Last fall, when Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced he was moving his office to a modern building and leaving his current office of 20 years, controversy erupted.
An analysis by a watchdog group now shows the move was significantly more pricey than LaRose claimed, all but undermining one of the main reasons he made the decision — that it would save taxpayers money.
Analysis by the progressive group American supervisionbased on documents obtained through an open records request. It found that the cost of moving the state office responsible for elections and filing business records was nearly 25% higher than LaRose’s estimate given to the public.
Last September, as he began his unsuccessful campaign for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate, local media learned that LaRose moves its state office from 180 E. Broad St. to a more upscale location along the Scioto Mile at 200 Civic Center Drive. The modern site would be farther from the state Capitol, state office buildings and downtown than three others under consideration, WCMH Channel 4 reported.
More controversially, the modern offices are in the same building as the law firms of BakerHostetler, LaRose’s campaign attorneys — whose address LaRose used to register his campaign with the Federal Elections Commission. That has raised concerns among ethics experts that LaRose may operate taxpayer-funded election administration facilities so that you can also run for office in one of them.
Suspicions grew even more when LaRose said he had no campaign headquarters because he was running for high office in a large state. Political observers said such a huge, elaborate campaign needed a headquarters, and there were concerns that LaRose would operate space somewhere in the modern building as a de facto headquarters. There were simply too many moral hazards, they said.
LaRose’s office declined to answer Capital Journal questions about those issues or this article.
But in October he recorded a campaign interview With currently imprisoned Steve Bannon in the building that is now believed to be the Secretary of State’s office. Asked in person after the interview whether he had used the building at 200 Civic Center Drive for campaign purposes or would do so in the future, LaRose he left without answering.
Then in December, LaRose’s spokeswoman admitted that he campaigned out of the BakerHostetler officebut he said he wouldn’t do it in the future.
The main justification LaRose used to make the move was that it would save money. But even the numbers he initially used made that claim highly questionable.
The move would save a little over $11,000 a year in rent, but the move would cost $600,000. So it would take until 2077 before the rent savings would cover the estimated cost of the move.
Of course, if the estimate was correct.
American supervision demanded “all expense reports, invoices, charge or credit card statements, and receipts reflecting the total cost of moving the Ohio Secretary of State’s Office to the modern location.”
The state’s response included $183,000 in invoices from movers alone. But it also included $314,000 for “building maintenance” and another $139,000 paid to King Business Interiors in November, among other expenses.
The total comes to $747,000 — $147,000 more than LaRose reported as the cost of the move.
That dispels his claim that the move was good for taxpayers — or at least for the huge majority of those alive today. If that’s how much the move cost, it would take 68 years — or almost another millennium — before the rent reduction would cover the cost of moving the state’s elections office into the building where LaRose’s campaign for U.S. Senate was officially registered.
