Sec of State Frank LaRose - IN STUDIO

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Seven. I was six here picking about PARCD talk station.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Happy Thursday Friday Eve is what I prefer, and I
always prefer having guests in the studio, and it is
a wonderful thing to look across the booth here and
see Secretary of State Frank LeRose in the studio to
talk about a variety of different topics. Welcome man, good
to see you again.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
Great to be back in the Queen City at fifty
five KRC and not talking to you on the phone
for one here.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
I know, and yeah, we've run into each other in
person all the time, and I will say out loud,
it's glad to see you, casual you're going running after it.
And I apologize to Frank because I didn't realize who's
going to be in my studio this morning. And I
have my defund Politicians t shirt on.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
I love it.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
I'm glad, but you know, I'm in charge of campaign
finance in Ohio, so we want to defund the you know,
the bad ones were doing it right.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Real quick here, right out of the gate.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
I know we've got other things to talk about, but
I think there's probably no one of my listening audience
is happy at all about this Cleveland Browns getting six
hundred million dollars through bond money that we have to
pay debt service on. I don't I don't understand where
that come from, How that can be How in a
representative government that all the Ohio taxpayers is going to
be shouldering the burden for debt service so the Browns

(01:24):
can get their new playfield. And this this, this, this facility.
It's just it's really rubbed my listeners the wrong way.

Speaker 3 (01:30):
And I know I'm going to disclose something here in Cincinnati, Ohio.
What a city I love. I'm a lifelong Browns fan.
I grew up in Cleveland, right right, But I also
am one that believes that football should be played outdoor.
I think men should play football outdoors in the weather, yes,
as God intended. But but further, I think that there's
this national arms race as it relates to stadium funding exactly.

(01:55):
And I think that the thought by a lot of
our legislators is, well, we're not going to unilt of
early disarmy because all these other states are putting public
money and public bond deals into these stadiums, and so
Ohio doesn't want to be the state with shabby stadiums
where we can't have big national events, where we can't
attract top talent. And Lord knows the Browns need all

(02:15):
the help they can get when it comes to attracting talent.
So again, there's two sides to this. I can see
your point completely.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Yeah, multimillionaire families sometimes billionaire families, and we the taxpayers,
pay for them so they can make money off of
the stadiums that we build on our backs. I find
the whole thing just I don't know. It's one thing
that's for sure.

Speaker 3 (02:37):
There's a thing that's called the model rule where if
any public money goes into a stadium and that team leaves,
then that money can be clawed back. I mean, if
there's anything that should be rock solid, it would be that.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Well, I'll just put an exclamation point on your point
that men should play football out in the weather. My
view is, listen, football fields are regulated. Size have to
be the exact same size. If you've got the football
field and you got a place for people to sit,
that's all that's needed to play the game. They could
play at Knippert Stadium. They could play football field at

(03:10):
like Elder High School. I mean, you know, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
If you're ever at the old old Brown Stadium. I
was ruined from like one year old. My dad would
take me to the old Cleveland Municipal Stadium, but you
had to pee in a trough. Yeah, oh that was yeah, okay, yeah,
you know, so remember those days and listen. Here's something
that Cleveland and Cincinnati have in common as it relates
to football. The great legacy of Paul Brown, who would
have been rolling in his grave seeing the pampered, the

(03:34):
pamper millionaires that are playing football these days, you know.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
Oh my god. And also the pampered millionaires who seem
to have all the resources that like, for example, we
have Dow Stadium upgrades here in the city of Cincinnati
from Clay Course Stadium, obligated by that terrible lease deal
that we approved. They put all the money into the booths,
the elite booths that none of the unwashed masters are
ever going to get into. So it's like, oh, we
need four hundred million dollars or two hundrellion dollars or whatever,

(03:57):
and you know the x amount of that at large
slice that is going to go to the private booths
where the elite gets to watch the games, and let's
face it, the unwashed masses.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
And Zip Champagne towards caviats they washed.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yeah, I'm sorry to get down that road. We had
a conversation early in the program this morning about it.
Let's talk about voter turnout, which was pathetic. Yeah, I mean,
I know it was an off cycle election. I fully
appreciate that, but you know, issue too, was there there
was a reason to go out and vote. And what
was it?

