Ohio Secretary of State office move cost $147K more than promised, watchdog says

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose. (Photo by WEWS.)

It was already controversial last fall when Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose acknowledged that he was moving his office to new digs and abandoning its home of 20 years.

An analysis by a watchdog group now indicates that the move was substantially more expensive than LaRose claimed. And it all but demolishes one of the main reasons he gave for making the move — that it would save taxpayer money.

The analysis, by the progressive group American Oversight , is based on documents obtained through an open-records request. It found that the cost to move the state office in charge of elections and business filings came in almost 25% more than the estimate LaRose gave the public.

Last September, as he was beginning his unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate, local media learned that LaRose was moving his state office from 180 E. Broad St. to a swankier location along the Scioto Mile at 200 Civic Center Drive. The new location would be farther from the state Capitol, state office buildings and the heart of downtown than the three others under consideration, WCMH Channel 4 reported.

More controversially, the new offices are also in the same building as the law offices of BakerHostetler, LaRose’s campaign attorneys — whose address LaRose used in registering his campaign with the Federal Elections Commission. That raised concerns among ethics experts that LaRose might use taxpayer-funded facilities intended to administer elections to also run for one of them .

Suspicions were raised even further when LaRose claimed to not have a campaign headquarters as he ran for a top office in a major state. Political observers said such a large, complex campaign needed a headquarters, and there were concerns that LaRose would be using space somewhere in the new building as a de facto HQ. There were just too many temptations for abuse, they said.

LaRose’s office refused to answer questions from the Capital Journal about those matters, or for this story.

But in October, he recorded a campaign interview with a now-imprisoned Steve Bannon in what was almost certainly the building that now houses the secretary of state’s office. Asked in person after the interview if he had used the building at 200 Civic Center Drive for campaign purposes or would in the future, LaRose stalked off without answering .

Then in December, LaRose’s spokeswoman conceded that he had campaigned out of the offices of BakerHostetler , but said he would not in the future.

A major justification LaRose used for making the move was that it would save money. But even the numbers he initially employed made the assertion highly questionable.

The move would save a little more than $11,000 a year on rent, but the relocation was estimated to cost $600,000. So it would be 2077 before the savings on rent would have covered the estimated cost of the move.

If the estimate was accurate, that is.

American Oversight requested “a ll expense reports, invoices, charge card or credit card statements, and receipts reflecting the total cost of the move of the Office of the Ohio Secretary of State to its new office location.”

The state’s response included $183,000 in invoices from the movers themselves. But it also included $314,000 for “building maintenance” and another $139,000 paid to King Business Interiors in November, as well as other expenses.

Taken together, they total $747,000 — $147,000 more than LaRose said the move would cost.

That disproves his claim that the move was a good deal for taxpayers — or at least for the vast majority of those now living. If that’s what the move cost, it’ll be 68 years — or nearly the next millennium — before the rent reduction pays what it cost to move the state elections office into the building where LaRose’s U.S. Senate campaign was officially registered.

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