Republican
Email: chris@hicksperience.com
Campaign Website
(The statements regarding the Chamber of Commerce, its staff, and its members featured in this questionnaire are inaccurate.)
Biography:
Chris Hicks grew up in Mt. Washington and Bethel. He graduated from McNicholas and Miami University. In a business career, he worked for Andersen Consulting, Accenture, and IBM before doing independent consulting work in over 50 countries. He has been married for 33 years and has one son.
Hicks is a conservative outsider who has fought relentlessly to clean up cronyism and corruption in the Clermont County Republican Party. He is not a friend of a Chamber of Commerce that is little more than a crony of government in Clermont County, receiving significant funding from government and protecting loyal insiders, like Bonnie “Biden” Batchler, from scrutiny by replacing traditional Chamber candidate forums with this questionnaire.
What are your three most important policy priorities? What do you hope will be the impact of implementing these policies?
I have 6 immediate tactical policy priorities:
1. 2nd Amendment: Drop carry restrictions at county buildings.
2. FC Cincinnati in Milford: End the bad deal and the tax subsidy.
3. Political Aides: End taxpayer paid political aides.
4. Transparency: Have Commissioner meetings at times friendly to citizen participation.
5. Animal Shelter: Allow cats and return to humane society control.
6. Schools: Get WOKE, transgender, sexualization culture out of our schools.
I have 5 strategic policy priorities:
1. Spending & Taxes: Cut county spending 10% and propose property tax ROLLBACKS.
2. Opportunity: End economic development gimmicks and focus on GOOD jobs that can support families.
3. Infrastructure: Quit wasting money on dumb infrastructure, like roundabouts in New Richmond, and focus on infrastructure that matters for good jobs (water, sewer, electrical).
4. Court Reform: Use the power of the purse to drive long overdue court reform like online payment, e-filing, and record transparency.
5. Cronyism and Corruption: End patronage, cronyism, and corruption in county government starting with a fraud and waste hotline.
If elected, what will be your approach to engage with constituents and businesses to gather input on legislative/policy decisions?
1. Have commissioner meetings, at least once a month, in the evening when citizens can attend.
2. Allow for virtual public participation in commissioner meetings and reading of citizen written input.
3. Having an annual citizen survey and citizen roundtables on key issues.
In your opinion, what are the two most important challenges facing our county and how do you propose to address them?
There is one: An insular culture of patronage, cronyism, and corruption of which the Chamber of Commerce is a part.
This survey is a great example. It is the Chamber protecting insider candidates, like Bonnie Batchler, from a Chamber candidate forum because she is not mentally agile enough for a fair and open Q&A forum. Why would the chamber protect insiders like Batchler? Because the Chamber likely is getting 30-40% of its revenue from governments across Clermont County.
Not only does the Chamber rely on government, taxpayer, money to survive, its VP of Government affairs, Andrew McAfee takes appointments to government bodies who levy taxes (like the Park District). It is a stunning conflict of interest. Further, the Chamber staffing itself shows cronyism. Both McAfee and Austin Heller are former Brad Wenstrup staffers.
How do you plan to address regulatory challenges that local businesses face? Are there specific regulations or policies you would advocate in order to streamline business operations?
The county tries to manipulate business via access to infrastructure resources (like water and sewer) and has developed an ugly habit of using the department of health to attack business (shutdowns, masks). All while wasting millions tax money on crony economic development, like FC Cincinnati in Milford or South Afton (Purina, Design within Reach), that does not deliver measurable good jobs.
The County government is a boat anchor on development of good jobs in the county. Jobs that can support families. In fact, they peddle backward as we watch power plant jobs evaporate with barely a peep from our Commissioners. Commissioners who seem to care more about looking good to Columbus insiders than fighting for Clermont Countians.
How do you plan to address infrastructure needs in our region, such as transportation, broadband, and utilities, to support business growth?
Step 1: Quit wasting money on dumb infrastructure like roundabouts and Showboats in New Richmond.
Step 2: Focus on water and sewer with a real vision and investment. Water and sewer is key to good jobs and good places to live. It is 100% a county thing. It has been neglected and lacked a true vision. Heck, how many years did it take to just get glorified septic in Newtonsville?
