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More at OHEA.org The candidates for state treasurer this weekend.

The state of Ohio.

Welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Karen Kasler.

We're concluding a month of conversations with the candidates for the four executive offices besides governor.

You can find those previous interviews with the candidates for secretary of state, attorney general and auditor in our archive at State News.

This week, the candidates for state treasurer, in alphabetical order, here's Republican candidate Jay Edwards, a former state representative from southeast Ohio.

here.

Do you think Robert Sprague has done a good job in this office?

I do, I think Robert's done a great job.

You know, one of the lasting things that Robert got done that I really love is he started a new link deposit program for first time homebuyers.

You're seeing statistics around the country right now that that number keeps getting.

People keep getting older and older by the time they buy their first home.

That's kind of a legacy thing that Robert started, that we want to carry on as what he's done and the states in a great investment spot right now.

So that's that's the key metric when you're looking at what a state treasurer does.

I think Robert's done a great job.

You do plan to expand and build on the Ohio checkbook?

Yes.

I would like to see the Ohio checkbook come back.

It was obviously a creation of Josh Mandel from over a decade ago.

I want to see that site simplified.

You know, I want to see a farmer in northwest Ohio or a mechanic in southeast Ohio be able to log in.

See the way the state gets their revenue and see the way the state spends their revenue.

And I think that should be in very simplistic forms.

It's funny, Karen, because as I'm traveling and talking and I'm bringing up farmers and mechanics and and people all over the state, I'm also talking to a lot of journalists who say, we really wish we had a better access to the high checkbook, and it was simplified so that we could do better reporting on things.

And so, you know, we want to we want to see that through.

And also we think local government should be a part of the high checkbook.

The state of Ohio is now accepting cryptocurrency for business filings and fees.

Should the state expand that and accept crypto for other payments?

Yeah, that's something working through the legislature right now.

I know Steve, Dmitri, I believe, has got a bill on this.

He's working on it.

The one thing I want to be cautious of is when it comes to where a custodian of the retirement accounts and we have board appointment authority.

I don't want to see the retirement accounts going down, gambling with retirees money.

It comes with a deep understanding.

It's not the government's money.

It's not the state's money.

That's the retirees money.

We want to make sure we're not gambling with the retirees money.

If the legislature decides they want to start doing things on on the state investment side as it retains to crypto and accepting payments, that's something the legislature can work out, and we'll definitely see through it and make sure it makes sure it's fit for Ohio.

Speaking of that, one of the things that the treasurer does appoint investment experts.

Yes, the boards of the state's five pension systems, one of the pension systems in particular, state Teachers Retirement System, has been a minefield over the last couple of years.

How will you navigate that?

I am going to make sure, you know, this is one thing.

I'm very fortunate in this race.

We've gotten endorsements from people you wouldn't you wouldn't necessarily think we'd get endorsements by.

And let me give you an example.

I got the endorsement from the teachers union here in Ohio, the Ohio Education Association, first statewide Republican since 2002, since Jim Petro in 2002 to get the endorsement.

It wasn't because of school policy.

It wasn't because of anything it has to do with the fact of they looked at both candidates.

They thought, who can protect our retirees money the best?

And I think that's us.

What the state did here recently by taking the rights of the the elections away from the from the retirees and selecting who they want on the boards, I think is wrong.

We'll deal with that however the court deems fit.

The court that's in a court case right now.

But however, whatever the case may be, even before that, the treasure has an appointment authority to that board.

I think it's it's uncalled for by the fact that the state teacher retirement system did not pay out a cost of living adjustment for five years without an explanation to those retired teachers.

Sometimes that might be the right financial mechanism in place, might be the right the right pathway to to make sure those funds are solvent and are doing things they need to be doing.

I think an explanation is need to be given.

We want transparency in our pension systems.

We want to make sure it comes with a deep understanding that that is the retirees money.

It's not the government's money.

We want to protect that.

And I'm so fortunate to have teachers and retired teachers on my side in this race.

You have said that you will direct more of the state's deposits and link deposit programs toward community banks and credit unions.

Yes.

