1-7-26 Scott Sloan Show

Scott discusses the mayor's proposed tax hike with Councilmember Jeff Cramerding. Also Ken Cuccinelli breaks down the election transparency initiative. Finally Stephen Eide pontificates if stronger mental health laws could have prevented Deputy Larry Henderson's murder.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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

(00:21):
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.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Good to have you. Hope you had a good break.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
I did. Happy New Year, It's great to be back.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
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

(01:06):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
Right yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:18):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
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.

Speaker 4 (01:50):
I am I I.

Speaker 3 (01:52):
I understand, I understand that.

Speaker 4 (01:54):
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.

Speaker 3 (02:11):
Very difficult spot. Put it is the reality, and I
understand it well.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
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,

(02:36):
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.

(02:58):
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?

Speaker 2 (03:08):
Now, that's a fair question for yes.

Speaker 4 (03:12):
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.

Speaker 3 (03:26):
It has to be.

Speaker 4 (03:27):
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.

Speaker 3 (03:45):
The city's budget.

Speaker 4 (03:46):
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.

Speaker 3 (03:58):
So this work has been ongoing.

Speaker 4 (04:00):
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.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
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

(04:40):
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.

Speaker 4 (04:47):
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.

Speaker 3 (04:56):
Keep in mind that the futures commissioning a very small arny.
That's the still a hole.

Speaker 4 (05:01):
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.

Speaker 3 (05:11):
Service as there is.

Speaker 4 (05:12):
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.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
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?

Speaker 2 (05:44):
Is it? Is it satisides?

Speaker 1 (05:45):
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

(06:07):
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.

Speaker 4 (06:17):
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

(06:39):
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.

Speaker 1 (06:57):
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.

Speaker 4 (07:21):
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

(07:44):
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.

Speaker 3 (08:04):
Painful, but they did.

Speaker 4 (08:05):
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.

Speaker 3 (08:19):
Us paper it over for a couple of years. After that.

Speaker 4 (08:22):
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

(08:43):
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.

Speaker 3 (08:58):
All right.

Speaker 1 (08:58):
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?

Speaker 4 (09:15):
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

(09:35):
others to be.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
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

(09:57):
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

(10:20):
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.

Speaker 4 (10:26):
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.

(10:50):
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.

(11:13):
I think everybody read that with a wise move. That
money is still in a lock box protected by city
ordinance and state ordans.

Speaker 3 (11:20):
So if you're.

Speaker 4 (11:20):
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.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
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

(11:56):
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.

Speaker 4 (12:11):
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

(12:32):
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.

Speaker 3 (12:53):
Columbus and Cleveland.

Speaker 4 (12:54):
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.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
Yeah, honesty.

Speaker 1 (13:03):
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.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
That's the scary part for you guys.

Speaker 4 (13:15):
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

(13:37):
a factor. It's definitely got to be part of the
conversation as we've perceived the next couple of months.

Speaker 1 (13:42):
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.

Speaker 4 (13:58):
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

(14:18):
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.

Speaker 3 (14:31):
Put something before the voters.

Speaker 4 (14:34):
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.

Speaker 3 (14:45):
Has to have.

Speaker 4 (14:45):
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.

Speaker 3 (15:01):
But if we're.

Speaker 4 (15:01):
Just waiting for the sake of waiting, then I think
that's unacceptable.

Speaker 1 (15:05):
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.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
The Futures Commission recommended.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
Yeah, so there's a lot of recommendations.

Speaker 4 (15:30):
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

(15:51):
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

(16:15):
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.

Speaker 3 (16:30):
On and make this work.

Speaker 1 (16:32):
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,

(16:52):
you're asking for money and there's going to be no accountability.

Speaker 2 (16:54):
Hopefully you can get that address.

Speaker 1 (16:55):
Jeff Cramerting share a budget and finance with the City
of Cincinnati councilmember. Thanks again of the time, appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (17:01):
Oh, it's great. Great to be with your listeners.

Speaker 1 (17:03):
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

(17:24):
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

(17:48):
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

(18:10):
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

(18:32):
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

(18:53):
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

(19:15):
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.

(19:36):
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

(19:56):
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,

(20:18):
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.

