The Long-Awaited, MUST-READ, Mary Taylor Lottery Audit is FINALLY HERE!

State Auditor (and John Kasich running mate) Mary Taylor finally released her long-awaited and long-overdue Lottery Commission Performance Audit today and the results are ASTOUNDING!

Wait…

Did I say astounding?

What I meant to say was incredibly boring.

The primary focus of her report involves recommendations that the agency fire a bunch of people to save about 2 million bucks. It’s not chump change, sure, but given the fact that the lottery took in over 2.5 BILLION dollars last year it’s really just a drop in the bucket.

And if you read the whole report you’ll discover something pretty funny. In the Executive Summary section (1-10) she spends a few sentences commending the current Lottery Commission for their hard-fought and unexpected success in the difficult task of changing software vendors which, she estimates, saved nearly twenty million dollars per year over the next 10 years. That’s nearly $200 million dollars in total!

Yes.

You read that correctly.

The Strickland-appointed lottery commission already saved the State TEN TIMES AS MUCH per year as all of Mary Tayor’s recommendations combined.

I’m not going to sit here and personally defend each and every Strickland appointee – the lottery director especially. But when you look at the big picture and you actually look at the actions of the Strickland Administration it’s amazingly obvious that Ted has pursued and, in most cases, accomplished everything the Republicans are proposing this year.

It also seems worth mentioning: Taylor was supposed to have this audit done in 5 months (by March) at a cost of $188,000. It’s now nearly September and the audit took twice as long as expected. One has to ask: did it cost twice as much? Did Taylor’s report cost us $400K? If so, why?

I really don’t want to attack Taylor here. I think she, unlike her running mate, is pretty honest. I really think she means well and she has the best interest of Ohio and Ohioans in mind when she makes decisions. And I commend her for not using this report as a political tool.

But you still have to ask yourself: if the best ideas coming out of the GOP this year are nothing more than poorly rehashed ideas the current Democratic administration has already successfully implemented, why should I vote for the Republicans?