Speaker 1 (04:27):
Ten percent?

Speaker 3 (04:28):
It was just over ten percent. And this is funny
because we have what we call election night operations. It's
a room where we're running. We got a direct line
to each of the eighty eight county boards of elections.
We're pulling the numbers in from them every half hour.
We're validating those numbers, we're flashing them up on the website.
So we're in the in the mode, we're in the game.
And when we went over ten percent, everybody cheered, and

(04:49):
I was so excited that we went over ten percent,
and then I said, stop, team, just realize here that
we're celebrating that ninety percent didn't vote. I know, but listen,
when we a party, we don't want people to not come.
And so we want to see high voter turnout, and
so we were happy to see that it went over
ten percent because we weren't expecting much. I mean, the
total number was eight hundred and sixty eighty one hundred

(05:11):
and twenty four of our fellow Ohioans who bothered to
get off their butts and participate in one of the
three forms of voting we have either early voting for
a whole month, or absently voting where we literally mail
your ballot to your house for you, or election day voting.
Now again, it's hard to get people excited about what
are so called off year elections, these these even these

(05:33):
odd numbered years like twenty twenty five. Now contrast that,
though to the even numbered years twenty twenty record breaking
year twenty twenty two, we broke the record for agubernatorial election.
Last year in twenty twenty four, we broke the all
time record for early voting. So it's not that Ohioans
are not civically engaged. Ohioans care about voting. They're and

(05:53):
they're engaged in it, and they know that it's both
easy to vote and hard to cheat in our state.
And they show up in record numbers when they care.
The problem is getting people to care about local issues. Yeah,
local elections. People get excited about presidential elections. People get
excited about governor's elections, US senate races. It's hard to
get people excited about the mayor's race and the city

(06:15):
council race and a statewide ballot issue. And it's unfortunate
because listen, it matters who lives in the White House.
As a soldier, I can tell you this, I leave
for army duty next week, and as a reservist, it
matters who my commander in chief is. But who lives
in the White House is probably not as important in
your daily life as who works at the courthouse and
the schoolhouse and at city hall. And in twenty twenty

(06:37):
five and years like that, that's when we make those decisions.
So you know, get off your butt and go vote.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
Well, going back to the record year, the twenty twenty
four election, that was a record year for early voting.

Speaker 3 (06:47):
Correct and by the way, Republicans dominated early voting, which
is historically unusual. We were now again we can't tell
how people voted, but we could tell in the numbers
leading up to election day, Republicans had out voted Democrats
by over two hundred and fifty thousand, a quarter million.
So we started election day up by a quarter million.
No wonder we dominated on election Day. I hope that's

(07:10):
a lesson to my fellow Republicans to continue taking advantage
of all three good options. It's like if you're a
football coach, you can score points by running, passing, or kicking.
You'd be foolish to only use one of those three.
We need to make sure that people vote whichever way
is convenient for them. But they got to vote.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
Well, what percentage of eligible islands voted in the presidential election? Generally,
like if you had ten percent in Ohio for the
off cycle election, we just went through.

Speaker 3 (07:34):
Yeah, it's always north of fifty. I mean sometimes we
get into the sixties and seventies. I tell the story
about when I was serving in Iraq. This is go
back to two thousand and five. They had their first
real election. They'd had the BS elections where Saddam Hussein
got one hundred percent of the vote. Everybody knew that
it was nonsense, but I was there as a soldier
to see their first real election.

Speaker 1 (07:53):
So the purple fingers and.