Your opponent has said that he will invest in community banks by not making any new investment in Israel or other foreign countries.

Are you planning not to invest in other countries, or is that more about Wall Street banks when it comes to this?

Yes.

So this is a you know, what gets lost.

I see a lot of this on social media.

I try to stay off social media.

It's political silly season here in Ohio.

But when you see on social media, I think there's a lot of people that think as it pertains to Israel bonds, that we just give money to the to the state of Israel.

That's not how it works.

It's a bond.

We have a we get a return on that investment.

I can tell you we've done that for about 30 years here in Ohio.

That is something we're going to take a look at.

We're not going to make this political.

We're not going to make this we're not make any vestment political.

We get a return.

It's one of the highest returning yielding bonds the state carries as our Israeli bonds, if that makes sense.

If we can get a better percentage somewhere else, we'll take we're going to take a look at it, but we're not going to, for political reasons, say we're not going to make those investments.

If we are getting a huge return on those investments.

It's not the state giving money to some other country.

We get a return on that investment.

And so far it's been a very, very good return for the state.

And that's looking out for taxpayers here in Ohio.

Now, when you talk about your concerns about Wall Street banks, if those investments are the best return for the state over community banks, would you do that 100%?

We're going to we want the best return that we could possibly get.

But it's also a mechanism of how you measure that return if you're giving money to the big national banks JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, US Bank, and that money isn't also being leveraged inside the state of Ohio, then you're not getting a full return on that, on that investment.

If you give money to Hawking Valley Bank in Athens or Benton County National Bank in Benton County, and that leads to a new loan for a first time home buyer, or leads to a new loan for a coffee shop in town, or leads to a new loan to expand a business in town by 30 or 40 jobs.

That is a much bigger return to the state of Ohio, and I think it's something that's got to be taken into account.

You've just said that you will not prioritize politics over investments in this.

How do you do that?

How do you keep Partizan politics out of this when you are a Partizan elected official?

Yeah.

You know, I was I was the chair of the finance committee, which I think makes me very qualified for this position.

I know the state budget very, very well.

We keep politics out.

Elections are elections.

Once you win an election, you have a duty and a responsibility to carry out the priorities of the state of Ohio.

That's what we're going to do with State Treasurer.

We're not going to look at things to a political lens.

We're going to look at things of what is the best return for Ohio taxpayers, and how do we keep as much of Ohio's money in Ohio as we possibly can?

You mentioned your time on the House Finance Committee, which you were on the House Finance Committee the entire time you were in the legislature.

You were the chair for your last term, not the first.

Not in my freshman term, but I was on there for six years, for six years.

So you've talked about eliminating waste, fraud and abuse.

Yes.

So you with your work, with the budget, have seen how much waste, fraud and abuse potentially there is.

Is there as much waste, fraud and abuse as Republicans have claimed, or is it really not that big a problem?

I think there is some waste, fraud and abuse, and I think it is a bigger problem than most people realize.

You know, how much we don't really know.

And a lot of this is a mechanism.

And when as it pertains to the legislature where we allocate funds to Medicaid, we allocate funds to children and youth and youth services.

We have advocate, we allocate funds to these organizations, and then they take it and do what they can, and they're pushing us during the budget process for the money that they need.

I think what you're going to see now is more of the legislator taking a role of looking into those fine details, and maybe the Ohio checkbook can be a part of that process of helping people look into these systems.

One thing that you and your opponent do agree on is an opposition of the use of unclaimed funds for the Cleveland Browns Dome stadium project in Park.

Now, that went through in the last budget, you were not a part of that budget.

You had already left the legislature by then.

You said.

I mean, what I'm wondering here is how do you improve the process of getting unclaimed funds so that they don't go to projects unclaimed funds?

Again, even though it's not technically in the budget, it's not part of the general revenue fund.

It does.

It is taxpayer money.

It belongs to the people, the people that are out there.

So I think that, you know, unclaimed funds right now sits under the Department of Commerce.

I talk to people all the time that's trying to get a check for $7.

And it takes, you know, two weeks, three weeks to be able to do it as well as a lot of paperwork.

