BuckeyeBlog

At a time he could surely use it, Governor Strickland garnered some good press coverage for his decision to forgo a hotel room in Washington, D.C., while attending President Obama’s inauguration. Instead, he and his entourage slept in Ohio’s Washington, D.C., office. Left out of this story, however, is the fact that Ohio taxpayers are shelling out a pretty penny to maintain that office and engage in other federal lobbying efforts. Around $800,000 a year is being spent on these efforts, part of which goes to pay for Ohio’s DC office. Another chunk of that goes to pay for Ohio’s membership in the National Governors Association (the Buckeye Institute has a few words on this expenditure here).

Now, some will surely claim that this money isn’t wasteful. After all, Ohio needs a presence in Washington, D.C., right? True, and the Constitution provides for this — that is why we send Senators and Representatives to the nation’s capital. Ohio’s DC office is a lobbying shop which seems mainly focused on securing more federal money for the state. So your tax dollars are being used to try and get the feds to spend more of your tax dollars. Using tax money for this type of advocacy seems pretty fishy to me. But, what the heck, some good came of it, right? Ohio taxpayers didn’t have to spend any money for a hotel room for the governor. Personally, I’d have preferred that the governor shell out $500 to stay the night at a Howard Johnson’s in DC than have the state’s taxpayers shell out $800,000 a year to pay for this office and its activities. But that’s just me, I guess.