Auditor of State Keith Faber was the featured speaker at the monthly Allen County Republican Party luncheon on Friday.
J Swygart | The Lima News
LIMA — Ohio Auditor of State Keith Faber, an 11th-hour fill-in, was the featured speaker Friday at the monthly luncheon hosted by the Allen County Republican Party.
Party Chairman Keith Cheney said a scheduling snafu led him to reach out at the last moment to Faber to address the party faithful for this month’s lunch. Cheney introduced the Celina resident, who is in his second elected term as auditor and is prohibited by state term limit laws from seeking a third, as “our next Ohio attorney general.”
Faber talked at length about his office’s efforts to safeguard taxpayer dollars.
“We are a watchdog over elected officials who spend your money,” Faber told the assembled crowd. “We have convicted more than 120 people for lying, stealing and cheating with your tax dollars,” he said. He said since taking office his team has tallied dozens of convictions of public officials, including county sheriff’s and county auditors, who stole millions of dollars of taxpayer money.
“The reality of it is, there are some people who touch public money who have sticky fingers. We catch ‘em, and we put them in prison,” he said.
Faber also talked about efforts to institute tighter regulations on Medicaid recipients. Faber said his office has discovered that more than 124,000 people enrolled in Ohio’s Medicaid Program were simultaneously enrolled in Medicaid programs in other states.
A report authored by Faber and released in March said that over a four-year period Ohio paid managed-care organizations more than $1 billion to provide services to individuals enrolled in multiple states’ Medicaid programs. The potential financial impact to Ohio of multi-state enrollees was more than $200 million, according to the report.
“Our question to Medicaid officials was, ‘why aren’t you doing something?’” he said.
Faber first took office as auditor in January of 2019 and was re-elected in November 2022 for another four-year term.
He is a former Republican member of the Ohio House of Representatives and represented District 12 in the Ohio State Senate from 2007 until 2016 and served as president of the Senate from 2013- 2017.