Speaker 2 (20:38):
I don't know if you know this or not, and
this was kind of news to me.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
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.

(21:01):
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

(21:24):
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

(21:47):
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.

(22:09):
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,

(22:32):
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

(22:54):
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.

Speaker 2 (23:12):
Zero and it was really good. I mean it.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
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.

(23:38):
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,

(23:59):
everything is affordable, it's just a lie. It's a myth.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
You know what.

Speaker 1 (24:02):
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

(24:23):
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.

Speaker 2 (24:31):
You're not gonna fail. And there are people out there
like that.

Speaker 1 (24:33):
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

(24:54):
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.

Speaker 2 (25:09):
Now in.

Speaker 1 (25:12):
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.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
The largest single dip and drinking.

Speaker 1 (25:25):
We're seeing a ninety year low as far as alcohol goes,
and forty four percent of Americans plan to drink less
this year.

Speaker 2 (25:35):
Largely young people are driving this.

Speaker 1 (25:37):
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.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
I mean, restaurants generally don't hang around long.

Speaker 1 (25:54):
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

(26:16):
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.

Speaker 2 (26:23):
But it makes it wonder like, what is the bar?

Speaker 1 (26:25):
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.

Speaker 2 (26:45):
Go to a bar?

Speaker 1 (26:46):
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.

(27:07):
You know, back in the day, people would drink a
lot of al and liquor and spirits because the drinking
water is unsafe.

Speaker 2 (27:13):
Well, we don't have that problem.

Speaker 1 (27:14):
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

(27:35):
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

(27:57):
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

(28:17):
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

(28:37):
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.

Speaker 2 (29:00):
By half of us do that. I guess as well too.

Speaker 1 (29:03):
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

(29:25):
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?

Speaker 2 (29:45):
Cutwater?

Speaker 1 (29:46):
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

(30:07):
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

(30:29):
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,

(30:51):
it doesn't count.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
And there's a case both ways for this.

Speaker 1 (30:54):
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

(31:15):
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,

(31:35):
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

(31:58):
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

(32:20):
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.

Speaker 2 (32:37):
It's scary.

Speaker 1 (32:38):
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

(32:58):
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.

Speaker 5 (33:05):
Or not.

Speaker 1 (33:05):
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

(33:27):
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

(33:47):
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.

(34:09):
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

(34:31):
what happens in Ohio have four days after election day
to have your vote counted.

Speaker 2 (34:35):
This would change that.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
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

(34:56):
this morning.

Speaker 3 (34:57):
Ken.

Speaker 2 (34:57):
How are you.

Speaker 3 (34:58):
I'm doing well, he's changed his name.

Speaker 5 (35:00):
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

(35:23):
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

(35:43):
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.

Speaker 3 (36:03):
So this would.

Speaker 5 (36:03):
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,

(36:24):
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

(36:46):
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.

Speaker 1 (37:07):
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?

Speaker 5 (37:17):
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

(37:37):
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

(38:01):
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.

Speaker 1 (38:16):
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

(38:38):
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?

Speaker 5 (38:50):
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.

Speaker 3 (39:06):
They're coming longer.

Speaker 5 (39:07):
Distances because they're overseas and deployed, So there's some rationale
to it.

Speaker 3 (39:15):
I would tell you.

Speaker 2 (39:15):
What if what if you work overseas well?

Speaker 5 (39:21):
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.

Speaker 2 (39:33):
Gotcha, okay, so it applies to them.

Speaker 5 (39:36):
I don't know this thing is then you find out
who who wins on election night.

Speaker 3 (39:42):
That's a big deal. I mean, think about.

Speaker 5 (39:44):
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

(40:06):
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

(40:31):
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

(40:52):
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.

Speaker 3 (41:06):
So look this, but this is not about that.

Speaker 1 (41:08):
This is about I don't really care about those states.
I care about where I live Ohio.

Speaker 5 (41:12):
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

(41:33):
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

(41:54):
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,

(42:20):
will have the opportunity to get cured.

Speaker 4 (42:23):
And you know.

Speaker 3 (42:24):
That's that's not a big number.

