Husted, we have a (fraud) problem
Not sure bringing Ka$h and the Trump Gang to Ohio to highlight fraud is a great idea when vulnerable U.S. Sen. Jon Husted perpetuated the largest taxpayer fraud in Ohio history.
I know Jon Husted a little bit. He is sweating bullets. Why?
Because suddenly his party has made fraud a central theme of their national effort to retain power.
Why is Husted sweating over that?
Let me explain.
First, a little history.
When I won my House seat in 2006, I came to Columbus for an oreintation session. The Ohio Legislative Service Commission puts it on every year for new State Reps and Senators to go over how things work in the legislature.
Every year the House Speaker and Senate President comes to speak, welcoming in the new class. So the year I was elected, then-House Speaker Jon Husted came and spoke. And since I was a fresh-eyed, newly elected state Rep whose primary focus was school funding, I asked him about why the state hadn’t fixed the school funding system, despite 4 court rulings ordering them to do so.
He blathered about how much more money we’re spending on education overall. Like that was some consolation given that I knew that all the increase was clearly going to fund Charter Schools (the state’s unconstitutional private school tuition subsidy program was back then a very tiny portion of the state budget).
So I explained that other states had figured it out. I mentioned Iowa, Indiana and New Mexico. I asked why we couldn’t figure out systems like these other states. His response? “That’s what you’re here to do.”
“Great! Just don’t table my amendments,” I replied.
He, of course, always did that when he was in charge.
Interestingly, after this exchange another freshman State Rep named Matt Huffman (yes, that Matt Huffman) came up to me and asked several questions about school funding and the other states’ solutions. He was absolutely sincere then about learnig about those other states’ solutions.
Not so much anymore.
Fast forward a couple years. Now Democrats hold the gavel in the House. Husted is in the Senate. And he became the point man to undermine Gov. Ted Strickland’s Evidence Based Model of school funding. I was the point man who fixed it in the House.
During the course of the development of that model, Husted would frequently take potshots at the plan. Finally, one day, I popped off and said something to the effect of (couldn’t find the actual story, but I know it’s out there somewhere) “I think it’s rich that Sen. Husted, who spent the last decade perpetuating an unconstitutional school funding system would try to block the only serious effort to address the Ohio Supreme Court’s rulings.”
I remember colleagues who told me that language was too strong. Times have changed haven’t they?
Anyway, what I didn’t know then, but I do know now is that the reason Jon Husted was so opposed to the Evidence Based Model had nothing to do with the model itself. It was all about Charter Schools. And the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) — who spent 18 years collecting more than a billion dollars to “educate” children it could never prove it was actually educating.
State Auditor Keith Faber eventually hit ECOT with a claim that it illegally took $117 million in taxpayer money to “educate” kids it never had — just for 3 of its 18 school years. Make no mistake; ECOT did this every year it was in existence. In fact, the state caught them doing it in its first year of existence. Then-Auditor Jim Petro hit them with about a $2 million fine, along with this little chestnut:
““ECOT’s significant operating loss of $3,280,160 and net loss of $3,806,248 cause substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern. ECOT has an accumulated deficit of $3,806,248 and a net working capital deficit of $4,217,999. Note 17 describes management’s plans regarding these losses.”
Why did they continue to exist, then?
Jon Husted.
See, Jon Husted is the one person most responsbile for the exponential growth of Ohio Charter Schools — a group that even national charter school advocates call the Wild, Wild West — and ECOT’s survival. Don’t get me wrong. He had lots of help from his Republican colleagues over the last 3 decades.
But Husted is Patient Zero.
He remains the only person to have received an honorary ECOT diploma .
He is one of two Ohio politicians (all ECOT graduation speakers were Republicans — the last was Tucker Carlson, of all people) to speak at 2 ECOT graduations. And he was the person ECOT founder Bill Lager credited during these ceremonies for saving ECOT. In addition, he did the following:
Husted introduced the bill allowing for-profit charters in Ohio, exempting them from Public Records Law: http://lsc.state.oh.us/analyses/anh124.nsf/All%20House%20Bills%20and%20Resolutions/AE715CF0B91BA7F385256ACB00480285
The final version of bill turned into the Wild, Wild West bill opening the doors to all kinds of new charters and sponsors: http://lsc.state.oh.us/analyses/fnla124.nsf/All%20Bills%20and%20Resolutions/1FA59868B44C0C0385256CEC00555822
Husted was the chief sponsor of the original legislation vastly expanding Ohio’s Charter Schools.
Husted also only limited charter school growth for charters sponsored by Public School Districts, allowing privately run charters to grow unabated.
When I was in the House working on the Evidence Based Model during the Great Recession, I suggested we cut online school funding, like ECOT, by 70 percent because they don’t have buildings, buses, etc. that regular schools had. Husted insisted that we keep paying ECOT as much as paid brick and mortar schools.
Why did he do all this? Because his two biggest political patrons at the time were 1) David Brennan, who ran White Hat Management and was the state’s Charter School and Voucher Godfather as well as its biggest Republican political donor at the time and 2) Bill Lager, who ran ECOT.
Husted spent his Ohio legislative career creating carve outs for these guys’ schools, protecting them from oversight, and reaping the political benefits for him and his legislative colleagues. All while Ohio Charter Schools repeatedly failed kids. I mean, here’s a list of ECOT’s “accomplishments”:
According to state data from the 2016-2017 school year, every penny sent from a school district to ECOT — more than $100 million — came from a district that outperformed the online school by at least 4 of 13 state report card categories.
An astonishing 1 out of every 4 dollars sent to ECOT came from a district that outperformed ECOT on every comparable measure.
While ECOT did graduate large numbers of students, they failed to graduate about twice as many as they actually graduated.
The New York Times found that it produced more high school dropouts than any school in the nation.
Less than 3 percent of their graduates ever received a college degree.
Oh yeah, did I mention that Husted also created the unconstitutional EdChoice private school tuition subsidy program when he was House Speaker in 2005? Yeah.
He actually bragged about it last year … after it was ruled unconsitutional!
So the reason we have no idea how more than $5 billion of our tax dollars have been spent in private schools?
Jon Husted.
The reason ECOT was able to make off with upwards of $200-300 million over 18 years, despite failing kids and creating more dropouts than any other school in the country?
Jon Husted.
The reason we haven’t been able to sufficiently fund the educations of millions of Ohio children for 30 years?
Jon Husted.
The reason you’ve watched you property taxes skyrocket to make up for that failure?
Jon Husted.
And this isn’t even accounting the fact that he appeared as a witness in the state’s largest ever political bribery trial.
So when Ka$h and the Trump Gang showed up yesterday to brag about how they’ve allegedly rolled up $50 million in Medicaid fraud, and allowed Dave Yost — the other two-time ECOT speaker who famously gave them an excellence in auditing award during an ECOT graduation ceremony while they were ripping off millions from taxpayers — I rolled my eyes.
For if these clowns really wanted to uncover Ohio taxpayer fraud, all they have to do is look at the guy who’s sitting at J.D. Vance’s old Senate desk.
Ohioans aren’t stupid, though. We know what Jon Husted did to allow his buddies to get rich by defrauding taxpayers while hurting our school children and raising our property taxes.
Ka$h’s press conference ain’t covering up that shit.
So when national Republicans try to use fraud as a way to pivot off their horrible affordability messaging, running a guy in Ohio who created, perpetuated and protected the greatest taxpayer fraud in the state’s history, along with being knee-deep in the state’s largest bribery scandal is, um, a problem.
See why dude’s sweating bullets?
All I can say is, “Good. It’s about goddamn time.”