During his visit in Zanesville Wednesday, Ohio’s Republican candidate for state treasurer, Robert Sprague, shared some of his core plans for office.

A Findlay native and current State Representative for the 83 House District, Sprague hopes to bring his background in private sector finance and experience in Ohio’s state government to the table.

Sprague shares some of the same values expressed by Mike DeWine during the first gubernatorial debate of the year Wednesday night, especially those concerning the state’s opioid epidemic.

Opioids

Focusing on heroin addiction treatment programs, Sprague would like to continue his work from the house and into the treasury by seeing a shift in funding from the current grant initiatives to a back-end funded bond program with the private sector through state-approved social impact bonds.

“So you issue a million dollar bond to run a two-year pilot program with some private sector treatment professionals that have created a better type of heroin treatment, and if the pilot program, after the end of two years, shows better results than what we’re currently getting for treatment in the state, Ohio commits to buying back that bond at the end of the two-year period, plus interest,” said Sprague.

Instead of funding treatment programs from the start, this approach would ensure the state pays for programs that produce measurable results.

“If results aren’t created, the state doesn’t pay,” said Sprague.

Sprague said existing programs funded through medicaid would not be affected by social impact bonds, but current programs would still be eligible to participate in the proposed program.

“What this program does is, if somebody comes up with a treatment that works much better than what we’re doing right now and we’re paying for with medicaid, obviously we’re going to replace those programs that aren’t working as well with the ones that produce better results,” said Sprague. “So you’ll find, over a period of time, we’ll be using that new program to address heroin.”

Sprague made it very clear that opioid treatment programs will be a priority in his budget, serving as an alternative to the constitutional amendment proposed by Issue 1 and to funding allocations for jails and prisons as a solution to the statewide overcrowding problem.

Sprague stressed his condemnation of Ohio’s proposed felony reduction amendment, Issue 1.

“Issue 1 is kind of this dangerous constitutional amendment that’s being proposed in November that ultimately is going to result in disaster for some Ohio families and probably lead to a lot more overdose deaths in the state,” said Sprague.

If passed, Issue 1 would reduce felony drug possession charges to misdemeanors, which raises concerns for Sprague in regards to how the reduction might encourage an increase of drug activity in the state.

“Now the drug cartels are going to be able to carry up to 20 grams of fentanyl, and all they’d get would be the equivalent of a traffic ticket,” said Sprague.

In almost the same words as Republican candidate for governor, Mike DeWine, Sprague stressed that 20 grams of fentanyl has the ability to kill 10,000 people.

“Fentanyl is what’s causing the overdose epidemic in the state of Ohio,” said Sprague. “It’s about 50 times more powerful than heroin.”

If fentanyl possession is nearly decriminalized, Sprague fears current treatment alternatives for criminals would become obsolete.

“Right now, the threat of prison time actually incentivizes a lot of people when they’re before the judge to choose drug court instead of prison time and get the treatment that they need,” said Sprague.

While supporters of Issue 1 see it as a solution for statewide jail and prison overcrowding, a problem which Muskingum County is not immune to, Sprague does not view it as the right solution, but as giving up on fighting opioids.

“I think the answer is better treatment,” said Sprague. “If you have better treatment, then people will actually maintain their sobriety. If they maintain their sobriety, they’re not going to reoffend and recycle through the jail constantly.”

That’s a long term solution, however, and it does not immediately solve the overcrowding issue in Muskingum County and the $34,000 – $36,000 the county spends each month to house inmates in Monroe County.

“I think the state and local governments have to work together to come up with solutions for that particular overcrowding problem, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to address the root cause,” said Sprague. “And what is the root cause of that overcrowding? It’s addiction and drugs, and until you address that issue, you’re always going to have a problem.”

Job Market and Budget

Other problems Sprague hopes to address through the treasury involve the job market.

When Sprague first entered the House in 2011, he said the state’s budget deficit was around $8 billion.

“I thought well, with my finance background maybe I could help with that,” said the former management consultant for Ernst & Young.

Sprague said he was charged with helping bring back 400,000 lost jobs to Ohio and balance the state’s budget.

At the time, we had lost almost 400,000 jobs in the state of Ohio under Ted Strickland and Richard Cordray.

The solution was a $5 billion tax cut, the largest in Ohio’s history, according to Sprague.

“We reformed the workers comp system and created a new development agency called Jobs Ohio,” said Sprague. “As a result, the economy has responded, and we’ve attracted over half a million jobs back to the state.”

Now Sprague wants to see increased wages and more skilled people filling those jobs, and he wants to start with teenagers.

Falling in line with a national narrative emphasizing the importance of vocational skills and denouncing the high cost of college tuition, Sprague wants to educated students before they make important life decisions.

“We’ve painted this false narrative that the only path to success in Ohio is through a college education,” said Sprague. “That’s just not reality anymore. If you have the right certifications while you’re still in high school, the right skill set, you can not only have a great job, you can have a great career in the State of Ohio.”

For students who choose to go to college, Sprague said they need to be educated on ways to graduate without leaving with a crippling amount of student loan debt.

“The earlier we can catch kids and help them prevent from getting into that debt trap, the better,” said Sprague.

Along the same lines of financial transparency, Sprague wants to ensure taxpayers are informed about where their dollar is going by improving Ohio’s Open Checkbook policy with new analytical tools.

“As taxpayers, you can hold the government accountable for the way it’s spending money, and you can understand how it can be more efficient,” said Sprague.

An example of what the proposed tools could afford is the ability to compare Ohio’s medicaid spending to neighboring states.

Much of these same statements made by Sprague to Y-City News were later addressed publicly before republicans in Muskingum County during Party on the Porch Wednesday evening.

Sprague will take on Democrat Rob Richardson in the race for Ohio treasurer this November.