Latest / Brian Thomas / AFP - We Need a Reset–Too Many Governments

Transcript

AFP - We Need a Reset–Too Many Governments · Brian Thomas

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I have a twenty eight ffty five krc DE talk station.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Happy Wednesday, one hour from now. Judge Ennen of Poulitano
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: preceded by Adam Hardach. He's a former CIA ops officer,
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: is going to give us the latest on the January
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: sixth pipe bombing investigation. Spicy details emerging on that. We'll
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: hear from him at eight to five in the meantime.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Welcome back Americans from Prosperities, Donovan and Eil and the shutdown.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: We've finally seen the light at the end of the
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: tunnel on that one. Donovan, welcome back. I understand you're
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: doing an empower you summinar tomorrow night. You're gonna get
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: seven pm. Ohio needs a reset too many governments. Donovan,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: good to heav you back on the show.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Ryan, always a pleasure to be with you. Thanks for
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: having me well.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: The marketing signs are going all over the place. New
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: York obviously is going to lose a lot of businesses
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: they have been. The business climate there is awful. There's
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: some ad campaigns going on. Texas is throwing out the
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: big welcome banner and here, Donovan, why can't we have
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: this Texas just voted to amend their constitution. The voters
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: approved three pro business tax amendments, saying there will be
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: no capital gains tax ever in the state of Texas.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: In the constitution, they also are going to have a
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: ban on security transaction taxes, as well as an outright
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: ban on a state and inheritance taxes. They don't have
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: any of those right now, but they've just enshrined in
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: the constitution they never will be. That is probably one
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: of the best marketing angles I've seen so far in
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: the effort to bring businesses in any given state. How
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: come we can't have that, Donovan, Well, I.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Think we have a lot of that, right, we're moving
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: in the right trajectory, but we're not. I think it's
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: right we're not marketing these things. And we also have
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: been doing a lot of this stuff in a very
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: incremental manner. You know. Just this past summer they moved
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Ohio to a flat two point seventy five percent income tax.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: That's huge, Brian. That's the lowest in the Midwest, second
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: lowest in the nation. But you're right, there's other states.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: As we've been on your show talking about before, Ohio
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: doesn't exist in a vacuum. We're in a fifty state compact,
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: these United States of America, and each one of these
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: states is competing for our jobs and opportunity and brightest minds.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: And we need that leadership in Columbus who's going to
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: fight hard to move Ohio in that bold direction, competing
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: with states like Texas, Tennessee and Florida that for years
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: have been eating our lunch.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Well, and you've talked about this on the Morning Show previously.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: I know Americans for Prosperity is you know, along the
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: lines of your seminar tomorrow night. And you know we
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: have so far too many local governments, thousands of townships, cities, boards, commissions,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: everybody's got their own offices. Everybody needs to be supported
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: and paid for. It is extremely complicated. What is the
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: vision that you see? How do we streamline this process
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: and bring about what Americans for Prosperity and you Donald
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Andannil are advocating for here in Ohio.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I'm really excited Dan Regnold and the empower
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: You team and just getting to go back go back
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: down there tomorrow night and be a part of that
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: with their crew. Appreciate you plugging that with us. And
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: that's what we're going to talk about. There's this we
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: think about big government a lot of times, Brian Wright,
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: as this monolithic creature that exists in Columbus or DC
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: right our state or nation's capital. But we're wanting to
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: begin to shine a light on and this isn't new.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: Every fifteen to twenty years or so, this comes back up,
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: and most recently it's occurred started to have come unsurfaced
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: itself through the property tax crisis. The problem here is
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: we have the fifth most political subdivisions in the country.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: What's the political subdivision? That's your township, city, school, village, county.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: All of them provide some services. Our argument is, though, Brian,
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: is there too dang much of them? And are we
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: actually experiencing because of how much local government we have?
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: Are we actually experiencing a big government crisis because of
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: the amount of government we have here in the state
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: of Ohio. And we're unique in that. Again, Pennsylvania, California, Illinois,
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: New York beat us into Ohio terms of the number
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: of political subdivisions. That's not a group of states you
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: want to be anytime you're with California, Illinois, New York,
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: sumpthing's wrong, Brian, and that's where we find ourselves today
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: here in Ohio.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Well, let us kind of generally contrast how those states
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: the you know, Ohio, what are the worst in your
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: list as you point out, with one of the fewest
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: government states. I mean, how does the how do those
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: states operate and provide the local attention? And I'm I'm
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: an advocate for you know, the closer a politician is
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: to me physically where they live and what they see,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: the closer they are to understand how the local issues
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: impact people locally. Nobody in DC has any concept of
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: how Joe Strecker lives in his neighborhood, and they can't
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: you know, provide benefits and ensure that his neighborhood is
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: being taken care of. They don't even know it exists.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: So that same kind of concept makes an argument for
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: no more local government is good. So how does the
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: fewer local governments address the needs of people locally and
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: will work out to everybody's benefit? Donovan?