I would like to see unclaimed funds moved on to the treasurer's office and us take a very proactive approach of getting that money returned to who it belongs to.

And you know, maybe if we did that, then maybe the legislature wouldn't raise those funds and pay for stadiums.

And it wasn't just $600 million to the Cleveland Browns.

It was 1.7 billion to stadiums around the state professional sports teams.

And I think in the midst of property tax increases and electric bill increases and cost of living increases that we're seeing right now, that was a slap in the face to Ohioans.

It's something that shouldn't have been done.

I do have to ask, you got campaign donations from the owners of the Cleveland Browns.

Jimmy and D has one.

Yeah, they're traditional Republican donors here in Ohio.

You know, I think it speaks volumes to the fact that I hadn't stopped me from talking about how bad of an investment this was for the state of Ohio.

And I could tell you, they tried to do this when I was a freshman, I believe freshman lawmaker right here at the Columbus Crew Stadium.

And Jay Edwards voted against that as well, because I didn't see it was the best use of taxpayer money for the people I was representing in Appalachia.

I still agree with that today.

I don't think it's right.

And you got this problem going on not just with the state legislature.

I think the city of Columbus just doled out a bunch of money for a professional women's soccer stadium right here in Columbus, as well as trying to raise taxes to pay for that off of ticket sales.

So it's it's kind of ridiculous what we're seeing right now.

Again, I'm more represent the blue collar working class people out there.

People are struggling.

And that's the people I really want to fight for.

On that note, you've signed the petition to abolish property taxes in Ohio.

You your opponent says if property taxes are abolished, that will destroy the state's ability to have debt.

And that, quote, you're just trying to give everybody candy right now without the impact that it would have on the rest of Ohio.

So how can you advocate for the abolishment of property tax?

Well, no, I didn't advocate for the abolishment of property taxes.

I signed the petition.

I have to put it on the ballot to see, I think when you got the legislature giving $600 million to build football stadiums, it makes a pretty hard argument to hold their feet to the fire, to make sure they're going to do something on property taxes, and I think something needs to be done about it.

You know, the state has done a little bit since that.

I don't think they would have unless this initiative was out there.

I think this initiative is holding their feet to the fire.

And I think giving people the option to see what they want to do on property taxes.

We live in a democracy.

Let's let people decide what they want to see on property taxes.

Do you personally want to see the abolishment of property taxes?

I wouldn't say that.

I think that there needs to be a plan in place, and I think the people that are pushing that right now have another year to get their signatures before they're planning to put it on the November ballot.

We'll see what the legislature does between now and next year.

There's another ballot issue potentially on data centers.

So I want to ask you, your opponent says that you've supported data center projects and defended using state dollars to incentivize them.

What are your thoughts on data centers?

Yeah, I'm not sure how I support a data centers.

Data centers need to pay their own way.

We need, you know, these are multi-trillion dollar companies from from the from the coasts that are wanting to come here, suck up our power, suck up our water resources.

They want tax incentives.

A lot of communities don't want them.

They're taking up farm ground.

I think that they should only go in communities that want them.

They should pay for their own electricity source, need to have mechanisms in place to check the water supply.

And you know, I'm not a I'm not a big data center guy.

Again, I'm more of the blue collar, working, working class people side.

And, you know, there are some jobs associated there that we do care about, but they got to go in communities that want them.

And finally, you survived a tough primary that kind of split the Republican Party.

You were endorsed by Vice President JD Vance and Senator Bernie Marino, not endorsed by Vivek Ramaswami, though he did appear at some events where you were at.

Is the party united now?

Yes, the party is very united.

And, you know, it's there was relationships there like there is in politics, like there is in life.

People have relationships.

They go with those relationships, people they knew previously.

That's fine.

We're all we're all together.

We're all rowing in the same boat right now.

And we're we're eight days out from seven days out from an election one week away.

And, you know, we're hoping to have a big turnout.

I hope people show up to vote.

now, the Democratic candidate for treasurer, Seth Walsh, a Cincinnati city Council member.

So you said that you've promised to be transparent.

