Latest / Brian Thomas / Keith Faber wants your vote for Ohio AG

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Keith Faber wants your vote for Ohio AG · Brian Thomas

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  Speaker 1: Eight oh five. Here a fifty five kr CE DE
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  Speaker 1: talk station. Happy Wednesday, Ryan Thomas, host to the fifty
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  Speaker 1: five KRC Morning Show. Welcoming back. It's been a little while.
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  Speaker 1: He's a early auditors date. Keith Faber. He's running for
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  Speaker 1: Ohio Attorney General. Welcome to the program, Keith Faberit it's
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  Speaker 1: great to have you on today.
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  Speaker 2: Thanks for having us. It's always great to be here.
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  Speaker 1: Let's start out. We we got the primary next week, and
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  Speaker 1: correct me if I'm wrong. I understand you're you're running
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  Speaker 1: unopposed for Ohio ag s or is that correct?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm a primary I have am no Republican opponent,
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  Speaker 2: so I will be the Republican nominee.
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  Speaker 1: Well, and that means you will be the next You'll
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  Speaker 1: be the next Ohio Attorney General, assuming that a train
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  Speaker 1: wreck doesn't happen in Ohio turns purple or blue in
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  Speaker 1: the next several months. But we'll wait and find out
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  Speaker 1: about that. Now, what is your motivation to run for
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  Speaker 1: Ohio Attorney General coming off the auditor's role, Keith Faber.
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  Speaker 2: Look, I am I am one of the most well
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  Speaker 2: prepared people to do this job. The attorney General's job
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  Speaker 2: is to keep Ohio and safe. They try and make
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  Speaker 2: Ohio affordable by stopping people who are trying to pray
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  Speaker 2: on Ohio consumers. It's about trying to keep crime and
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  Speaker 2: checked by supporting the Bureau Criminal Investigation and our prosecutors
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  Speaker 2: and charits across the state. At my time in the legislator,
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  Speaker 2: serving as Centate President and then serving as your state auditor,
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  Speaker 2: where we have a track record of now convicting over
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  Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty nine individuals who are lying, stealing,
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  Speaker 2: and cheating with state money. That's a good track record.
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  Speaker 2: It's prepared me well to be a to do.
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  Speaker 1: The job well and fraud in both actually outright theft
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  Speaker 1: is on everybody's minds these days, most notably mine. I
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  Speaker 1: talk about it all the time. I know the FBI
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  Speaker 1: just served, I guess rated twenty two Minnesota childcare centers
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  Speaker 1: involving a federal program, the Feeding our Futures program. And
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  Speaker 1: the problem seems to be that, you know, I heard
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  Speaker 1: you mentioned state dollars in state money, they'll be state
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  Speaker 1: tax payer dollars, but what are federal dollars? I mean,
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  Speaker 1: these are American taxpayer dollars in it seems to me
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  Speaker 1: that a federally funded program like Medicaid doesn't get on
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  Speaker 1: anybody's radar, and no one within us on a state
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  Speaker 1: level seems to care about fraud, waste, and abuse within
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  Speaker 1: federal programs. But that's an insult to every person who
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  Speaker 1: pays taxes. Your reaction, Yeah, let me just clarify.
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  Speaker 2: When I say state dollars, I mean dollars that come
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  Speaker 2: through inside the state of Ohio that are government money.
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  Speaker 2: We have jurisdiction in the Auditor's office over state, local,
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  Speaker 2: and federal dollars, and so we have convicted people for
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  Speaker 2: stealing all three. The fact of the matter with regard
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  Speaker 2: to these fraud issues, medicate our state dollars. Yes, the
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  Speaker 2: federal government reverses Ohio about sixty cents of a dollar
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  Speaker 2: that we spend, but we still have to spend a
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  Speaker 2: dollar to get reimburse sixty cents forty cents of that
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  Speaker 2: state dollars. That's why we take that very seriously. I
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  Speaker 2: just testified in front of the Joint Legislative Medicaid Committee,
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  Speaker 2: and we identified what could be up to four point
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  Speaker 2: four billion dollars of wasted abuse and over payments in
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  Speaker 2: the medicaid system. Just recently, add to that what we
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  Speaker 2: identified as potential fraud frankly inside Franklin County and the
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  Speaker 2: rest of the state. Eight in the home healthcare side
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  Speaker 2: of Medicaid, and you've got real money.