Speaker 5 (42:25):
But we've had races to seven by a thousand in
Virginia and where you know.

Speaker 1 (42:29):
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

(42:49):
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

(43:10):
automatically trigger a recount? So it puts everything on hold.

Speaker 5 (43:13):
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.

(43:35):
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

(43:57):
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

(44:17):
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

(44:39):
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

(45:01):
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.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
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.

Speaker 2 (45:33):
It's never been proven.

Speaker 1 (45:34):
I think that underminds it more than things like this,
don't you.

Speaker 5 (45:40):
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

(46:02):
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

(46:25):
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

(46:46):
president is more quickly and will eliminate the paranoia period
between election day and when ballots are finally counted.

Speaker 1 (46:54):
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

(47:16):
Court rules the other way, then do we need to
we have to under the law?

Speaker 2 (47:20):
Should we wait till it's till's still rules?

Speaker 5 (47:24):
First of all, this bill doesn't eliminate voter access. It
improves voter access. You seem to assume that no one
will adjust.

Speaker 1 (47:32):
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.

Speaker 5 (47:49):
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,

(48:12):
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

(48:34):
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

(48:56):
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.

Speaker 1 (49:08):
Ken Kuchinelli at the Election Transparency Initial, appreciate you answered
my questions.

Speaker 5 (49:12):
Sure, glad to do it all the best of you
be well.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
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.

Speaker 2 (49:38):
Helping you put the big P in profession. Here's our career, sir,
Julie Bauki. First one of.

Speaker 1 (49:46):
The new year, where our good friend at Julie Bauki
and we today's our anniversary who we've been together the
most marriages?

Speaker 6 (49:54):
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.

Speaker 2 (50:11):
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.

Speaker 1 (50:18):
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.

Speaker 2 (50:37):
Can you talk about that?

Speaker 6 (50:39):
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

(51:01):
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

(51:24):
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

(51:45):
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

(52:08):
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

(52:28):
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

(52:49):
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.

Speaker 1 (53:00):
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?

Speaker 6 (53:22):
It's pretty good, Blackdoor.

Speaker 2 (53:23):
I think you're talking about glasto. What did I say?

Speaker 4 (53:25):
It's pretty good?

Speaker 7 (53:26):
You know, I think you have else.

Speaker 6 (53:31):
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

(53:52):
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,

(54:14):
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

(54:36):
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,

(54:57):
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

(55:18):
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.

Speaker 1 (55:31):
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

(55:52):
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

(56:13):
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

(56:35):
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.

Speaker 6 (56:40):
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.

(57:00):
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

(57:20):
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

(57:42):
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

(58:04):
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

(58:25):
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.

(58:45):
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.

Speaker 2 (59:09):
Yeah, And I think that's true.

Speaker 1 (59:10):
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

(59:32):
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

(59:53):
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.

Speaker 6 (01:00:03):
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

(01:00:24):
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

(01:00:47):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:00:57):
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?

Speaker 3 (01:01:04):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
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?

Speaker 6 (01:01:26):
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

(01:01:49):
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.

(01:02:11):
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

(01:02:31):
still relevant and of value. Today institutional knowledge is only
worth so much.

Speaker 1 (01:02:36):
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

(01:02:58):
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.

Speaker 6 (01:03:17):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:03:30):
Job, right right, yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:03:35):
Yeah, yeah, no, so that's I think that's that's ridiculous, right.

Speaker 1 (01:03:39):
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.

(01:04:00):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:04:18):
So there's that side of.

Speaker 6 (01:04:19):
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

(01:04:40):
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,

(01:05:02):
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

(01:05:26):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:05:37):
Yeah, as the case may be, so is your would
your advice be to just leave the thing the way
it is?

Speaker 2 (01:05:43):
Right now?

Speaker 1 (01:05:43):
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,

(01:06:04):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:06:13):
I just hire all women.

Speaker 6 (01:06:17):
Then they're gonna rise.

Speaker 2 (01:06:19):
Well no, I'm just.

Speaker 1 (01:06:19):
Saying, yeah, yeah, it's like I pay you based on
what you bring to the table, what your experiences are
and the like.

Speaker 2 (01:06:25):
You know, so as it should be.