Do you think the office is not transparent now?

I think any elected official, that's something you should be thinking about, is how can you continue to be transparent and continue to push the boundaries on transparency?

I would say with the current office and the way it's set up, it needs some modernization, frankly, trying to find any information there.

It's not the people that are keeping the information, but they're not.

They're certainly not making it easy.

We're in 2026.

It's a lot easier to be able to get things modernized, put them online, start, kind of give a fresh set of eyes to how you can put stuff out there.

The Treasurer's office inherently is very wonky.

It has a lot of information, a lot of data, a lot of very personal data that we have to be able to encrypt and protect.

But I think there's always ways you can just keep moving that ball forward on it.

I want to ask you about some things specifically in that office, for instance, the Ohio checkbook, which is something that's operated out of that office.

Is that one of these things that you think is kind of clunky and wonky?

Well, I think it's a I think that's been a really fantastic step toward transparency from the state treasurer's office.

In fact, it's one of the things I hear from people who do know about the state treasurer's office.

They love it and they want to keep keep that going.

And I absolutely agree with that.

You know, the more we can be open to what our financials finances look like, that is the secret to success for any corporation in any government.

And so I would say for that one, it's a great roadmap for how we can continue to just modernize and be on the right step forward when it comes to the office.

You've said you won't make new investments in the State of Israel or any other country.

You will instead reinvest Ohio's funds and community banks.

Isn't the goal, though, to get the best return for the state's money?

And if that is the best return for the state's money to invest in Israel or somewhere else, wouldn't you want to be seeking to do that?

Well, I think investments and what the return looks like for the state of Ohio comes in a lot of different facets.

The reality on our vestments is that they're pretty heavily regulated by the state legislature in terms of what you can do and what you can't do.

And so you're going to get a pretty similar return based on all the options that exist across the board, because we try to make them fairly low risk ultimately.

So I think we can get the biggest bang for our buck is when we can reinvest in our communities, where we can get more people into housing, that they can buy and own their own home, where we can get people to start their own business and get more people employed in businesses, because then their turn on that investment for Ohio is not just the actual percentage that we're yielding off of it, but it's also now people living in Ohio, people investing in Ohio have more money coming into the state of Ohio.

And so I would argue that in many ways, if you do this right, you can have a bigger investment in return.

Does this mean that you would divest in Ohio's overseas investments in Israel or in other countries?

The state treasurer has no power or authority to do that, and those are contracts that exist already.

And we're not going to be on winding any current contracts.

As we look forward, it's about how we want to choose to make those investments.

And my entire career, my entire pathway in life has been about how we can grow communities.

So I want to make sure that the money we do have to invest is being invested in a way that's strategic to grow our communities again.

Now, one of the other things that the treasurer does is appoints investment experts to the boards of the state's five pension systems.

You've talked about working with pensions as you have in the past, and you say specifically that you'll protect teachers retirement security, quote, by appointing qualified, independent individuals to the pension boards, the State Teachers Retirement System Board, and the whole system in general has been a minefield the last couple of years.

How will you navigate that?

Well, one of the one of the first things is making sure that we're actually representing the teachers on there.

There's so much legislation happening right now around trying to get rid of active and retirees rights to be represented on the board.

And look, I've sat on pensions, so I see the tension that exists within the pension boards.

And and it's designed that way because you have those who are receiving it, those who are going to hopefully receive it in the future.

And then you have the electeds who have the fiduciary responsibility to the public.

It's a really critical component to it.

Your spot on, though, it's been a minefield.

And how do you navigate that?

Well, you find investment experts, but then you also ask them about where their goals and priorities are and how does that align, and making sure we can get to the future.

Not everybody is aligned, believe it or not, on what a healthy and successful pension looks like.

And so for me, it's about making sure that we can be protecting our teachers not only now, but in the future.

And it's about making sure that that is at the forefront of every investment decision we are making for it.

Because a pension that is good today, but not solvent in 50 years is a failure on our part today.

And the treasurer goes to the Board of Deposit, a member of the Board of Deposit Board.

Would you be going to those meetings?

That's the plan.