Speaker 3 (07:54):
I tell the story. People were being threatened though these
Islamist groups from backed by Iran. We're telling people that
it was un Islamic to vote. That's a lie. They
were saying that if they saw that purple ink on
your finger, they would cut your finger off. And so
when those Iraqis held that purple finger in the air,
it might as well have been another finger. They were saying,
I'm not afraid of you. And so that election we
saw over seventy percent. I always joke that listen, nobody's

(08:17):
threatening to cut fingers off in a while. No, and
we almost never get over seventy percent. But again, it
shows you that free people can make a difference when
they go out to vote, and we need to not
take that right for granted here.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
Well, and to those people who are upset about the
six hundred million dollars just referred to, that was my retort,
which is, you know it isn't illegal. Necessarily. Elected officials
are always picking the winners and losers in terms of
where our taxpayers go. It's the ballot box is how
you hold them accountable.

Speaker 3 (08:45):
Every vote is determined by those who show up. And
I always laugh when I encounter protesters that don't vote,
like you're missing, like you're going to wave a picket sign,
you're gonna go out there and protest, but you're not
going to vote. You're missing the most important part of
the process. We're continue with Secretary of State frankle Rose
in studio. We'll talk a little bit about qualified community
and his run for State Auditor. Frank LeRose dot com

(09:09):
is where you can get the info about Frank.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
Maybe help them out. Oh look, there's a donate button
right up in the upper right end corner. Stick around
and'll be right back.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
First.

Speaker 2 (09:16):
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Speaker 3 (10:09):
This is fifty five KRC an iHeartRadio station.

Speaker 1 (10:13):
Made for this mountain. Exhibit.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
Timy the channel line first one to one forecast today,
partly cloudy day, warm, humid, late afternoon evening storms kicking
in probably around seven pm. They saying or forecasting anyway,
eighty five for the high today, overnight low sixty eight
with a few storms possible tomorrow in the South. We're
going to get some storms in the afternoon and evening
storms are likely starting around five pm, with wind gus

(10:38):
tornadoes and torrential downpours possibility.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
Eighty two to the high tomorrow overnight low sixty two.

Speaker 2 (10:43):
The rain I'll move out. We'll have a dry day
on Saturday, partly cloudy with the highest seventy three sixty three.
Right now, let's get a traffic update, Chuck.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
From the UC UP Triumphings Center.

Speaker 4 (10:52):
You see health hands Expert traumacare focusing non prevention, treating
injuries and supporting long term recovery and rehabilitation. Learn more
had UC help dot com. Highway traffic settling down a
bit all rex on inbound seventy four now clear, delayser
gone to northbound seventy five.

Speaker 1 (11:10):
You're off and on the brakes.

Speaker 4 (11:11):
From Buttermilk to Kyle's southbound slows a bit out of Lackland.
Chuck Ingram on fifty five krs the talk station.

Speaker 2 (11:20):
Sevent eighteen to fifty five KRCD talk station Happy Friday.
E Frank Lero, Secretary of State, Reach for now soon
to be State Auditor if he gets his way running
for State Auditor. Frank Lorose dot com where you find
Frank Frank. I got to ask you, man before we
get the qualified immunity in your comments on that. That's
an amendment that's being circulated ballot and issuative out there,
and I know you're responsible for the language and you

(11:40):
just approved the least the language of the heading.

Speaker 3 (11:43):
We approved it as one as one issue, so there's
a multi step process.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
I cheer. Is really called the ballot board.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
Okay, By way of explanation, I'm talking about pivoting over
to the amendment of the constitution that would remove property tax.
And I wanted to gauge your reaction on that because
I'm not sure how things would work out if it passed,
and I'm guessing it probably would if it's actually on
the ballot. So let's even take a step back. And
I kind of editorialized on this yesterday when I was

(12:10):
chairing the ballot board to look at it and approve
whether it should be one issue or separate issues on
the ballot. We're leaning too far into direct democracy right now.
In Ohio.