Speaker 1 (01:06:27):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:06:44):
There's a jackknife truck.

Speaker 1 (01:06:45):
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

(01:07:06):
up in news that's about six seven minutes away here
on seven hundred WLW.

Speaker 2 (01:07:11):
Do you want to be an American idiot? Got flown
back on seven hundred WLW.

Speaker 1 (01:07:16):
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

(01:07:40):
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

(01:08:02):
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.

Speaker 8 (01:08:18):
I'm great, Thanks for having me, Scott.

Speaker 1 (01:08:20):
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.

(01:08:42):
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.

Speaker 8 (01:08:50):
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

(01:09:11):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:09:28):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:09:38):
Correct.

Speaker 8 (01:09:39):
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

(01:10:00):
that's why it's really important that we have leadership from
the gubernatorial level.

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):
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.

Speaker 8 (01:10:22):
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

(01:10:45):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:10:53):
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.

Speaker 8 (01:11:12):
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

(01:11:34):
it's all worse when they get kind of caught up
in that system.

Speaker 1 (01:11:37):
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.

Speaker 8 (01:11:54):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:12:16):
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.

(01:12:37):
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?

Speaker 8 (01:12:55):
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

(01:13:16):
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,

(01:13:38):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:13:50):
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

(01:14:11):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:14:23):
Who have mental health issues.

Speaker 1 (01:14:25):
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

(01:14:46):
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.

Speaker 8 (01:14:52):
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,

(01:15:12):
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

(01:15:35):
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

(01:15:56):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:16:17):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:16:26):
That's a big social plan.

Speaker 1 (01:16:27):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:16:48):
Right.

Speaker 8 (01:16:49):
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.

(01:17:11):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:17:24):
Well, the people inside suffer, which makes the problem worse,
gives them more bag to go.

Speaker 2 (01:17:28):
See, you see, this is why you gotta close it.

Speaker 1 (01:17:29):
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.

Speaker 4 (01:17:45):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:17:46):
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.

Speaker 8 (01:17:58):
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

(01:18:21):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:18:31):
Yeah, so we close the jails.

Speaker 1 (01:18:32):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:18:47):
Right.

Speaker 8 (01:18:47):
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,

(01:19:10):
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

(01:19:30):
going to need jails and we're going to need incarceration
if we win to face after this crime problem.

Speaker 2 (01:19:35):
Stephen on that too.

Speaker 1 (01:19:38):
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

(01:19:58):
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.

Speaker 5 (01:20:14):
Well?

Speaker 8 (01:20:14):
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

(01:20:37):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:20:47):
Are just bad.

Speaker 8 (01:20:48):
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

(01:21:09):
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

(01:21:31):
to their needs.

Speaker 1 (01:21:32):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:21:54):
And that's happened a lot real quick.

Speaker 4 (01:21:56):
Here.

Speaker 2 (01:21:56):
What how do we fix this?

Speaker 8 (01:21:59):
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.

(01:22:20):
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

(01:22:40):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:22:51):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:22:51):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's that's probably true.

Speaker 1 (01:22:54):
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

(01:23:14):
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.

Speaker 8 (01:23:22):
I really enjoyed it. Thanks for having me, Stuf Care.

Speaker 1 (01:23:25):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:23:36):
We got another eleven year old dead.

Speaker 1 (01:23:37):
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

(01:23:59):
seven High Wild. There we go, New Year's resolution, more snorts.

Speaker 2 (01:24:22):
Sarah Relasi's here from the Kid Chris Show one on
two seven e v M.

Speaker 1 (01:24:26):
Of the social media perspective on everything sport and Cincinnati.

Speaker 2 (01:24:29):
There is some of the new year with the snorts report.

Speaker 9 (01:24:33):
Yes, there are so many things trending with Cincinnati sports
right now.

Speaker 7 (01:24:37):
Not really snort worthy, though.

Speaker 1 (01:24:39):
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.

(01:25:00):
Can't win Xavier? What what give me a post?

Speaker 4 (01:25:02):
Wait?

Speaker 9 (01:25:03):
Why are we putting so much money into the Duke Energy?
What is it called now? The Cincinnati Convention Someday Energy Center?