Yeah.

There have been treasures who have chosen not to go to those meetings.

Yeah.

I mean, the plan is to be going.

I mean, I plan to be a full time treasurer and to be involved here.

It's one of the things that's made me successful throughout my career is you get involved, you get your hands dirty, you learn, you get, and you show up and really dive in and dig in and know the numbers.

One of the things that you and your opponent do agree on is opposing the use of unclaimed funds for the Cleveland Browns Stadium, the Dome Stadium project in Brook Park.

You've said you want to improve the process of reuniting unclaimed funds with their owners before that money is diverted to projects benefiting billionaires.

That's part of your quote there.

How would you do that?

Well, I mean, back to the question about transparency.

It's a modernization.

So if you haven't checked, I highly encourage you to check if you have on claim funds.

The process, though is just it's really complicated and messy.

It is.

And I liken it to buying a new car.

Five years ago, I remember trying to buy a new car and I would be like, I don't want to spend the next six hours of my life just filling out paperwork to be able to get the car right.

That's always the experience we had.

Well, I recently bought a new car in the last couple of years and I was shocked.

It's completely modernized.

You come in, it takes 20 minutes now to be able to do what used to be six hours of paperwork.

And I would say that's the equivalent of unclaimed funds.

If you have money that's in there right now, you have to ultimately print it off, find a notary, send it in and hope it gets it, gets processed, finds its way back to you.

There's ways that we can modernize that.

That is, it got to be one of the easiest things that we can do for any elected right now.

And that's that's what I'm talking about with transparency, but also just the modernization of making it easier to reunite.

But then on top of that, I do think that there's a responsibility to say to people.

Hey, did you know you have unclaimed funds?

Because the only way that I knew, I had $3,000 in unclaimed funds from property taxes and insurance that just were escrow and never made it back to me, was because a former mayor of Cincinnati was just bored and typed in all the council members names and unclaimed funds and found that had $3,000 and reached out to me.

So did you know you have this?

I never even thought to look.

And I think in a lot of cases, people don't even know that they have unclaimed funds with the process even exists.

And again, we see so much marketing that exists these days.

You're telling me that we can't get proactive and saying, hey, you have unclaimed funds out here, and here's the process, and then make the process easy to actually go through.

The state of Ohio is now accepting cryptocurrency for business filings and fees, should the state accept crypto for other payments?

I'm not in favor of crypto.

I think it is a very high risk currency that we in regulated currency, that I don't think we should be invested in that and we should not be using that as a state of Ohio.

And that's my personal opinion on it.

When you talk about data centers, you say you oppose incentives, tax incentives for data centers.

Can the treasurer can't really do anything about that though, right?

No.

But I think one of the critical things for any elected official you're going to elect, you have to make sure that they align with your morals and what your goals and values are.

And so I like to talk is I mean, you're finding many of our quotes, we're pretty public about our opinion on a lot of things across the board.

And the reason why is because I think the average person wouldn't tell you what the policies are of the state Treasurer's office, but they want to make sure that they're electing someone they can trust, and hiding my opinion on topics that people care about, I think doesn't build trust.

And so I'm very clear about where my stance is, even when my stance doesn't necessarily have an impact.

And I don't have a vote and it doesn't run through the treasurer's office.

But I think it's important to speak out and talk about it.

Your opponent was on the House Finance Committee all six years that he was in the legislature, and he was the chair of the House Finance Committee for his final turn term.

In that role, he worked on and pushed through the state budget.

Of course.

How does your experience on Cincinnati City Council stack up against his experience in dealing with a budget?

When you're talking about dealing with billions of dollars of the state's hundreds of billions of dollars in states money?

Well, we're talking about investing money.

We're not talking about a budget to money.

When you're talking about a budget we do at Cincinnati City Council, we do billions of dollars in budgeting as well.

You're choosing how you can fund the State Department's that need to continue to operate, fund the state police, etc., and those are line items that you're making the decision on.

When you're talking about investment, you're talking about how do who do we partner with that we can trust is going to invest this money to actually get a return for us and use this money in a really effective way, at which point I would argue that I actually have more experience than my opponent in this.

