July 17, 2025 • 11 mins
The Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, Lima's own Matt Huffman, joined Todd Walker to talk about taking money from the unclaimed funds to help finance stadiums (specifically for the Browns). He also discussed the legal fight over the "Modell Law" and some other vetoes they'll try to override.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The idea of taking money from the unclaimed funds to
loan to the Browns or whatever it is. There's a
constitutional challenge to that. What you must believe that what
you did was constitutional, or you wouldn't put it in
the budget, I presume. But do they have much of
a leg to stand on with this lawsuit in your opinion?
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Well, no, they don't. But I mean, I also think
that part of what folks, a lot of folks who
file lawsuits are is somebody's paying me to do something,
and whether they're doing it because they believe they actually
have a chance of doing it, or it's something that
we get to talk about over and over through the
(00:40):
twenty twenty sixth election. You know, who knows. But the
you know, we obviously wouldn't pass something that well, well
this is unconstitutional, but let's give it a shot anyway.
You know, the interesting thing about unclaim funds, there's some
statistics for you. So this this was created in nineteen
oh nine in the state of Ohio, and every state
(01:00):
has one of these. And so someone does in case
their utility check or an income tax refund, or they
leave money over at their lawyer's office and move off
to Arizona. That money all has to be turned over
to the state, and there is four point eight billion
dollars in this fund. And what we did is established,
(01:22):
as many states do, but for the first time in
the state of Ohio, a statute of limitations that if
you do not claim your funds within ten years of
the time it's with the state, then it aeschets or
the state is now the state's money. And many states, Indiana,
for example, has the statute of limitations. Nobody over there
has said it's unconstitutional yet, so we created the ten
(01:45):
year statute. And so what happened was one point seven
billion dollars immediately went into this achievement fund. And the
interesting thing I think about that is three point one
billion dollars of that has been accumulated in the last
ten years. Okay, In twenty twenty four, five hundred and
(02:06):
twenty four million dollars came into this fund. It also
and that's not interest. It also generated one hundred and
ninety million dollars in interest. Okay, And so I don't
nobody's done a study of that. But so what's happened
in the last several years that wasn't happening prior to that,
it's the Internet. People sign up for stuff and they
(02:29):
forget about it. And those companies have the money, they're
not allowed to just keep it. They have to turn
it over the state. So we get a half a
billion dollars into this fund. We paid out about one
hundred and fifty million in actual claims because people can
still come and claim their money, even for the ten
year old plus once now you still have another year
to come in and claim their money. But it's like
(02:51):
a lot of things. It's like, hey, you know, you
drive three miles down the road and realize they gave
me the wrong change at the drive up window. They
shorted me too, Am I going to drive all the
way back? I forget it? And that's that's what's happening here.
So the Supreme Court did say a few years ago
that the state couldn't take the with no other statutory authority,
(03:14):
couldn't just take the interest and spend it. So that
stopped about fifteen years ago. So we've now created this fund.
And it's not a loan to the Browns or to
anybody else who's going to use this, which I think
there'll be a lot of other people. It's a grant
and what they and everybody else has to show before
they get the money to the Tax Department, Office of
(03:35):
Management Budget, the Facilities Commission that the new revenue janetated
to the state will exceed the amount of money that
you're getting, or you don't get the money. Now, we
don't do that when we give tax abatements to local
companies to come to Lineman. I don't know what they're
doing for data centers. I know for the adderall and
(03:57):
or all projects sorry down to pick a county. We
have given them eight hundred and fifty million dollars in incentives.
We think it's going to do good things. We think
it's going to generate jobs. But they didn't have to
prove that in order to get these grants. And in addition,
of course, the Browns Organization has to put up one
hundred million dollars front money like a security deposit that
(04:19):
we get to draw from to get our money. We
don't do that to Intel. We didn't do that to
the battery plant down in Fayette County, to Jobe and Dayton, Ohio,
all these other billion dollar operations that we're doing. So
you know, in theory, they may not get the money
if they can't show what the new taxes are. But
(04:40):
several independent organizations have already verified that, and that's why
we were willing to do it in the first place.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
That's because it's more public sort of fun to talk about.
The Other part of the Browns issue is, of course,
the City of Cleveland fields that you monkeyed with the
model law off for lack of a better term, and
changed it, and you shouldn't be allowed to do that,
or what you did doesn't pass a legal muster that's
(05:08):
also being adjudicated, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah, there's a lot of lawsuits, and of course I
understand that people file lawsuits to do more, especially when
it comes to public issues, to do more than to
win the lawsuit. There's always a series of lawsuits challenging
school vouchers and things like that, and usually they're filed
within a month or so of when we're doing budgets, like, ah,
(05:33):
maybe we better not expand ed choice scholarships because we're
getting sued over it. I hear that all the time,
but understand that we all of course know the story
and the point of the Modell law is we didn't
want professional teams to leave. Now the city of brook
Park is actually adjacent to the city of Cleveland, So
(05:54):
this spot is about a mile and a half from Cleveland.
