What are the top 3 challenges Wood County will face over the next three years, and how will you address those challenges? 

1) Data Centers. Data centers represent a basic threat to our way of life. They threaten our water, air, the price we pay for electricity. They take up farmland, and reduce the quality of life and property values for everyone around them. They also represent everything that's wrong with the way our governments function today. Negotiated in secret, given huge tax abatements, ignoring the will of the people, these are all symptoms of deeper problems with our county government. I'm pledged to fight all future data center proposals.

 2) "Business As Usual" As I said, data centers are a symptom of a deeper problem. Decades of the same politicians and political parties controlling our government at all levels has resulted in a culture of corruption that threatens the economic well being of everyone in Wood County. For too long, our politicians and business leaders have been too cozy, cutting out the citizens from decision making. It's been called "The Wood County Way," but it's reached the point where bad decisions, like allowing the Meta data center, are being forced on the rest of us. Scratch a bad policy and you find corruption.

For years, I fought Ohio's HB6. That was a law that added charges to most Ohioans' electric bills to bail out Ohio's failing nuclear plants and two coal plants. We didn't know it at the time, but that legislation was the result of over $65 million in bribes paid out by First Energy. Both Democrats and Republicans voted for HB6. At his trial, Larry Householder's defense was that this was simply "business as usual," that corporations routinely give money to politicians and they have every right to expect laws and policies that benefit them. That's why he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. 

Politicians of both Parties have forgotten that they are there to do what's best for the people, not the corporations. Decades of giving businesses whatever they want or ask for means that "business as usual" is now taking money out of your pocket in the form of higher electricity costs, lower wages, higher taxes, and businesses that drain our resources like farmland and water. As an Independent, I will not go along with "business as usual." I will fight for you.

 3) Uncontrolled growth. Wood County is literally one of the safest places to live in North America. As natural disasters like droughts, heat waves, hurricanes, and forest fires continue to accelerate, we happen to live in one of the places least likely to be affected by them. We have the entire continent buffering us from hurricanes; the Great Lakes moderating our climate and supplying us with water; the last largely untapped aquifer in North America, the Michindoh, sitting beneath our feet, large undeveloped tracts of land, a strategic location, low cost of living, and many other advantages. The big corporations and the global elite are starting to notice. That's why we are seeing a wave of companies like Meta and Amazon suddenly building in our region. 

Over the next three years, we are going to see a wave of people and businesses moving in to Wood County. We're already seeing huge new housing developments in places like Perrysburg and BG. If we are not careful, if we don't carefully manage this growth, we will see all the problems that come with that: housing prices skyrocketing worsening our housing shortage; the loss of our quiet, rural way of life; polluted streams and aquifers; and the kind of sprawling development that creates basic infrastructure problems with maintaining roads, supplying water, and dealing with sewage. We need to have a county wide discussion about what we want Wood County to turn into. I attended the public meeting that the planning commission held at the fair grounds, where people were asked to write their priorities on little sticky notes and paste them up on bulletin boards. People talked about preserving Wood County's quiet, rural character, but as soon as a corporation like Meta comes along, those sticky notes are tossed in the trash and the corporation is given whatever it asks for. 

Over the next 3 years, as commissioner, I intend to have in depth, meaningful meetings in communities all over Wood County. Your comments won't be limited to sticky notes, and I will both listen AND act on your recommendations for controlling Wood County's development in the future.

 How would you prioritize county services in the event of a significant loss of federal, state, or local funding? 

Before answering this question, it's important to look at why it's being asked. Most Ohioans don't realize the full extent and impact of the massive cuts of state funding over the past few years. State aid used to be a major part of the budgets of local governments, but decades of cuts have hurt everything from our schools to social services. Most people don't know this because many of their local officials, like County Commissioners, belong to the same political party which has had supermajority control of the state budgets for almost 20 years. 

No local official with any hope of advancing in the Republican Party is going to speak out against the statewide policies of their party, no matter how much it hurts the people in their county. One such policy has been the tax cuts for the wealthiest Ohioans. Ohio has moved to a flat tax system which benefits the wealthy while burdening the middle class. The largest part of Wood County's revenue, almost 50%, now comes from sales tax, which again puts more of the burden on people with the least amount of money. Property taxes are less than 20%, partially because many businesses, like Meta's data center, have received huge tax abatements. As an Independent, I have no desire to "move up" in Party ranks. I will work for the people of Wood County, period. I will speak out and warn the citizens of Wood County about these ruinous cuts BEFORE they happen, so we can head them off, not just react afterwards. That won't make me popular with the politicians in Columbus, but it will help prevent hunger, homelessness, and bankruptcies here in Wood County. 

That having been said, County Commissioners do not have a great deal o f flexibility when it comes to what they must spend money on. Many of their services are mandated by law, which means that if there's not enough money to fund them, cuts would have to be across the board. As much as possible, I would prioritize services that help county residents directly such as child protective services.

 Under what circumstances would you enter a contract with ICE or DHS? 

Under no circumstances would I support the county entering into a contract with ICE. ICE has been transformed from a law enforcement agency into what I call a "lawless enforcement agency." It once simply enforced immigration laws, but now it is being used as a tool of political repression, and is breaking laws in the process.

Forgetting about the well publicized killings of US citizens for a moment, most people don't know that ICE routinely violates US and international law by forcing asylum seekers who have applied to be here legally, have received permission to work and live in the US, and who are law abiding, productive members of our society to return to their countries of origin. For many, this means certain death at the hands of gangs or dictatorships.

Asylum seekers are rounded up, often at court hearings they're required to attend to maintain their refugee status, kept under inhumane conditions, then flown in shackles to third countries where they're either imprisoned indefinitely or immediately flown back to their countries of origins where, again, they face certain death. This not only violates our laws, and international law, it's just evil.

ICE is planning to build mammoth concentrations camps all over the US. If you think they will only be used for immigrants, you're sadly mistaken. I will not cooperate with ICE.

I will cooperate with the Department of Homeland Security when it is engaged in activities that protect US citizens from credible security threats 

 The December 2024 ransomware attack that cost Wood County $1.5 million revealed deep incompetence. We need fundamental changes in our practices.

 *We need a full time, dedicated cyber security office, in addition to the regular IT functions. Keeping the computers and IT infrastructure running is a full time job, so is protecting them from cyber threats. 

*Mandatory cybersecurity training for all County employees. We haven't been told how the ransomware infected the County's computer systems. It could have been as simple as an employee opening an email attachment. There are a lot of very basic security measures that everyone should know. For example, one of the most common ways passwords are stolen is through keyloggers, malicious programs that record every keystroke. Using a secure onscreen keyboard to enter passwords can block keyloggers. That should be standard procedure for all county employees, and they all should be trained in basic cybersecurity skills.

 * Frequent automatic backups of all data to secure servers can protect against ransomware. Ideally, data should be backed up every day.