax still, Brian,they have to pay for that, or
sales tax or otherwise. We reallyneed our lawmakers in Columbus to get serious.
Won't rating and spending This capital budgetgrows everybody anym and it's the biggest
(02:24):
yet it's a huge amount of money. Yeah, since ad Open Tennis tournament's
going to get what how many millionsof dollars twenty seven and a half million
dollars for that. And I talkwas Representative Green yesterday here on the program
and she sort of defended it bysaying, well, it brings in a
whole lot of money every year,and we can't afford to lose it because
they were getting ready to take theirball and go elsewhere with it. You
(02:46):
know, from my experience and talkingto people in the know about all these
you know, stadium projects and overthe years, it is a bit of
a canard to suggest that the moneyspent on these huge, colossal venues with
all the amenities actually has the returnon investment for the local communities, like
the Paul Brow the pay Course stadium, for example. Well, it's it's
(03:07):
the same, yes, and it'sthe same problems we see in what you
know, we would call this cronyism, with this crony capitalism right where you
have these large corporations that come inand ask state governments to in local governments
to just hand over all the taxcredits, exemptions, all, you know,
basically give away the farm on theback of taxpayers, rather than recognizing
(03:30):
the reality that you know, youknow, we shouldn't have taxpayers subsidizing a
company, We shouldn't have taxpayers subsidizinga professional sports industry. We should be
using tax dollars for public purposes,roads, schools, bridges, police fire,
keeping our community safe and people ableto get where they need to go.
(03:50):
But you know, it's the that'sthe larger problem right now in both
political parties, right because keep yourmind, brand Republicans run Columbus and I'm
a big fan of our conservative friendshere. I'm a conservative myself, but
we really need to be making surethat the folks we send to Columbus are
enacting the conservative policies, the fiscalrestraint they campaign on. Otherwise you get
(04:12):
bills like this where the spending justkeeps growing and it's it's unfortunate. Well
a little fun fact you interjected there, and I don't want to gloss over
it. We're borrowing money for this. There's going to be debt service that
has to be paid, an interestbill that will become due when we borrow
the money to cover these capital projects. Well yeah, no, no,
(04:33):
that's not unusual. I want tobe clear, that's not unusual. This
is something new that they just did. But what is notable and we think
we need to be conscious of isyou know, justin just back in twenty
nineteen, twenty twenty, just acouple of years ago, you know,
we put two point two billion indebt finance. Now we're financing this.
Can you this capital budget? Membersjust voted on yesterday three point two billion.
(04:56):
We're growing the amount of debt we'refinancing. And I don't I don't
know if folks are paying attention.Thanks to a lot of what Washington See
is doing these days, our economyis not very you know, it's pretty
fragile right now. There are alot of concerns out there. And start
financing debt, uh, you know, tax revenues could take a hit if
if Biden manages to steer our economyinto a into a tail spin, and
(05:20):
you know, you're putting a lotof risk out there. We should be
paying for these things with cash,right if we do have extra tax dollars.
Let's have that debate. Let's havethat discussion, and let's fund programs
with the revenue that we have,not to not put it on the backs
of the future generations. Imagine thatactually being able to pay for what you
decide you're going to buy. Huh, let's pause. We'll bring Donovan back
(05:42):
and some other notable line items inthe Capitol budget as well as other bills
have passed yesterday, Donna in particularto you, Donovan O'Neil. In the
Capitol budget in particular, you know, I not nothing in particular. I
think we'll go you know, we'llgo through line items as we go forward.
The Black Eye Institute does a greatjob with its Piglet booklet of calling
out a lot of these kind ofpork barrel spending projects that we have here
(06:05):
in the state. But you know, I call your listeners on this piece
of legislation, the Capital budget inparticular, is you know, talk to
your talk to your representatives, encouragetheir fiscal restraint. Remind him every dollar
day spend in Columbus is a dollarcoming out of your paycheck for taxes to
fund those projects. And we reallyneed to do more fiscal restraint and Columbus
(06:26):
when it comes to spending. Butthere's other things they did yesterday, Brian.
There's the Modal legislation. If we'vegot some time to chapter about that
too, please. Well, I'vebeen on your show before talking about raising
the alarm a few times about Houspillseventy nine, Housepil seventy nine. It's
the it's known as an energy it'san energy efficiency mandate though it's introduced actually
by Southwest Ohio Zone Bill site.Yeah, and what's this. What what
(06:51):
this legislation does is it creates anew energy efficiency mandate program. One of
the few good things that happened inHouse Bill six, the nuclear Energy bailout
bill that was written with scandal,was eliminating energy efficiency mandates that were imposed
under former Governor Ted Strickland and Democratswhen they when they had control of the
(07:13):
Ohio House over fourteen years ago.Well, these are back, they're coming
back, and the House managed topass on a very slim vote fifty or
forty five to move it out ofthe House and send it over the Senate.
And you know the problem here,Brian is and you who've probably some
of your listeners probably heard the songdanced before. I'm sure you have.
