Here's a Friday document dump
We love a reasonable public records request; don't we, folks?
It’s the Weeklong Giveaway at Rooster Worldwide LLC, an annual event where I attempt to entice the free-loading hogs in the parking lot to take the plunge on a financial subscription.
A big thing to remember during a weeklong promotion is to unlock every dispatch, which I failed to do on Thursday.
That mistake has been fixed, and you can read that one over here. It features a nearly 10-minute interview with one of the Statehouse’s grimiest gremlins, and more!
Being a free subscriber and opening the occasional public dispatch helps keep the lights on. But the brave and noble warriors in the Patriots Caucus sustain the operation, from the viral videos to the in-depth, on-the-ground reporting.
I’d be honored if you considered a subscription today
Subscribers receive every dispatch, exclusive videos, commenting ability, a free Statehouse tour and entrance to book giveaways.
Plus, it comes with the peace of mind that you’re putting psychic damage on the lizard cabal that controls Ohio’s state and local governments—all from the comfort of your couch.
What can the automobile panopticon do for you?
When The Rooster broke the story about Columbus City Council candidate Tiara Ross driving on a suspended license while owing nearly $4,000 in unpaid parking tickets, some of her defenders thought we hired a private investigator to “stalk” her.
That’s only partly true. I did hire an investigator, but only to run her license report while probing for information in the official challenge of her residency.
If you learn one thing from The Rooster today, make it an understanding that automobile ownership is one of the easiest ways for the government (and motivated snoops like myself) to surveil you. None of this stuff would work on me because I commute by bike and bus.
For roughly $200, you can learn a lot about a potential target by only knowing their license plate number. It is that easy.
For example, let’s take another politician—one I’m choosing entirely out of a hat—Wow! Will you look at that? It’s Speaker Matt Huffman (R-Lima), who is, in my opinion, a domestic terrorist.
Huffman eschews the “Speaker-mobile,” and prefers to drive himself around. Thanks to his storied history of reckless speeding (which, in his defense, he’s cleaned up in recent years), you don’t have to work hard to find his license plate number.
Thanks to that information, we know Huffman purchased a pre-owned 2023 Buick Enclave in “good” condition with 16,146 miles on May 29, 2024, from Tom Ahl Buick-GMC in Lima for $39,5000.
A “plate report” includes when that license plate stumbled through the panopticon of surveillance for automobiles, dating back years.
You can download Huffman’s location history here:
It’s not hard to envision how these sorts of reports could be used for good (catching a cheating spouse) or bad (finding a former partner who fled an abusive relationship).
But Huffman makes himself vulnerable to prying eyes because he insists on driving himself everywhere. After all, he’s refused to adequately fund mass transit systems throughout his career.
And for good measure, here are two record requests for Huffman’s work calendar ranging from Jan. 7 to March 18, which reminds me I’m due to submit another records request later today:
Huffman prefers traveling with Delta Airlines, which has a long history of opposing unionization efforts. He has always loathed the working man.
What does $100K for an Assistant to the Regional Manager get you?
The Ohio Legislature approved a $20,000 raise for Assistant Speaker Pro Tempore Phil Plummer through the transportation budget in late March.
Plummer had been taking that inflated salary through the year, which is the type of fuck-you thuggery that’s seemingly only legal in the Ohio Statehouse.
When I confronted Plummer about the raise, he lobbed petty insults at me and tried to portray himself as one of the legislature's hardest-working members.
I’ll let his work calendar speak for itself in that regard:
Most notably, Plummer met with FBI Agent Brock Flint, who gets top marks for an elite name for an FBI agent, on Tuesday, Jan. 14.
I had hoped this meant that the FBI was again snooping around House leadership. However, Agent Flint interviewed Plummer about the spate of “mystery powder” and bullets mailed to state politicians for which the FBI recently charged an Ohio man who, it must be said, was not me.
Here’s Slapshot’s 2024 work calendar
Ohio State President Ted “Slapshot” Carter received a 3.5 percent raise in 2024, bringing his annual salary to roughly $1.4 million.
Not bad business for a president who earned headlines in 2024 for enabling the worst commencement speech in university history, violently crushing peaceful pro-Palestine protests, and renegging on promised employee raises mere days before Christmas.
You can view Slapshot’s 2024 work calendar here:
For $1.4 million, Carter doesn’t seem to work on weekends other than watching Ohio State football games or the occasional work-related traveling. It’s not a bad gig if you want to sell your soul to Republican trustees and an increasingly hostile legislature.
Admittedly, I am not as versed in the Ohio State universe as much as I am in state politics, so feel free to let me know if you see anything noteworthy in the calendar.
Will Ohio finally regulate submetering scammers!?
Columbus Councilman Chris Wyche is currently working on the local level to ban the scam of submetering.
Somewhat surprisingly, there’s a bipartisan bill in the Statehouse sponsored by Tex Fischer (R-Boardman) and Sean Brennan (D-Parma) that aims to do the same.
From Sarah Donaldson of wosu.org:
Submetering is common at apartments or other multitenant housing, where apartment managers buy utility services, and then include the cost in the rent, often dividing based on individual usage among tenants.
Because of unregulated fees, watchdog agency the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel said the consumers on a submeter could be seeing significantly higher rates than the consumers being billed directly by their utilities.
“(The bill) restores the basic principle that no one should profit off reselling essential services without public accountability,” Counsel Maureen Willis said.
Fischer doesn’t want an outright end to submetering, he said.
“At my core, I’m a free market conservative, but what I do not believe in is businesses who are selling the same products to customers while playing by a different set of rules,” Fischer said.
I talked with Rep. Brennan about his bill in the video you see above.
The Republican Caucus generally respects Brennan, and Fischer is seen as a rising star by his colleagues.
From that vantage point, we have some heavyweights carrying a bipartisan bill with a broad coalition of support that includes everyone from the Consumer Council to American Energy Power.
If Ohio had a functioning legislature, this bill would sail to the governor’s desk. But we know that’s not the case.
I spoke with House Energy Chairman Adam Holmes (R-Nashport) in passing on Wednesday. Holmes is a straight shooter who takes his job seriously.
He admitted he was awaiting testimony before rendering his verdict on the bill, which means that nefarious submetering entities like Nationwide Energy Partners have already hired influential lobbying firms to keep the scam going for as long as possible.
I recently realized that I need to brush up on my energy policy knowledge, and I’m hopeful that Brennan and Fischer’s bill will offer an opportunity to do so because I want to put the submetering lackeys on camera at the first opportunity.
THOSE WMDs. Conservative PAC raked in donations from Hindus, and then trashed them when the checks cleared… The Really Big One: A massive earthquake will destroy a sizable portion of the Northwest; the question is when… Digital stalking and abusive relationships in the 2020s… Explosive sex toys and cosmetics: The story behind the DHL parcels plot… How an American Cardinal beat the odds to become Pope.
TEXFORD is pushing a bill to ban noon Buckeye games. The dude is a clown, dancing for Boomer goblins.
which website did you use for this plate reader in case others want to look up a random politician?