The dog days of summer are just around the corner and with them come new routines and costs for families: cleats for summer baseball ($54), weekly swimming lessons at the Y ($15), season passes to Kings Island ($120).
While families are busy spending their much-needed tax refund, there is another hidden fee that continues to eat away at our residents’ pocketbooks – the hidden tax of political corruption.
It seems you can’t open your Sunday issue of The Enquirer ($2) without seeing another headline about an Ohio politician caught stealing money from the public coffers. If it’s not a city councilman taking bribes for political favors, it’s a public official giving no-bid contracts to friends and family. These transgressions aren’t small matters of petty cash. In November, Cincinnati City Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld was charged with accepting $40,000 in bribes. That’s more than the average yearly salary of a Cincinnati resident ($31,000).
Just last month Jamie Schwartz, former campaign manager for Congressman Steve Chabot (OH-01), pleaded guilty to stealing $1.4 million from campaign funds. To be clear, he wasn’t accepting shady money from companies looking for favors, he was taking the hard-earned money from citizens in Cincinnati and Warren County.
When politicians ask the people they claim to represent for political donations, they are not asking for handouts. They are asking with the implicit promise that their money will be used to further political causes they believe in – from causes as conventional as building projects and road repairs to causes as venerable as protecting the sanctity of life and defending personal liberties.
Headlines like, “Campaign manager steals millions from campaign,” can be misleading. They make it seem as if the money was stolen from some magical pot that merely exists to fund campaigns, or even worse that it was stolen from the politician personally. The politicians involved don’t help to clarify either. When asked publicly about Schwartz’ theft, the attorney for Representative Chabot claimed the congressman was the victim of “political malfeasance.” That’s a fancy word for cooking the books.
But Chabot isn’t the victim, he didn’t personally finance a single dollar of his own campaign. The real victims of this scandal are the families he claims to represent, citizens who donated their hard-earned money ($2,900 max) with the trust it would be used to secure representation for their ideals and beliefs. Trust.
Stewardship of the public trust is the most important role of any elected official. There is no excuse for fraud in any personal, professional, or campaign finances. Putting your name on the ballot means saying, “The buck stops with me,” It doesn’t mean you get to be first in line to play victim. The average Ohio family knows when $50 goes missing from their bank account – politicians shouldn’t get a pass when over a million goes missing from theirs.
The hard truth is that corruption in our politics is getting worse, and the only way it is going to get better is if we the people begin holding our representatives accountable. No more benefit of the doubt when the public trust is broken. No more passes for not knowing what’s going on in your own books. Otherwise, when you are budgeting for that yearly family vacation ($4,580), be sure to budget a little extra for the next time a politician robs you.
We know the truth. The truth is when you see that headline, “City official gives sweetheart deal in exchange for cash,” it should read, “YOU just got robbed… again.” And when you hear that a campaign manager stole $1.4 million it means they stole:
- 93,000 swim lessons
- 25,000 pairs of baseball cleats
- 11,000 passes to the amusement park
- 700,000 newspapers
- 45 yearly salaries
- 482 max campaign donations
- Or 305 summer vacations.
And they stole it all from you.
Republican Brent Centers is mayor of Franklin, Ohio and a candidate for Ohio’s 1st Congressional District in 2022.
