Cordray’s GOP opponent targets budget

By Marc Kovac

A Cordray spokeswoman said the allegations are false and ‘deliberately misleading.’

COLUMBUS — Democratic state Treasurer Richard Cordray has devoted too much of his office’s budget to promoting his own name, his Republican opponent for Ohio attorney general said.

Mike Crites, citing documents obtained through a public records request, said Cordray’s office devotes about 20 percent of its operating budget to public relations staff.

“I think it’s time for state government to take a serious look at where it’s spending yours and my hard-earned tax dollars,” he said, adding later, “I find it very ironic that at the same time that my opponent is advising Ohioans to carefully budget their own money, he’s acting so recklessly with the tax dollars that have been entrusted to him.”

Leesa Brown, Cordray campaign spokeswoman, quickly countered Crites’ assertions as “wrong and deliberately misleading.”

Crites spoke about the issue Tuesday during a press conference just outside the Statehouse, in full view of the state office building where both Cordray and the state attorney general’s offices are located.

The treasurer’s office has about 150 employees and a budget of about $8.8 million, Crites said. Of that total, 31 employees and $1.8 million are used for public relations activities — “to aggressively promote Richard Cordray’s name as he runs for attorney general,” Crites said.

Crites said there is a role and a need for public relations staff in public offices, which have an obligation to communicate with citizens. But 20 percent of the total budget is too much, and the number of public relations staff should be cut by 25 percent to 50 percent.

“When I was the United States attorney [covering half of the state of Ohio], we had an office of approximately 100,” Crites said. “And I didn’t have one PR person to handle my press releases, to handle the return of indictments and things of that nature.”

In an e-mailed statement, Brown said prior state treasurers paid 34 full-time employees to complete the tasks Crites’ identified in his review and that Cordray has reduced his budget compared to past officeholders.

She said that after budget cuts, the office has 127 full-time employees, six of whom “perform communications duties which include preparing and distributing news releases, statements, testimony, collateral materials, reports required by law, coordinating in-house printing, updating the Web sites and answering all public inquiries.”

Brown added, “To get to his conclusion, Crites trotted out the campaign clich of lumping together employees of several different departments [all of which have existed in the state treasury since the early 1980s] which perform a variety of jobs.”