Speaker 3 (12:20):
We are a representative republic. It has served us well
for two hundred years. We do not want to govern
via constitutional amendment. Legislation should be done in the state
House and the state Senate. It should not be done
by constitutional amendment. Now, listen, I believe that property tax
is entirely too high. When your mortgage payment is more

(12:42):
than half of it is your property tax, something's wrong.

Speaker 2 (12:45):
Right.

Speaker 3 (12:46):
It feels like you are and how about seniors on
a fixed income. They've paid off that mortgage, they burned
that note already, and now it feels like they're renting
their property from the state government, from the local government.
Too high, property taxes are too high. This may not
be the way to fix it, though, right, and so
I think that things like putting a cap on it,
revisiting a thing called the homestead exemption that provides property

(13:09):
tax relief for seniors. And something I'm going to focus
on as the state auditor is who the heck's spending
all this money at the local level and are they
accountable and are they efficient? Really, the State Auditor's Office
could be o DOGE, Ohio Department of Government Efficiency. And
you know, if you're not happy with your county commissioners,
you know who to vote out. If you're not happy
with your city, you know who to vote out. But

(13:31):
how about the local housing authority, how about the planning commission?
How about the park district? Who do you hold accountable
for that kind of stuff?

Speaker 2 (13:39):
Well, and we keep voting to have those levies replaced
or increased or continuing resolution. I know it's on the
backs of the people who show up to vote, but
a large chunk of the property taxes is schools. Yeah,
and the Ohio Supreme Court declared two decades ago that
our funding mechanism for schools in the state of Ohio
is unconstitutional. And yet here we are ty years later,

(14:00):
still doing it the same way. Now someone had called
in because I'm a lawyer, this was a mystery to me,
and how it will be characterized as a complaint. Isn't
there some mechanism we could refuse to pay our property
taxes because the Supreme Court has declared it unconstitutional at
least that portion of taxes.

Speaker 3 (14:15):
That's like the sovereign citizens said, say, I don't need
a license plate. That doesn't work. But here's the thing
that what you're talking about is the thing from God.
I was a high school student when this happened, the
d'olf decision, and what it was based on is school facilities.
The first draft decision was all about you had these
little Appalachian schools with dirt floors, and then you had

(14:37):
these suburban schools that were beautiful, and there was disparity
between that. Honestly, that part has been largely fixed through
a thing that the Ohio state government calls the school
Facilities Commission. You noticed a lot of nice schools built
over the last few decades in Ohio.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
Maybe some of them too, nice.

Speaker 3 (14:54):
College university level stuff exactly, But that was the School
Facilities Commission. So we've largely fixed the disparity in school buildings.
Now what happens inside of those is still a problem, right,
And we know that your zip code has a lot
to do with what quality of schools you have. And
I think, honestly, this is why school choice is so important.

(15:14):
I think the school choice is the civil rights issue
of our era. Amen, no kid. If we believe in
a meritocracy, we do that any kid should be able
to grow up and make something of themselves and live
up to their God given potential. It has to start
with good schools for any kid. By the way, this
was one of our founding ideals when the Northwest Ordinance
created this thing that we now call Ohio. Right public

(15:38):
schools was a revolutionary idea that didn't exist, And so
you know, we need to have good schools and property
tax is currently part of the mix. Now here's the
problem too, though. If you get rid of property taxes,
are you relying entirely on state level taxation. You don't
have local taxation because guess what, the people that are
paying are making the decisions. So if you want to

(16:00):
have local control over your schools, you need to have
some level of local funding as well.

Speaker 2 (16:06):
Yeah, no question about it. It complicates matters just I mean,
beyond my comprehension, And sometimes I think, how would this
all work?

Speaker 3 (16:12):
You wouldn't design it this way. If you were going
to start today to design a state, you just wouldn't
build it this way. But we're stuck with some legacy
issues that we need to work through.