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  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, real money. And you know, mid the swirling
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  Speaker 1: debate over eliminating property tax and how people are always
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  Speaker 1: concerned about, oh my god, where's the money gonna come
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  Speaker 1: from to replace that? Some people are of the mind, well,
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  Speaker 1: if we didn't allow fraud or outright theft to occur,
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  Speaker 1: then we wouldn't have as big of a hole to
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  Speaker 1: fill up.
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  Speaker 2: Absolutely true. Since I've been auditor, we've identified roughly nine
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  Speaker 2: billion dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse. And you know,
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  Speaker 2: it started in the unemployment pandemic unemployment situation, which we
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  Speaker 2: tagged at just shy a seven billion, and then going
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  Speaker 2: on with conservative numbers, we've now identified Medicaid twice. One
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  Speaker 2: was about a billion, another was about a billion four
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  Speaker 2: and this last one could be up to four point
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  Speaker 2: four billion. It ranges from eight hundred million to four
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  Speaker 2: point four million. We used the conservative numbers in our
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  Speaker 2: in our chart. But the bottom line is all government.
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  Speaker 2: When you have a big government benefit program, we know
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  Speaker 2: there's fraud in that program, the government needs to take
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  Speaker 2: steps affirmively to try and chase out the fraud. In
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  Speaker 2: the Auditor's office, what we do is identify the potential,
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  Speaker 2: We identify the weakness for that fraud. It's on the
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  Speaker 2: agencies to do the beneficiary checks and put the controls
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  Speaker 2: in place that make it tough for people to cheat. Unfortunately,
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  Speaker 2: too many of these big government programs, it's not just
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  Speaker 2: tough to cheat, it's easy to cheat.
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  Speaker 1: And in your role as a HIO Attorney General, assuming
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  Speaker 1: and I think it's a safe assumption you're going to
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  Speaker 1: be there, will you go after these thieves if I
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  Speaker 1: can boil them down in a finite singular term, thieves.
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  Speaker 2: Every day and twice on Sunday, We're going to have
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  Speaker 2: a very aggressive program to go after those people who
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  Speaker 2: are taking advantage. By the way, the Attorney General is
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  Speaker 2: the entity that has the jurisdiction to prosecute medicaid fraud,
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  Speaker 2: and we will identify that aggressively, whether working with the auditor,
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  Speaker 2: working with Medicaid or the MUFUKO which is Medicaid Fraud
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  Speaker 2: Division inside the area, I think you need to find
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  Speaker 2: and make exc samples of people who are who are
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  Speaker 2: abusing public tax dollars. I've done that as auditor, we
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  Speaker 2: will continue to do that as Attorney General. But not
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  Speaker 2: just there. I mean, we've got scammers that are trying
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  Speaker 2: to take advantage of everybody. Every day, Ohiolans day doesn't
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  Speaker 2: go by that. I don't get five to ten people
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  Speaker 2: calling me pretending to want to put me on a
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  Speaker 2: Medicaid advantage program or a Medicare advantage program. I'm not Medicare,
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  Speaker 2: are Medicaid eligible, so I know those are all scam calls.
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  Speaker 2: And what they do is they try and target people
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  Speaker 2: who have had cell numbers like mine for twenty five
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  Speaker 2: years that haven't changed, and they think that you're a
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  Speaker 2: senior citizen and going to be gullible. We need to
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  Speaker 2: grab those people and help protect our senior citizens, help
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  Speaker 2: protect Ohiolands from cyber fraud.
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  Speaker 1: Well, you know, I love your statement. You're going to
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  Speaker 1: be very aggressive and prosecuting people. We'd like to see that,
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  Speaker 1: of course, like with a for example, in Minneapolis, apparently
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  Speaker 1: everybody in elected capacity knew the fraud and abuse and
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  Speaker 1: theft was going on, and it didn't lift a finger
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  Speaker 1: to do anything about it. You know, enter the Trump
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  Speaker 1: administration and the RAIDE yesterday and great. I don't reel
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  Speaker 1: a recall, and I don't want to be necessarily critical
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  Speaker 1: of Dave yeus, but I don't recall any high profile
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  Speaker 1: announcements about prosecuting people in Ohio for this widespread of
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  Speaker 1: fraud and theft that's going on. Are you do you
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  Speaker 1: think the current occupant is doing a decent job in
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  Speaker 1: prosecuting or is that something we need to ramp up on.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I think Dave is doing his best to try
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  Speaker 2: and prosecute medicaid fraud when he can. He has launched
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  Speaker 2: some fairly high profile prosecutions. But again, part of it
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  Speaker 2: is he has to get the information from the people
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  Speaker 2: inside the system. I was hyper critical of our former
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  Speaker 2: Medicaid director. Now the governor replaced the Medicaid director a
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  Speaker 2: couple of months ago, and the new guy seems to
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  Speaker 2: be cooperating with us a lot better, seems to be
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  Speaker 2: getting us information. For example, the legislature asks us to
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  Speaker 2: do a complete audit of the age bind it disabled population,
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  Speaker 2: which is supposed to be people that have very little
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  Speaker 2: or no assets inside the Medicaid system. Well, we did
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  Speaker 2: some snap shots and found that a bunch of those
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  Speaker 2: people had significant assets, including a number of millionaires. You
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  Speaker 2: should not be on those programs if you're not poor.