Step 3: Work with and pressure our Federal and State legislative delegation on road infrastructure that matters. In the Bob McEwen era, 5 bridges were built across the Ohio River. Imagine a bridge in the New Richmond Area. Imagine better ingress and egress from SR 32 to Batavia. Imagine work to improve county roads that have not markedly improved in 50 years, like Clough Pike. While there are many real needs, our commissioners have focused on dumb road infrastructure, like narrowing US 52 (Why?) and adding roundabouts on some insane theory that creating congestion will cause people to “shop and eat in New Richmond.”
Step 4: Use the power of the purse and press our legislative delegations, for broadband access in all parts of the county.
These things are logical and not hard to pursue. But our county commissioners have lacked basic common sense and focus on strategies that can have a great positive impact. Instead, they focus on tripe and failure, that wastes tax dollars, like New Richmond roundabouts, FC Cincinnati in Milford, and South Afton. All of which do not help create good jobs.
What strategies do you propose to enhance workforce development and address any skills gaps in our community?
First off, Clermont County needs to be an attractive place for people with skills to live. Secondly, there needs to be a good job strategy so “workforce development” is more than working retail or restaurants.
“Workforce development” also starts in our schools where we need to get and keep focus on excellent academics and skill development. The county can use the power of the purse in target ways to help in that goal.
For older residents, maybe displaced by the abject failure of Clermont County Economic Development, there needs to be real skill development opportunities (not Chamber fluff). School kids can take “College Credit Plus” classes. We need such an offering for adults.
Finally, we need to instill values of hard work, showing up in time, delivering an honest day’s work. The county should be recognizing private sector exemplars of those values and not constantly giving “certificates” to government workers who, too often, are not exemplars of those virtues.
What measures do you propose to attract new businesses and encourage entrepreneurship locally?
We need to clean up the perception that our county is crony, SWAMP, patronage. That we are a fair and honest place for new business, business relocation, and entrepreneurship. The Chamber and the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau can and should be part of that but need reform to stand with business (not with crony capitalists).
County economic development is a train wreck. I would hire Ken Geis, the genius who brought over ten of thousand good jobs to Union Township, to run county economic development. Such a move would be a game changer. It would likely result in some in government, the Chamber, and other places who talk “economic development,” but are incapable of delivering results, to flee and put us in a better position, with less cost, to deliver tangible results.
As a member of an elected body, how would you work with your colleagues to build relationships and build consensus for your ideas?
This is a question asking, “Will you submit to the crony ‘go along to get along’ system that is holding us back?”
While I would seek positive relationships with my commissioner colleagues, my job is positive relationships with the lowly taxpayers who are working hard and sacrificing their money to support this county. Not with those who, like Bonnie Batchler, have become parasites padding their Ohio Employee Public Retirement System (OPERS) pensions.
This questionnaire, being designed to protect people like Bonnie Batchler, failed to ask, “Why you vs. your opponent?” Since it did not, let me answer that question here.
My opponent, Bonnie Batchler is a poster child of the crony Clermont County system. I am not sure she has ever had a meaningful job outside of being paid by taxpayers. If re-elected, she will be 81 shortly after taking office. There is nothing wrong with that but there can be and there is with Ms. Batchler. She is simply in a state of Joe Biden type mental decline. She is being protected by the crony SWAMP. Her lack of fitness for another term is not because I say so. It is because she said so.
In 2020, Batchler pledged in a dramatic ceremony that, if elected then, she would only serve one term because she was old, and after a term, would be ready to fully retire. But, like SWAMP politicians do, she lied and is now running with no vision and no platform.
In the Clermont GOP endorsement, she offered no platform other than that she opposed my view that the Animal Shelter should return to Humane Society control and again take cats.
She does not want that because the shelter used to be dirty and now is clean. Never mind that it now routinely turns away dogs, won’t take cats, and cost more under county control than what humane societies asked for to operate it properly.
But it gets worse. Batchler delegates major parts of her job to her taxpayer paid aide, Jennifer Haley. That included what is supposed to be the Commissioner role in property taxes.
I call Haley the “fourth commissioner.” It is ridiculous. Haley is to Batcheler what “Dr.” Jill is to Joe.
But it gets worse. Batchler has a tendency, like Joe Biden, to make up stories that are not true but repeat them. In 2020 Batchler claimed to be a “lifelong Republican” only to get caught in a blatant lie. She had been a Democrat through Reagan, Clinton, and even the Newt Gingrich “Contract with America.” John Becker got her paper voting history. Even after that, she kept telling the lie. To the point, like with Biden, you wonder “Does she actually believe the story she is telling?”
It is time for some real change in Clermont County. It is time for Bonnie Batchler to retire.
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