Speaker 7 (01:25:09):
Don't that's not what the article said.

Speaker 2 (01:25:11):
Sure, I'm just gonna call it that forever, okay, because
its energy? So the Riverfront stadium.

Speaker 7 (01:25:18):
But I'm like, shouldn't we put more money into our defense.

Speaker 2 (01:25:23):
Again?

Speaker 7 (01:25:25):
We're gonna start with the positive though, real quick.

Speaker 9 (01:25:28):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:25:38):
Hold on, hold that thought a second.

Speaker 1 (01:25:40):
So we've been doing this segment for a few years now,
and I believe this is the first time she's mentioned Miami.

Speaker 2 (01:25:46):
University basketball because it's that bad.

Speaker 1 (01:25:49):
We've got to go to Oxford to go, well, there's
something we can hang our hat on all the way.

Speaker 9 (01:25:53):
In cozy Oxford, my alma mater. You'll be checking out
a game there on the thirty first.

Speaker 2 (01:25:58):
Are you going to go watch the bear Cats?

Speaker 9 (01:26:00):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:26:10):
I like, of all the people hiding off on Dan,
I don't know if it was going off on him.

Speaker 9 (01:26:17):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:26:22):
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.

Speaker 7 (01:26:32):
It's like, don't be darky and say that.

Speaker 9 (01:26:33):
I don't like that the whole us against the world,
the world.

Speaker 2 (01:26:38):
Then why am I buying your tickets?

Speaker 1 (01:26:40):
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.

Speaker 9 (01:26:47):
But as you know, it doesn't matter who the coaches
are in Cincinnati, we are going to hang on to them.

Speaker 2 (01:26:52):
The coaches show is the dumbest thing.

Speaker 7 (01:26:53):
It doesn't matter what the record is.

Speaker 9 (01:26:55):
I guess in Baltimore it matters because they let go
of their night to that guy.

Speaker 2 (01:27:03):
Tom is going to be the greatest.

Speaker 9 (01:27:05):
Meanwhile, we've got everybody in the AFC North cutting coaches
except in Sincenata.

Speaker 7 (01:27:09):
What about you stay another year.

Speaker 2 (01:27:11):
You've got to get one more time.

Speaker 1 (01:27:12):
Duke Tobin's been here since the Truman administration, before football
was even the thing.

Speaker 9 (01:27:17):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:27:34):
Doing it? Going to write it to an Ama asked
me anything.

Speaker 7 (01:27:37):
Yeah, I don't want the Bengals media in there. I
don't want this. I don't want this interview to be weak.

Speaker 9 (01:27:42):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:27:52):
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?

Speaker 2 (01:28:06):
What about the draft?

Speaker 7 (01:28:07):
Nobody wants to lose their crew.

Speaker 2 (01:28:08):
But I want yeah, very so bad. Yeah, because they
well they'll pull there.

Speaker 1 (01:28:12):
That's so weak as like, well, you asked a tough question,
you'll have your credential pulled.

Speaker 9 (01:28:15):
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

(01:28:39):
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?

Speaker 7 (01:28:47):
Because everyone's so mad?

Speaker 2 (01:28:49):
Yeah, yeah, our season ticket holders.

Speaker 1 (01:28:53):
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.

Speaker 7 (01:29:14):
And general statement that you could ever.

Speaker 1 (01:29:17):
We trust these guys men, We trust them. You got
to the super Bowl once in twenty eight years.

Speaker 7 (01:29:23):
And we need to stop talking about that Super Bowl
enough that was light.

Speaker 2 (01:29:27):
Years ago, which also looking like that was an outlier.
Like literally, I.

Speaker 7 (01:29:30):
Can talk about the big red machine from fifty years ago.

Speaker 1 (01:29:34):
Right, there's no dynasty there is, Like it feels like
at this point now you stumbled into that is what
it looks like.

Speaker 9 (01:29:40):
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?

Speaker 7 (01:29:55):
Joe is a great leader. He's not going to throw
anyone under the bus.

Speaker 2 (01:29:58):
Oh he's not.

Speaker 9 (01:30:00):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:30:08):
What if they don't make the playoffs next year?