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: Sure? Well, I put to a state like Florida when
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: it comes to school districts, right, they are the single
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: largest here in Ohio consumer of our property tax revenue. Right, example,
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: we have six hundred some school districts here in the
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: state of Ohio, each one of those run with by
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: a superintendent, a board of five school board members, assistant
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: superintendent's treasurer, assistant treasure a lot of administration, right that
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: doesn't even get to the front lines of education. State
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: like Florida, I think there's somewhere about ninety school districts.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: They run them by county.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: If we were to do a similar model, which is
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: an unprecedented there are reports and studies that have shown
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: how this can be done. There's off and on conversations
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: about doing that. Here in Ohio, we'd have eighty eight
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: school districts, give or take. We have one per county. Right.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: What we're talking about there is streamlining the delivery of services,
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: not moving it to Columbus or DC, but streamlining within
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: our counties to eliminate a lot of this overhead and
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: administrative burdens that exist that all costs tax dollars. By
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: the way, on the argument for your local elected officials
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: being accessible might push back to our friends who are
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: out there fighting the property tax fight right now alongside us,
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: who are also saying they want more local government. I
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: say to them, how many of your township trustees, county commissioners,
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: school board officials that you've gone to and complained about
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: your property taxes, how many of them have actually done
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: something to lower that burden for you. Just because these
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: folks are accessible, Brian, doesn't mean they're actually, you know,
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: conservative and delivering the kind of efficiencies we want out
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: of government. There's some things we can do by consolidating,
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: and that's what's at the heart of this conversation.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: Well, and you know, for whatever reason, I'm thinking back
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: to Sheriff Neil, but he was really big into developing
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: the concept of shared services among the region's law enforcement
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: officers for the purposes of efficiency. If you have one
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: dive team that is accessible for all of the various
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: police departments, they know what to do, how to do it,
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: they're efficient at it, and they share that service with
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: the others. That relieves the other police departments from having
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: an obligation of having a well a dive unit. So
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: that makes perfect sense. So this would extreme streamline efficiencies
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: in school government. You have fewer school board members, you
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: have fewer schools. It could deal with some of the
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: perhaps overcrowding or undercrowding issues, more efficiently managed property. I
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: see a lot of pluses for this, and see what
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: you say to see how you react to this. Going
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: back to the whole property tax, if you end up
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: eliminating property tax in Ohio, and I know that's a
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: train wreck for a lot of people, but if you
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: had county wide school boards, allocating the resources to a
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: single school board would be a damn sight easier than
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: allocating the resources to what you said, six hundred different
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: ones in the state of Ohio. If it's going to
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: be centrally distributed in terms of the whatever revenue is
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: being used to fund the schools.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and I think you know centralization. You want
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: to be careful with that, right, Yeah. You don't want
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: to move everything entirely to Columbus or everything entirely to Washington,
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: d C. But we have to find a balance, and
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: right now the imbalance exists with the amount that we have.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: When I lived in Franklin County near Columbus, the community
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: I lived in, I paid taxes. I filed income taxes
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: brian to six different entities. Columbus City of Reynoldsburg, a
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: joint a JED, a district that we had a special
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: taxing district that we had there probably not a jed
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: a special taxing district, the school district, the state of Ohio,
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: and the federal income taxes. On top of that, I
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: had property taxes. And when you look at your property
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: tax bill, which more and more that's becoming transparent, you're paying,
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: you know, for a dozen more levies that go to
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: all these different political subdivisions, all in a lot of ways,
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: right Brian, services we want I like police showing up
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: when my when there's an emergency. I like fire if
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: there's an issue with my home. I want to I
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: want to have safe roads to drive on, and I
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: want to know that you know, if I choose to
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: send my kid to a public school, that it's going
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: to be a good education. But the challenge here is
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: we have so many of these entities taking a slice
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: out of our pocketbook. That's at the heart of why
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: we are experiencing the property tax crisis we're experiencing right now.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: So many of these political subdivisions exist, and there are
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: some opportunities through consolidation, shared services, and other collaborative agreements
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: to bring that number down and ultimately that delivers relief
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: to Ohioans and creates a more economic prosperous future so
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: that states like Texas, Tennessee, and Florida stop taking our
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: jobs and opportunity and they come here to the economic