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  Speaker 2: And the bottom line is that we are trying to
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  Speaker 2: root that out. When we find those we send them
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  Speaker 2: over to Dave and or other people to prosecute. And
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  Speaker 2: I'll be honest, some local prosecutors will get relatively aggressive.
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  Speaker 2: They just had a successful prosecution of two ladies that
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  Speaker 2: were cheating in Columbus with regard to unemployment fraud and
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  Speaker 2: the millions of dollars. Now the local judge and Columbus
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  Speaker 2: sentenced them to four years nine months. I don't know
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  Speaker 2: that I think that's a great sentence for that that
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  Speaker 2: level of offense. I think they probably needed to go
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  Speaker 2: away a little longer. But the fact of the matter
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  Speaker 2: is that's a Columbus judge, and so we try and
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  Speaker 2: educate courts and judges and prosecutors as to how serious
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  Speaker 2: this kind of fraud is. In fact, Brian, I am
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  Speaker 2: the first state auditor in history to have personally tried
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  Speaker 2: a four day jury trial against a lady who was
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  Speaker 2: stealing from a regional transit authority. And I went up
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  Speaker 2: and did the trial myself. We convicted her a seven
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  Speaker 2: felonies and she was sentenced to twelve and a half
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  Speaker 2: years and stay prison. So that's the how seriously we
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  Speaker 2: take some of these things.
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  Speaker 1: Well, I know my listeners are happy to hear that.
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  Speaker 1: Now I'm pivoting over. I understand you have some that
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  Speaker 1: there are some local agencies that have been targeted by criminals.
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  Speaker 1: Is this some sort of cybercrime that you need to
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  Speaker 1: let my listeners know about.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think your listeners need to be aware
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  Speaker 2: of that in their own world as well. But certainly
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  Speaker 2: with regard to local governments, we are very very vigilant
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  Speaker 2: to try and stamp out cybercrime. We have had a
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  Speaker 2: big uptick and people either stealing in whitewashing checks. So
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  Speaker 2: make sure you're doing your check reconciliation every month on
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  Speaker 2: your checkbook because people are stealing checks out of the mailbox.
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  Speaker 2: I thought that crime had kind of gone away as
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  Speaker 2: being old tech, but they're doing it again. But what
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  Speaker 2: they're doing now is they're doing the electronic deposit. And
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  Speaker 2: our friends at the banks, who aren't always out to
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  Speaker 2: help consumers, our friends at the banks are trying to
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  Speaker 2: make electronic deposit have different rules than the old check
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  Speaker 2: rules with regard to how fast businesses and government and
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  Speaker 2: maybe even individuals have to report this stuff. So if
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  Speaker 2: you don't see it right away and you don't report it,
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  Speaker 2: you could be stuck with the loss.
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  Speaker 1: Wow.
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  Speaker 2: And so that's a big thing we're telling people with
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  Speaker 2: regard to local governments, they've got people pretending to be
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  Speaker 2: a vendor. And I always say, here's the best example.
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  Speaker 2: Somebody calls up and says, hey, township, I'm ABC Paving.
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  Speaker 2: I did work for you guys on your streets. I
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  Speaker 2: changed my bank from Fifth Third to Key Bank. Here's
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  Speaker 2: my new bank information, send my checkout, And all too
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  Speaker 2: many of our local governments are just saying okay, and
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  Speaker 2: we send the check to the new bank account and
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  Speaker 2: guess what that really wasn't ABC Paving. So we sent
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  Speaker 2: out guidance to local governments as to how to avoid
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  Speaker 2: that loss. And unfortunately, every single week I'm still seeing
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  Speaker 2: losses in the ten twenty thousand, one hundred thousand, and
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  Speaker 2: in one case in a school district in the Claremont
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  Speaker 2: County one point seven million. So this is real money
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  Speaker 2: that there's it's often taxpayers on the hook. So we're
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  Speaker 2: trying to stop that we're trying to educate and we're
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  Speaker 2: trying to prevent.