I come from an experience of working in community development, where I had to work with those same investment groups on how they deployed the money, and I know how they how some groups got the money deployed and how some groups found ways to make sure the money do not get deployed.

And being able to use that experience, as well as having served on a pension and had to run a nonprofit that had over $30 million in assets that we were then investing to make sure that we were getting a return so that we could keep our accounts solvent.

Those are really critical skills, and yes, it scales up.

I don't think anybody in the state has had the experience of the investment level that we're talking about.

Unless you've been the state treasurer, of which neither of us are qualified on that front yet.

But it's a skill and experience.

And it's not just about how do you budget, because both of us have experience in how we handle governmental budgeting.

You wrote an op ed saying Ohioans are paying higher energy bills because of your opponent, former Representative Jay Edwards, and his support for the nuclear power plant bailout, House Bill six, which has been repealed, and his support for using state dollars to incentivize data centers.

Is that a bit of a stretch to tie him to those costs, those increased costs?

I mean, I would say when you when you look at our representatives, Mr.

Edwards stance over the years, I mean, one, he hasn't come out and even justified his involvement in what was going on with that scandal.

He's in an HBO documentary about it, which is a unique situation for any of the statewide elections to be in, and it has shown to have an impact on our energy increase.

He has not taken a stance against the data centers he was involved in, the years in which we were giving away these tax breaks.

Mr.

Edwards, hopefully I haven't seen his interview with you.

Hopefully he answers these questions and actually give some information on it for me and free time.

I've been around him every time I've seen him comment about it publicly, he has disavowed that there's anything to even talk about in that sense.

And so, no, I don't think it's a stretch.

And if anything, I think when we both talk about transparency, the first thing about transparency is he should be answering how it's not an evolved form, because it seems to me, to your point, you can't take credit just for being part of passing a budget.

You have to take credit for everything that you did while you were in the state government.

And his impact in the state government had negative impacts for the state of Ohio.

He has signed on to the petition that would create the amendment to abolish property taxes.

It's a popular idea.

What are your thoughts on that?

I think it's him.

He's just trying to give everybody candy right now without the impact that it would have on the rest of Ohio.

And let's talk about it.

From a state Treasurer's perspective, we are limited in what our bonding and our debt capacity is.

A state of Ohio at 5% of what our budget exists at right now.

We're at we keep it healthy.

We at about 3%.

So there's room on either side of it.

If you abolish property taxes overnight without filling it with another source of revenue, you've actually destroyed our ability to have debt.

And so what I'm curious from Mr.

Edwards is what is his plan when all that debt becomes due immediately, as soon as that property tax abolishment goes into effect, because as soon as that comes due, he could bankrupt the state of Ohio without a plan.

So the only plan that has been offered out there and governor DeWine has talked about that is we're going to have to have a sales tax increase dramatically into the 20 plus percentile.

Is Mr.

Edwards ready for us to have to pay the tax that way?

Again, it's great that he signed on as a populist movement to be part of.

But let's have the real conversation about what it's going to take.

And that's not how we solve the problem.

That is property tax right now, because that only creates more problems for Ohioans.

Is there anything else you want people to know about your campaign?

You know, you've been quoting us a lot.

So I just want people to know that you can find us online.

It's Team Walsh HQ again.

We are very open.

We want to be very public about our positions and our opinions, and I hope people will take the opportunity to watch us and learn a little bit more about it.

And if they don't like us, that's totally okay because we want them to know where I stand before they cast their vote.

You can see all my previous interviews with the candidates for governor, secretary of state, attorney general and auditor, as well as three of the four candidates for Supreme Court justice at our archive, at State News or on our YouTube channel.

And please join the Statehouse News Bureau live on election night on the Ohio Channel from 10 to 11.

We'll have the latest results.

Reaction from the candidates and analysis from University of Dayton professor Christopher Devine and longtime statehouse reporter Jim Audie.

That's it for this week.

Please check out our website at State News or find us online by searching State of Ohio Show, you can get our Ohio State House alerts by texting state news to this number.

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