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: engine of the Midwest.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: All right, assuming this concept is embraced and we are
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: convinced that it's the right way to go, doesn't this
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: require each of these individual political subdivisions to be willing
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: to give up their control. A lot of people view
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: these as their own independent fiefdoms, like police departments. I'm
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: not working with them, and this is mine. You can't
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: trot on my neighborhood, you know, berber Berber. There's a
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: lot of that going on, and politicians typically act like that.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: So this is going to require the relinquishment of control
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: by these various entities.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: What have you ever known a politician or an elected official,
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: no matter how small their political government is, to let
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: it go. No, it's near impossible. The last time. Well,
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: here's the thing this I mentioned earlier in the segment.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: This isn't a new concept.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: If you you might remember some of your listeners might
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: remember back in two thousand and nine, we experienced an
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: economic crisis, Right, two thousand nine experience an economic crisis.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: John Kasik came in as governor, fixed the state budget,
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: and one of the big conversations at that time was
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: what we were going to do about all these political
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: subdivisions in Ohio. Reports were put out. Buckeye Institute Greg
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: Laws and put out a great report talking about this.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: The governor had an Office of Transformation on that Auditor
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: of State Devio's who I was working for at the time,
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: we went out and talked about skis the Ohio and
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: shared services. The problem, though, Brian, you hit on it.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: The problem is the fiefdoms and the the these folks
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: who are out there who have their special district or
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: their governmental entity, and just like Congress, you love your congressman,
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: but you hate Congress. People love their local government, but
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: they hate the cost of it. We've got to come
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: to a reconciliation here because it's bleeding us dry. And
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: that's you know, the flag and banner we're raising out
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: there is that, if you you know, underlying this property
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: tax crisis is a big government problem and it's not
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: entirely in Columbus right now. It's in the villages, townships,
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: school districts, and counties that your your local government, and
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: we need folks to get engaged and start start asking
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: for more accountability there.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: Well for those desirous of political expedients. Again, if we
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: embrace this concept and the majority of people are all
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: in favor of it, this isn't as if Columbus could
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: pass some piece of legislation that would streamline all these
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: various years ditions. They would have to relinquish that control themselves,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: or the local voters would have to say we here,
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: let's say I live in Simms Township, we agree to
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: merge with Loveland as a political entity or subvision or
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: something along those lines. It would require local consent.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: Well, for instances of villages that local consent is already available.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: You can go and get a small fraction of signatures,
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: put it on the ballot and let the voters vote
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: on that. Wouldn't that be novel Brian instead of and
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: that exists today. But we don't see that happening across
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: the state of Ohio because who wants to be that
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: parie in their community? Right going to you're going to
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: abolish the village. So there's a lot at play. I
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: think what we need to do is regionalize some of
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: this stuff. So it's hard to get it done in
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: Columbus because there are literally tens of thousands of paid lobbyists.
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: If the state would have passed alat to day abolishing
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: villages or consolidating schools, the outcry and pressure campaign from
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: that would be unbearable, I think. But I think you
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: regional that you allow folks local in their communities to
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: make some of these decisions. I think there's some opportunities reform.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: We've seen though that the voluntary disarmament doesn't seem to
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: be working because those options are available today, but it's
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: not happening.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, not in my backyard. Oh Donovan, you've got a
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: tough road ho on this one. But that's what you're
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: going to be talking about. Tomorrow night. Seven PM's a
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: start time. You can show up live three hundred Great Oaks,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: drive the Empower Youth se in our studio or log
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: in from the comfort of your own home. It's empower
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: Youamerica dot org. Check out what Donovan has to say,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: and also here from Eric Conroy, who will be discussing
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: the time he spent in the CIA as well as
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: his run for Congress. They do this what they call
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: take twenty twenty minutes worth of information from him, along
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: with Donovan and the Americans for Prosperity. Donovan, hope you
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: have a well attended seminar, and I hope you flush
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: out some of these ideas and maybe we'll see some
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: direction or some positive movements in this direction. But it's
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: going to take some work at a grassroots level. Absolutely
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: always does. Thanks Brian, I appreciate it. Thank you, Donald n'neill.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Empower Youamerica dot org. And of course this conversation and
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: the details will be at fifty five kr SE dot
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: com right now, it's seven forty three and fifty five
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: krs the talk station, Peter Shabia, Keller Williams seven hit