It's obviously not downtown, and I'm a downtown guy, but
I'm also a Browns fan, and it's really hard to
get to a football game a downtown I usually I
got my special parking garage, I park, and it's about
eight blocks to walk, and it's fine because I'm usually
with you know, my family or friends and things like that.
(06:16):
But the concept over the model Law is, look, we
don't want the Cleveland Browns to leave the state of Ohio.
And in one sense, what is the General Assembly care
whether they're in Cleveland or brook Park or Canton, Ohio
as long as they're in the state of Ohio generating
money and jobs and economic activity and all of those
(06:37):
other things. So we just wanted to clarify that it's
not one city doesn't have a death grip on it.
And you know this is there's a great article in
Wall Street Journal this weekend about how the Atlanta Braves
are winning when they're losing. They were eleven games under
(06:58):
five hundred, but they have all sorts of people coming
down there and coming to their games because they've created
one of these stadium lifestyle deals where they have shops, apartments, hotels,
and so people are coming to their games. They're not
that good this year, but it's and so other folks
are coming around saying, how is it that we're getting
(07:20):
people to and to do all the other things they do,
concerts and you know, hopefully World Cup, and I think
they could have the Olympics at this facility someday in
the state of Ohio if they wanted to.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Were there any other issues the governor veto that you're
going to take up or just the property tax stuff?
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Well, yeah, there are a variety of issues that we
will take up. And you know, as I mentioned to you,
we could have just waited till October when we are
scheduled to come back in session. And in fact, we
have until the end of twenty twenty six, the end
of this General Assembly to do that. Because of the
(08:00):
timing and the twenty six tax bills. That's why we're
rushing back on the twenty first to do that. And
you know what, we'll have to see what's there were
some curious things that are in there. For example, we
had a several years ago during the Casey administration, we
gave a tax exemption for building materials for data centers
(08:21):
in the state of Ohio. And the idea was, these
data centers are going to get built someplace, let's make
it cheaper for them to do that here. Well, we
passed House Bill fifteen and we gave them tremendous authority
that doesn't exist anywhere else, which means they can build
their own power generation as we say behind the meter
(08:43):
American Electric Power, first Energy Duke. Of course, they hate
all of that because they want to make money selling
them power. Well, now these guys get to make the
build their own gas power lines, saving them a lot
of money. And as a result, lots of folks are
coming here. You know, there may be one coming here
in Allen County, there's one near in Van Word County.
But why should those folks not pay the sales tax
(09:05):
that you know, some guy who's building local restaurants has
to pay. And so we removed that about fifteen year
old exemption out of it. The governor vetoed that saying, well,
maybe people won't build as many data centers as well.
I think there's going to be more data centers as
a result. Of house built fifteen and some of the
other things we put in there. So, but it is
(09:28):
an extraordinary number of vetos. We'll be looking at them
as we go throughout the year, and you know they
there's there's always some practicality that goes into this. There's
a governor of your own party, maybe you're more less
likely to override a veto. There's a governor who's in
his first two years of what could be an eight
(09:49):
year term, less likely to override that. But I think
there's because of what happened with these real estate tax vetos,
there's more of a mind of, well, if that's the
way this is going to be, let's line them up
and start voting.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Were there any could you say, social issues in the
budget that he vetoed that you personally or otherwise think
you should try to override.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah, And some of it is curious. For example, we
have a kind of an extraordinary local library funding in
the state of Ohio. We have over I guess two
hundred and thirty five local library districts, and some of
it's strange. In Hamilton County there's only one district. In
(10:37):
Ashtabula County they have nine because everybody wants to have
their own local district, which of course costs more money,
and they were getting a percentage of the state revenue
from the state. Even with what we've just done, Ohio
is number one in funding local libraries.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
By a lot. I mean, it's even if they change
it to what you propose, right.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Yeah, well we did, and the governor didn't veto all
of that. So, but the local libraries control their own destiny.
They get a lot of money from the states. Like schools,
they get a lot of money from the state. They
make lots of decisions. So, but we make a lot
of decisions for schools too. We say you must teach this,
and you know, we're going to have a servius course,
and you have to get rid of this new fangled
(11:19):
way of teaching reading where kids aren't learning to read.
We got rid of that finally, and it's really helped.
But one of the things we said is adult content.
Literature must be removed from the child portion of the library. Okay, Now,
you would think most districts would do that anyway, and
(11:41):
many do, some do not. The governor Vito debt, So
we'll probably vote to override that veto because you know,
it's kind of one of those common sense things. It
really in the case of the literature, this is like, well,
of course we're going to do that. There are going
to be a number of things like that.