Speaker 7 (01:30:10):
Four years in a row. We got problems.

Speaker 1 (01:30:12):
That's fine to get you know what we are We
need a little more time.

Speaker 7 (01:30:16):
Well, just extend Zach for another couple of years.

Speaker 1 (01:30:19):
Right now, they're renovating pay court. They need to renovate
the front office is what they need to do.

Speaker 9 (01:30:23):
Take that money from the convention center whatever you're doing,
the money and just.

Speaker 2 (01:30:27):
Fix it down.

Speaker 7 (01:30:28):
You got fixed.

Speaker 2 (01:30:29):
The Brown family has enough money. We're good.

Speaker 7 (01:30:31):
He's a what is it, He's one of the top
five riches people. It's in the track.

Speaker 2 (01:30:36):
We need to give them more money. Yeah, no, you don't.

Speaker 1 (01:30:38):
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.

Speaker 9 (01:30:51):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:31:01):
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.

Speaker 7 (01:31:09):
This look at the snowy seats.

Speaker 2 (01:31:12):
We don't care about the fans.

Speaker 7 (01:31:13):
We care about the fans, and apparently over the weekend.

Speaker 2 (01:31:16):
Or we do in the stadium, isn't that good? Well yeah,
but we're paying for that.

Speaker 7 (01:31:20):
Correct.

Speaker 9 (01:31:20):
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.

Speaker 7 (01:31:31):
Yeah, so that wasn't fit exactly.

Speaker 9 (01:31:33):
We got more problems though, Cam Taylor Britt doing some
time in jail and straight to the off season to
the Hamilton County jail.

Speaker 7 (01:31:43):
I guess reckless driving, running some stop lights.

Speaker 1 (01:31:46):
In this time, having like two thousand miles an hour
up and down Vine Street.

Speaker 2 (01:31:49):
What are you doing?

Speaker 9 (01:31:50):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:31:58):
She brings that same attitude to the Duke Tobin thing, Yeah,
can we get Chelsea sick to the press or on Friday.

Speaker 7 (01:32:05):
She's all over it.

Speaker 9 (01:32:06):
But yeah, these charges go all the way back to June,
and then he was cited again in September not having
a valid license.

Speaker 7 (01:32:13):
I mean, it's crazy.

Speaker 4 (01:32:14):
What do you doing?

Speaker 2 (01:32:15):
Go through your mind?

Speaker 7 (01:32:16):
It's like you can't celebrate, you should have your stuff
to go.

Speaker 2 (01:32:19):
But it's also like I don't need to get a license.
What what the hell you think? What are you doing?

Speaker 9 (01:32:23):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:32:34):
So apparently getting a driver's lives not only the only responsibility.

Speaker 2 (01:32:38):
Shirk so.

Speaker 9 (01:32:40):
Not the best examples for our young kiddos that look
up to the Bengals players here.

Speaker 2 (01:32:45):
He's not gonna be back anyway.

Speaker 7 (01:32:47):
I don't think so. I think I'm done with CTB. Yeah,
I've seen enough.

Speaker 2 (01:32:50):
I've seen enough. We don't want to say anymore. There's
like three guys I keep on. I think that's it.

Speaker 7 (01:32:54):
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.

Speaker 9 (01:33:06):
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?

Speaker 7 (01:33:20):
Yes it was, Yes it was.

Speaker 9 (01:33:22):
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

(01:33:47):
and fossils. I guess that's what he gifted his O
line this year for Christmas.

Speaker 7 (01:33:51):
Fossils. Last year was the samuraized Swords. Yeah, now they
got rocks.

Speaker 2 (01:33:55):
I think Bengals have enough fossils.

Speaker 7 (01:33:57):
We got to and that's the problem. Like we got.

Speaker 2 (01:34:04):
Ladies are great, Joe, marry me, marry me.

Speaker 7 (01:34:07):
Here's some rocks.

Speaker 9 (01:34:08):
Mean, while Pat Mahomes is like based on personalized rolex.

Speaker 2 (01:34:12):
Was you marry Joe?

Speaker 1 (01:34:14):
Based on some of the stuff he wears for his
pregame fit, you could double your wardrobe, ladies.