Speaker 2 (16:19):
Yeah, And on school choice, Indiana has had demonstrably great
luck with the school choice. They've expanded it, but it's
proven benefits for the students. The numbers have gone up,
the reading scores are now in the top ten, their
math stores are now in the top ten. And it
wasn't always that way. So I think we should embrace
that model and run with it.

Speaker 3 (16:38):
We've gone a long way on school choice, We've got
further to go. Yes we do, Yes, we do real quick.

Speaker 2 (16:43):
On qualified immunity, as qualified immunity men, and speaking of
ballot initiatives, the police do enjoy qualified immunity for the
job that they are doing.

Speaker 3 (16:52):
What's your take on the measure itself. Yeah, terrible idea.
Imagine anario where in a completely justifiable use of force,
so bad guy pulls a gun, police officer shoots bad guy,
bad guy dies, bad guy's family if this past could
then personally sue that police officer for pain and suffering

(17:15):
and lost wages and what even a completely justifiable situation.
And now nobody's going to want to be a police officer.
If your personal assets, your home, your personal wages could
be taken away to compensate some bad guy's family. It's
a crazy idea and it's something that really, if it
makes the ballot, Ohioan should roundly reject it in the

(17:36):
name of public safety and standing with police. Now, let
me be clear, ninety nine point nine percent of the
time the men and women in law enforcement do the
right thing. On that fraction of a percent. When they don't,
they'll face justice for it. They need to write and
their consequences. But qualified getting rid of qualified immunity is
a kooky idea.

Speaker 2 (17:55):
I agree completely. It's tough enough getting police who are
getting citizens to consider into law enforcement these days, and
for someone out there screaming go well, if there's nothing wrong,
it was justifiable shooting, then there's no way that could
be found liable. There's a thing called legal expenses, and
having to lawyer up and pay that lawyer four or
five hundred dollars for every hour work is an insurmountable

(18:16):
challenge in and of itself. Most people can't afford that
kind of money, and to foist that upon law enforcement officers,
it's just going to be a horrific thing. So, Frank LeRose,
a comment on your run for state Auditor, just a
real brief before we part company this morning.

Speaker 1 (18:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:29):
So the auditor has two job, catching crooks that engage
in public corruption. Anybody that would break the public trust
by taking tax dollars and put in their own pocket
needs to be in jail. That happens, unfortunately. I'll do
that as Auditor of state. The other thing is government efficiency.
The auditor can come into any of six thousand different
local and state government offices and find out if they're

(18:50):
running as smoothly as they should.

Speaker 1 (18:51):
Think about it.

Speaker 3 (18:52):
As Ohio doje, That's how I plan to use it
to shake the waste out of local and state government.
I'm excited about this.

Speaker 2 (18:59):
I've got quite a few listens out there right now
probably screaming the word medicaid at the rate because I
know we got some problems during the state of Highway.

Speaker 3 (19:05):
Row abuse all of that. Yeah, and our current auditor,
Keith Faber, has has gone a long way. He's done
an audit of the state medicaid system. But now it's
time that we implement some of those things. By the way,
this is why I'm excited for our next governor, who
I believe is going to be Vi Vake Ramaswami. I
think he's the man that's got the courage to actually
fix the stuff that the auditor finds wrong.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
Boy, he have the backing of the Ohio Republican Party too.
Was it vote sixty sixty to three or something like.

Speaker 1 (19:30):
That to tell you what, Yeah, he is a good man.

Speaker 3 (19:32):
You're seeing a consolidation early because he's a visionary leader
that actually has the courage to get things done. I
describe it as you know in the military, you've got
leaders you have to follow because they've got more rank.
This is that rare leader that you want to follow.
And I was the first one back him. Yeah, I
was the first one to back him. I'm out on
the campaign trail with him all the time, and I
think he's got the potential to be the most transformative

(19:55):
governor of our generation.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
I share your belief in that, I truly do. Frank
Lrose has been a real pleasure. Thanks for stopping in
the studio this morning, folks, stick around. Coming up, Tim Keller,
founder of the US Diabetes Carry is going to help
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