The idea of taking money from the unclaimed funds to
loan to the Browns or whatever it is. There's a
constitutional challenge to that. What you must believe that what
you did was constitutional, or you wouldn't put it in
the budget, I presume. But do they have much of
a leg to stand on with this lawsuit in your opinion?
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Well, no, they don't. But I mean, I also think
that part of what folks, a lot of folks who
file lawsuits are is somebody's paying me to do something,
and whether they're doing it because they believe they actually
have a chance of doing it, or it's something that
we get to talk about over and over through the
(00:40):
twenty twenty sixth election. You know, who knows. But the
you know, we obviously wouldn't pass something that well, well
this is unconstitutional, but let's give it a shot anyway.
You know, the interesting thing about unclaim funds, there's some
statistics for you. So this this was created in nineteen
oh nine in the state of Ohio, and every state
(01:00):
has one of these. And so someone does in case
their utility check or an income tax refund, or they
leave money over at their lawyer's office and move off
to Arizona. That money all has to be turned over
to the state, and there is four point eight billion
dollars in this fund. And what we did is established,
(01:22):
as many states do, but for the first time in
the state of Ohio, a statute of limitations that if
you do not claim your funds within ten years of
the time it's with the state, then it aeschets or
the state is now the state's money. And many states, Indiana,
for example, has the statute of limitations. Nobody over there
has said it's unconstitutional yet, so we created the ten
(01:45):
year statute. And so what happened was one point seven
billion dollars immediately went into this achievement fund. And the
interesting thing I think about that is three point one
billion dollars of that has been accumulated in the last
ten years. Okay, In twenty twenty four, five hundred and
(02:06):
twenty four million dollars came into this fund. It also
and that's not interest. It also generated one hundred and
ninety million dollars in interest. Okay, And so I don't
nobody's done a study of that. But so what's happened
in the last several years that wasn't happening prior to that,
it's the Internet. People sign up for stuff and they
(02:29):
forget about it. And those companies have the money, they're
not allowed to just keep it. They have to turn
it over the state. So we get a half a
billion dollars into this fund. We paid out about one
hundred and fifty million in actual claims because people can
still come and claim their money, even for the ten
year old plus once now you still have another year
to come in and claim their money. But it's like
(02:51):
a lot of things. It's like, hey, you know, you
drive three miles down the road and realize they gave
me the wrong change at the drive up window. They
shorted me too, Am I going to drive all the
way back? I forget it? And that's that's what's happening here.
So the Supreme Court did say a few years ago
that the state couldn't take the with no other statutory authority,
(03:14):
couldn't just take the interest and spend it. So that
stopped about fifteen years ago. So we've now created this fund.
And it's not a loan to the Browns or to
anybody else who's going to use this, which I think
there'll be a lot of other people. It's a grant
and what they and everybody else has to show before
they get the money to the Tax Department, Office of
(03:35):
Management Budget, the Facilities Commission that the new revenue janetated
to the state will exceed the amount of money that
you're getting, or you don't get the money. Now, we
don't do that when we give tax abatements to local
companies to come to Lineman. I don't know what they're
doing for data centers. I know for the adderall and
(03:57):
or all projects sorry down to pick a county. We
have given them eight hundred and fifty million dollars in incentives.
We think it's going to do good things. We think
it's going to generate jobs. But they didn't have to
prove that in order to get these grants. And in addition,
of course, the Browns Organization has to put up one
hundred million dollars front money like a security deposit that
(04:19):
we get to draw from to get our money. We
don't do that to Intel. We didn't do that to
the battery plant down in Fayette County, to Jobe and Dayton, Ohio,
all these other billion dollar operations that we're doing. So
you know, in theory, they may not get the money
if they can't show what the new taxes are. But
(04:40):
several independent organizations have already verified that, and that's why
we were willing to do it in the first place.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
That's because it's more public sort of fun to talk about.
The Other part of the Browns issue is, of course,
the City of Cleveland fields that you monkeyed with the
model law off for lack of a better term, and
changed it, and you shouldn't be allowed to do that,
or what you did doesn't pass a legal muster that's
(05:08):
also being adjudicated, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah, there's a lot of lawsuits, and of course I
understand that people file lawsuits to do more, especially when
it comes to public issues, to do more than to
win the lawsuit. There's always a series of lawsuits challenging
school vouchers and things like that, and usually they're filed
within a month or so of when we're doing budgets, like, ah,
(05:33):
maybe we better not expand ed choice scholarships because we're
getting sued over it. I hear that all the time,
but understand that we all of course know the story
and the point of the Modell law is we didn't
want professional teams to leave. Now the city of brook
Park is actually adjacent to the city of Cleveland, So
(05:54):
this spot is about a mile and a half from Cleveland.