Speaker 7 (01:34:19):
I'll wear the sweatsuits.

Speaker 9 (01:34:20):
Those are some nice sweatsuits, T shirt and shirts I
you did cozy in the would.

Speaker 2 (01:34:24):
Come in and it's just like they look like I
don't care.

Speaker 7 (01:34:26):
They really did not care. This year.

Speaker 9 (01:34:28):
I wasn't blown away with the fashion by you can't
be flashy when you're six and a line.

Speaker 2 (01:34:33):
Focus on that nonsense.

Speaker 7 (01:34:34):
Wear the suits when you go undefeated, when you can
win a few games in a row.

Speaker 2 (01:34:38):
Okay, will you walk with a little swagger now, with
your tail the two of your legs.

Speaker 7 (01:34:42):
Let's move on.

Speaker 1 (01:34:43):
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.

Speaker 9 (01:34:52):
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

(01:35:13):
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?

Speaker 2 (01:35:21):
Winter ball? I don't know what.

Speaker 9 (01:35:22):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:35:43):
The players are coming though, Yeah, we'll.

Speaker 9 (01:35:45):
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

(01:36:06):
right me.

Speaker 2 (01:36:07):
Yeah, I wouldn't do that. You know you should.

Speaker 1 (01:36:10):
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.

Speaker 7 (01:36:16):
Oh stop, nobody wants to see that. Come on, let's
keep it. But can you imagine these.

Speaker 2 (01:36:25):
Former former Reds players taking our shirts off.

Speaker 9 (01:36:27):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:36:41):
For Red Strip Poker.

Speaker 7 (01:36:43):
That's a whole nother website that that has nothing to
do with me.

Speaker 2 (01:36:45):
See Sarah's only fans anyway.

Speaker 7 (01:36:48):
Anyways, that's what's trending on social media.

Speaker 1 (01:36:52):
You're also cringing, So you know I'm going to talk
more about Please don't Red strip poker.

Speaker 9 (01:36:56):
Please don't, because I'm thinking about the dudes in that
room and no.

Speaker 2 (01:37:00):
Gapper Wado Gapper takes us know what this something that.

Speaker 9 (01:37:05):
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?

Speaker 2 (01:37:12):
Like a Philly fanatic?

Speaker 9 (01:37:13):
It's like it's it's really weird Jilly fanatic at the
Bristol Speedway thing.

Speaker 7 (01:37:19):
And he's odd, a little creepy, is a little creepy,
all right.

Speaker 9 (01:37:22):
Apparently the dude that plays him as creepy, So explain
some things.

Speaker 7 (01:37:27):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:37:34):
All right.

Speaker 7 (01:37:35):
So there's not that respect.

Speaker 2 (01:37:36):
Bengals.

Speaker 9 (01:37:37):
We got the Reds and we have Miami university killing
it with basketball and the EHL strike is over.

Speaker 2 (01:37:44):
So last like three days.

Speaker 9 (01:37:45):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:37:53):
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.

Speaker 9 (01:37:59):
That might have been the end of the Yeah, so
glad that those guys are going to get exactly what
they were striking about.

Speaker 7 (01:38:07):
Treatment. Yay, Miami, let's go red hooks baby sixteen to no.

Speaker 2 (01:38:11):
You know it's bad.

Speaker 1 (01:38:12):
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.

Speaker 7 (01:38:23):
Oh yeah, they've your place tonight. They're in Milwaukee.

Speaker 1 (01:38:25):
If if the wheels fall off Miami with you, hope
they don't, But then what do you do you owe?

Speaker 2 (01:38:30):
You you go to Dayton.

Speaker 7 (01:38:31):
This is this is when we just look forward to
Opening day, NonStop countdowns.

Speaker 1 (01:38:37):
Yeah, nothing like this New Year's depression to go on
here with our sports teams because there's no just no
good news.

Speaker 7 (01:38:44):
Miami, Miami.

Speaker 1 (01:38:45):
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.

Speaker 7 (01:38:53):
It's just regular poker.

Speaker 2 (01:38:55):
Spread the rumors you're a poker with Sarah seven