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  Speaker 1: Well like hearing that as well. Keith Faber And one
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  Speaker 1: more topic, do you go over with you the rise
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  Speaker 1: and cost of higher education? You're running for a Hio
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  Speaker 1: Attorney general. How does this factor into your role as
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  Speaker 1: a highway g.
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  Speaker 2: Well? As attorney general, you are the lawyer for all
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  Speaker 2: state colleges, universities, and state government, and so one of
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  Speaker 2: the things you need to do is have policies and
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  Speaker 2: procedures that candidly import improve access, and improve things that
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  Speaker 2: are going to make the colleges better. Part of that
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  Speaker 2: is getting rid of the DEI programs. Part of is
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  Speaker 2: enforcing state law with regard to the new laws with
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  Speaker 2: regard to the DEBI. It's also helping the universities be more
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  Speaker 2: efficient and affordable. Look, higher end has gotten too darn expensive,
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  Speaker 2: and we're not doing a lot in Ohio to try
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  Speaker 2: and lower that cost curve. We can do better. When
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  Speaker 2: I was Senate President, we passed then the Senate President's
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  Speaker 2: Challenge to reduce the cost of higher Education, and we
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  Speaker 2: reduce the average across Ohio between twelve and fifteen percent
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  Speaker 2: and the cost of education getting a degree. Unfortunately, higher
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  Speaker 2: education has creaked up since then, and we're still making
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  Speaker 2: it too darn expensive for too many Ohioans, but not
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  Speaker 2: every here's a big example. I'm going to tour Xaviors
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  Speaker 2: new med school today. One of the things we see
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  Speaker 2: in the cost of healthcare is the limitation and access
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  Speaker 2: to doctors and healthcare professionals, so that drives up costs
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  Speaker 2: and so Xavier is trying to fix that by educating
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  Speaker 2: more doctors. But if you just look at one of
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  Speaker 2: our flagship med schools in at Ohio State University MI
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  Speaker 2: alma mater, it is almost half of the people that
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  Speaker 2: come in and are accepted that med school are not
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  Speaker 2: from Ohio. Those people aren't going to stay in Ohio.
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  Speaker 2: And why are state tax dollars subsidizing a college or
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  Speaker 2: university to educate doctors for the rest of the world
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  Speaker 2: and the rest of the country. This is something that
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  Speaker 2: Ohio needs to be more vigilant of and we need
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  Speaker 2: to have more educated doctors, more educated professionals here in Ohio.
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  Speaker 1: It seem to be the universities love those out of
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  Speaker 1: state folks. As they pay out of state tuition, they
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  Speaker 1: don't get the benefit of a lower tuition rate, which
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  Speaker 1: is money for the universities.
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  Speaker 2: That's right, and the universities, like anybody, if you can,
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  Speaker 2: if you can get two dollars for what you can
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  Speaker 2: charge in state residents for dollars, try and figure out
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  Speaker 2: how to do that. But the reality is, as long
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  Speaker 2: as the state subs and glares are, they are there
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  Speaker 2: to subsidize the institutions. Ohioans have a right to expect
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  Speaker 2: that Ohio students are the ones being educated and that
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  Speaker 2: those people are coming back to the lower the costs
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  Speaker 2: for all Ohioans. And so the bottom line is, look,
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  Speaker 2: we need to reduce the overall costs of higher education,
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  Speaker 2: and one of the ways you do that is by
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  Speaker 2: getting rid of unnecessary, frivolous programs, getting rid of things
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  Speaker 2: that we're just increasing the cost. And so that's why
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  Speaker 2: we need to focus not only on butts in the seats,
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  Speaker 2: we need to focus on what those bucks are costing
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  Speaker 2: and who's paying for it.
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  Speaker 1: Keith favor Or running for a Hio Attorney General. You
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  Speaker 1: be voting for him in November unopposed in the primary
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  Speaker 1: next week. Keith has been a pleasure having you on.
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  Speaker 1: I like your ideas and thoughts on the roll and
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  Speaker 1: you're always welcome here on the fifty five krs Morning Show.
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  Speaker 1: As we get closer and closer November.
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  Speaker 2: Thanks Brian and everybody. Be safe out there and continue
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  Speaker 2: to support your law enforcement. They need your backing.
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  Speaker 1: Amen to that, my friend, you got no problem with