(07:33):
It was a minority of Republicans joiningwith a majority of Democrats to pass this
legislation. We've got Republicans super majorityin Columbus and they managed to pass this
thing out. And we really needfolks to be paying attention to this and
reaching out to their senators to stopthis legislation. That'll be a fee on
their utility bills and additional costs evenif they managed to op out of this
(07:56):
program. Yeah, it's a dollarfifty every month as described to pay utilities
for rebates and discounts on smart onsmart thermostats, energy efficiency, energy efficient
appliances, and other things to helpreduce electricity use. So I'm giving Duke
Energy a buck fifty every month sothat they can give a discount to someone
(08:18):
else on one of these devices.It seems to me to be well a
bureau bureaucratic nightmare, and that thatbuck fifty is going to be consumed in
the process. But if there's somethingout there that's going to save me money.
They claim that smart thermostats, forexample, can lower my bill between
ten and fifteen percent. I haven'tsented to go out and buy one of
those damn things myself. Well that'sright. Well, you know, we've
(08:43):
been experiencing a heat way, right, so hopefully all of us have been
you know, smart and sort ofconserving energy and just you know, you
just kind of do those things becauseyou know, nobody wants the acro run
all the time. But one ofthe things that these programs would allow energy
companies to do would be too whenthey install the smart thermostat, be able
to control your AC. So ifyou know, we hit these ninety plus
(09:03):
days and the energy companies say,well, look we're gonna we need to
control the load on the on thegrid. We're going to turn your heat,
your air up. We're not goingto let you keep it at seventy
anymore, Brian, You've got tomove it to seventy two or seventy three,
and there's not a lot you cando about it. Those kinds,
those are the kind of invasive programsthat legislation like this will introduces should it
(09:26):
be signed by the governor. Notonly that people who even opt out.
So let's say you want to optout and not pay that dollar fifty a
month fee for the program. Youjust don't want to do it. There's
a mechanism in the bill called lossrevenue generation. Lost revenue generation. What
that means is when energy efficiency programscome into play, and you would hope
(09:48):
to see if they're working, energydemand go down, which means money paid
to Duke Energy goes down because you'renot consuming as much energy. Right,
Well, you think Duke Energy andtheir sharehold want that to happen. They
want to lose money because of theprogram they force us to implement. No
so they can go to gougo withthis lost revenue generation mechanism and get that
(10:11):
money back through a fee they taxback onto your bill. So the utility
companies lose no money. The ratepayersshoulder the full burden. And at the
end of the day, we maymaybe if expectations meet the mark, and
rarely do they in government involved.When governments involved in these programs, maybe
(10:33):
we save a little bit of energy, shave a half to maybe a percent
off of our demand on the grid. Our argument would be increased supplies put
more energy production on the grid,rather than trying to force people to adopt
these energy efficiency programs that they're justfrankly not interested in. Well, and
that was going to be my pointearlier. Wait a second. If there's
(10:54):
if the grid is being taxed,in other words, it can't handle the
amount of load that's being played done, then the grid is insufficient. They
shouldn't be able to shut off myelectricity or or or curb my my use
of any particular electric you'd be usingproduct. That's that's just they But and
that's the direction we're gone. Imean, you know, with everybody getting
(11:16):
electric vehicles like they want us todo, that's even just going to be
more attacks on the grid and moreof an opportunity to shut it down because
they can't handle the load. Thisis insanity, it is well and in
that and that's our argument, rightis let's go have the debate about how
do we get more We're sitting ona landmine of a gold mine of natural
(11:37):
gas under Ohio. What are wedoing to hold the federal government accountable to
unleash that production to get more energyproduction online. That's what we need to
be focused on, bringing more energyproduction online, creating abundance of energy.
Let's increase the supply to not onlyto exceed demand and bring down costs rather
than just try to work on themargins and ultimately have the rate pay as
(12:00):
in the state of Ohio, shoulderthe burden of the utility companies. Well
forty part company Donavan not just soit must observe that they did pass a
bill eighty seven to ten that justrelabels nuclear energy as green energy, which
thus allows it to pass. Iguess religious muster among the environmentalists when it
(12:20):
is the perfect solution to all ofour problems. Well, so that's a
good thing. I'm a fan ofall of the above, Nagy, you
know, getting but this is thesilliness, right, Like we have to
figure out how to label things different, I know, so they can qualify
for tax credits, so we canbring it online. Why aren't we just
getting that energy online? Why can'twe just get the nuclear energy on line
(12:43):
power the country and regain energy dominancein the world. Once again, it's
it's mine, but you know this, it is, it is It's frustrating
mind boggling and very Orwellian, allrolled up into one big, nice packet.
Donovan and Neil, Americans for Prosperity. Appreciate you joining the pro to
highlight the insanity. I look forwardto having you back on real soon,
(13:03):
my friend. Best of health youand everybody at a FP talk to you
then. Thanks brother. Seven fortynine fifty five Kosty Talk Station. Cindy,
hang on, I'll take your callright out of the gate we get
back. I want to mention though, first uh OHC, my cancer doctors,
the good doctors at OHC. I'mglad that I was surrounded by those
wonderful physicians.
Brian Thomas News
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