It's obviously not downtown, and I'm a downtown guy, but
I'm also a Browns fan, and it's really hard to
get to a football game a downtown I usually I
got my special parking garage, I park, and it's about
eight blocks to walk, and it's fine because I'm usually
with you know, my family or friends and things like that.
(06:16):
But the concept over the model Law is, look, we
don't want the Cleveland Browns to leave the state of Ohio.
And in one sense, what is the General Assembly care
whether they're in Cleveland or brook Park or Canton, Ohio
as long as they're in the state of Ohio generating
money and jobs and economic activity and all of those
(06:37):
other things. So we just wanted to clarify that it's
not one city doesn't have a death grip on it.
And you know this is there's a great article in
Wall Street Journal this weekend about how the Atlanta Braves
are winning when they're losing. They were eleven games under
(06:58):
five hundred, but they have all sorts of people coming
down there and coming to their games because they've created
one of these stadium lifestyle deals where they have shops, apartments, hotels,
and so people are coming to their games. They're not
that good this year, but it's and so other folks
are coming around saying, how is it that we're getting
(07:20):
people to and to do all the other things they do,
concerts and you know, hopefully World Cup, and I think
they could have the Olympics at this facility someday in
the state of Ohio if they wanted to.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Were there any other issues the governor veto that you're
going to take up or just the property tax stuff?
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Well, yeah, there are a variety of issues that we
will take up. And you know, as I mentioned to you,
we could have just waited till October when we are
scheduled to come back in session. And in fact, we
have until the end of twenty twenty six, the end
of this General Assembly to do that. Because of the
(08:00):
timing and the twenty six tax bills. That's why we're
rushing back on the twenty first to do that. And
you know what, we'll have to see what's there were
some curious things that are in there. For example, we
had a several years ago during the Casey administration, we
gave a tax exemption for building materials for data centers
(08:21):
in the state of Ohio. And the idea was, these
data centers are going to get built someplace, let's make
it cheaper for them to do that here. Well, we
passed House Bill fifteen and we gave them tremendous authority
that doesn't exist anywhere else, which means they can build
their own power generation as we say behind the meter
(08:43):
American Electric Power, first Energy Duke. Of course, they hate
all of that because they want to make money selling
them power. Well, now these guys get to make the
build their own gas power lines, saving them a lot
of money. And as a result, lots of folks are
coming here. You know, there may be one coming here
in Allen County, there's one near in Van Word County.
But why should those folks not pay the sales tax
(09:05):
that you know, some guy who's building local restaurants has
to pay. And so we removed that about fifteen year
old exemption out of it. The governor vetoed that saying, well,
maybe people won't build as many data centers as well.
I think there's going to be more data centers as
a result. Of house built fifteen and some of the
other things we put in there. So, but it is
(09:28):
an extraordinary number of vetos. We'll be looking at them
as we go throughout the year, and you know they
there's there's always some practicality that goes into this. There's
a governor of your own party, maybe you're more less
likely to override a veto. There's a governor who's in
his first two years of what could be an eight
(09:49):
year term, less likely to override that. But I think
there's because of what happened with these real estate tax vetos,
there's more of a mind of, well, if that's the
way this is going to be, let's line them up
and start voting.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Were there any could you say, social issues in the
budget that he vetoed that you personally or otherwise think
you should try to override.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah, And some of it is curious. For example, we
have a kind of an extraordinary local library funding in
the state of Ohio. We have over I guess two
hundred and thirty five local library districts, and some of
it's strange. In Hamilton County there's only one district. In
(10:37):
Ashtabula County they have nine because everybody wants to have
their own local district, which of course costs more money,
and they were getting a percentage of the state revenue
from the state. Even with what we've just done, Ohio
is number one in funding local libraries.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
By a lot. I mean, it's even if they change
it to what you propose, right.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Yeah, well we did, and the governor didn't veto all
of that. So, but the local libraries control their own destiny.
They get a lot of money from the states. Like schools,
they get a lot of money from the state. They
make lots of decisions. So, but we make a lot
of decisions for schools too. We say you must teach this,
and you know, we're going to have a servius course,
and you have to get rid of this new fangled
(11:19):
way of teaching reading where kids aren't learning to read.
We got rid of that finally, and it's really helped.
But one of the things we said is adult content.
Literature must be removed from the child portion of the library. Okay, Now,
you would think most districts would do that anyway, and
(11:41):
many do, some do not. The governor Vito debt, So
we'll probably vote to override that veto because you know,
it's kind of one of those common sense things. It
really in the case of the literature, this is like, well,
of course we're going to do that. There are going
to be a number of things like that.
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