Tiara Ross owes $3,795 in unpaid fines on her suspended license
We lost the residency challenge, but we took one unaccountable motorist off the roads for the immediate future.
The Franklin County Board of Elections, by a 3-0 vote on Monday afternoon, denied my residency challenge of City Council candidate Tiara Ross.
Given the makeup of the Board of Elections, I wasn’t shocked by the margin. For example, one vote belonged to Franklin County Democratic Party Chairman Michael Sexton, whose party recruited Ross to run in the first place.
The dream was always to force a 2-2 vote along party lines and send the decision to Secretary of State Frank LaRose.
But with Republicans like Douglas Priese, a state lobbyist for Columbus-based entities like AEP and the Ohio Citizens for the Arts, on the board, it’s not hard to see why the Franklin County Republican Party went extinct.
At least Franklin County Republican Chairwoman Meredith Freedhoff had the decency to abstain from the vote.
The stacked deck doesn’t make me feel any better about losing. I abhor losing. But I’ll always wage these fights—no matter the odds—because you never know what other misdeeds the investigation will expose.
Minutes before I left the Hilltop for the hearing, the BMV returned a records request for Ross’ license.
The report listed Ross’ license as “SUSPENDED,” which surprised me considering I had observed her driving away from a candidates forum last Thursday night when I originally obtained her license plate.
This would have been the second rodeo for Ross, who was cited in 2012 for driving on a suspended license:
Nevertheless, there wasn’t time to investigate why Ross had lost her license.
However, upon arriving at the Board of Elections, I observed Ross’s Hyundai Santa Fe SUV, which bore registration tags that expired in September 2024, the month of her 37th birthday.
I popped the information on Ross and her lawyer, Corey Colombo, in my opening statement. Judging by their reaction, it seemed that the revelation caught Colombo by surprise.
Near the end of the hour-long hearing, Ms. Freedhoff was apparently the only Board member concerned that Ross, a practicing lawyer with the city attorney’s office and a city council candidate, might have driven to the hearing on a suspended license:
In retrospect, this exchange was hilariously telling, as Ross intentionally refused to answer simple questions about her license under oath.
After the meeting, Ross left her Hyundai Santa Fe in the parking lot.
Which got me wondering on the way home… What had Ross done to earn a license suspension for the second time in a little over a decade? Because there wasn’t anything immediately apparent in the obtained BMV report.
Thankfully, I married someone smarter than me. While I was sitting on the couch eating a delicious meal from Mean Mug Wings & Things, Hilltop Husband ran Ross’ plate through columbus.citationinfo.com/ and hit the jackpot.
Ross, who makes $135,000 a year at the City Attorney’s office, has received 48 parking tickets since Aug. 15th, 2022, when she was ticketed for failing to pay a meter.
She earned her most recent ticket on Feb. 23, 2025, for a “failure to register” her vehicle.
Ross has paid only five of those tickets, which leaves her unpaid balance of a staggering $3,795.
Ross, for whatever reason, had previously let her registration lapse in September 2022; it wasn’t renewed until February 9, 2023.
She apparently didn’t learn her lesson.
Ross’ garbled answers about being “unaware” of her license being suspended and her plates being expired strain credulity, at best.
Ross was ticketed for failure to display proper registration at least nine times between September 2024 and yesterday:
11/12/24 at 8:42 a.m. — outside apartment — failure to display
11/12/24 at 3:25 p.m. — 100 block of Fulton Avenue East — failure to display
11/13/24 at 10:38 a.m. — 300 block S. Third Street — failure to display
12/4/24 at 12:08 a.m. — outside apartment — failure to display
12/14/24 at 1:42 a.m. — outside apartment — failure to display
12/18/24 at 11:16 p.m. — outside apartment — failure to display/expired meter
12/19/24 at 9:49 a.m. — outside apartment — failure to display
1/16/24 at 7:32 p.m. — 100 block E. Gay — failure to display/expired meter
1/24/25 at 2:06 p.m. — 100 block E. Mound — failure to display
2/7/25 at 8:45 a.m. — outside apartment — failure to display/expired meter
2/23/25 at 1:18 a.m. — outside apartment — failure to display
When you review Ross’ tickets in full, they generally occur in one of three places: Outside her work at the City Attorney’s office, outside her apartment, and outside bars.
From my perspective, Ross skimped on purchasing parking passes at her work and apartment complex because she clearly didn’t think she had to pay for what I can only assume is a glovebox stuffed with parking violations.
And why would she? The ultimate enforcement of the tickets falls in the purview of her boss, City Attorney Zach Klein. Does Ross have a similar look-the-other-way attitude at her day job when enforcing code violations on poor homeowners? I have my doubts!
Unfortunately for Ross, these kinds of shenanigans fit into a long pattern of dishonesty and “rules don’t apply to me” behavior, which would be no high crime if she weren’t actively campaigning to hold power in a city of one million people.
I’ll have more on Ross in the very near future.
Until then, Columbus voters should ask themselves: Is Ross worthy of a prestigious city council seat when she can’t handle simple adult tasks like parking legally, paying parking tickets or renewing her license and registration in a timely manner?
THOSE WMDs. Texas workers face mounting dangers in the heart of America’s oil boom… The global matcha boom is driving a shortage in Japan… Dermatologists break down how tattoos affect the skin… The foundations of America’s prosperity are being dismantled… A Vail woman’s harrowing pursuit of the world’s tallest mountains.
Not a single FCDP member thought to run a background check tells you a lot.
Love the call out of Doug, too. Van Meter thinks doing massive evil (HB6), followed by minor evils (raising money for arts so Ginger Warner and Donna Collins can steal it for friends) will keep them out of hell. It won’t.
David Pepper, a passionate Democrat, ran against DeWine for attorney general in 2014. He lost a lot of credibility when his parking ticket record was revealed. He had Ms. Ross's record beat x3. Over 10K for 182 tickets! Not a good look for someone who wanted to be Ohio's top law enforcement guy.