County government provides a wide range of services namely police protection by the sheriff, a wide array of social services, road construction and maintenance, tax collection and a host of others. The commissioners will earn $102,043 next year by statute but are not required to work full-time, although they spend countless hours on county business every week.
Rogers, 76, first won a seat on the commission in 2012, beating out previous commissioner Courtney Combs and incumbent Chuck Furmon in the primary and Democrat Jodi Billerman and Libertarian Daryl Olthaus in the general election.
“When you have your county by several metrics running better than any other of the 88 (counties) then what does an opponent want to do better,” Rogers told the Journal-News. “We’re going to keep the lowest taxes in the state, we’re going to keep Butler County a job-ready workforce and we’re going to keep our AAA rated financials.”
Small, 46, is a nurse practitioner who also owns her own consulting business, The Institute for Employee Safety. She provides workplace prevention training for “marginalized and vulnerable worker population” like home healthcare aides and is also a professor at the University of Rio Grande. She has 25 years experience in the home care industry and is a national council member on two committees with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She has lived in West Chester Twp. for 11 years.
She is running for commissioner because she believes, “we can do more, we can do better.”
“I care deeply about this community and I know and I believe at the local level government has an immediate and direct effect on people’s lives. I will invest in economic stability which is definitely needed after COVID. We’re still in COVID but we’re not in the thick of it anymore,” she said. “Some of the economic tragedies that happened during the height of COVID need to be addressed. I also want to work on workforce development, training and apprenticeship programs, especially when we talk about mental health and healthcare access.”
Rogers is a retired home builder and Realtor, past president of the OKI Regional Council of Governments and Hamilton/Fairfield Board of Realtors. He has lived nearly his entire life — except for four years — in Butler County within six townships.
Small is also running because she said the current commission needs to be more responsive to the needs of the residents when making funding decisions, “if you haven’t had that deep conversation it would be hard for a commissioner to really decide where to put those funds or what to prioritize.”
“I always go back to the ‘C’ word collaboration, you have to collaborate with those around you and it’s not just with the board of commissioners you also have to go out and talk to the people. You have to collaborate with the residents in the community. You have to collaborate with state officials, you have to collaborate with leaders in education and public safety and mental health and healthcare,” Small said. “Through collaboration and working with everyone you can find out where you really need to put your funding. The county commissioners hold the purse strings basically, they have all the funding and I don’t think that funding has been prioritized appropriately.”
Rogers pointed out when the federal government awarded the county $74.4 million in American Rescue Plan Act dollars they didn’t use the money to pay their own bills — as many governmental entities did — they shared the windfall across the county.
President Joe Biden signed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act into law March 11, 2021 and it allocated $350 billion to help local governments with pains caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The county received an eclectic array of funding requests totaling more than $200 million including economic development projects, help for the homeless, propping up small businesses, park and bike trail expansion and a new county morgue to name a few. They ranged in price from $24 million for new advanced aviation and manufacturing training centers in Middletown and Hamilton to $125,000 for healthcare worker training.
“Going back over the last four years as the commission was paying down debt to zero and achieving a AAA Moody rating, we have always addressed the needs of our cities, villages and townships as demonstrated most significantly by the broad distribution of ARPA funds and the federal CDBG funds after numerous meetings to gain their input,” Rogers said. “It is my experience that the relationships and cooperation with the various governmental jurisdictions are at the highest level in recent history.”
Rogers said he also attends five or six functions across the county every week, “I talk to a lot of people.” He noted the commissioners have also given direct assistance to every property owner in the county with two tax rollbacks. They agreed to rollback their entire inside millage for 2022, a total of $18.5 million. Then when historic property value hikes hit last year County Auditor Nancy Nix asked all taxing bodies to consider not collecting the tax windfall that would result from the value explosion. The commissioners accepted the “challenge” and the county tax break totaled $5.8 million.
He also noted the commissioners convened a summit — they met several times and continue to do so —with local leaders and state elected officials to try and find a solution to the property value/tax crisis.
Small said public safety, especially where women are concerned, is another top priority for her. She said there needs to be more access to healthcare and mental health services and gun violence is also concerning.
“We can do a lot in our community to protect women so they’re not harmed, so they get appropriate healthcare, so they have access to healthcare when they need it and not when they’re dying,” she said. “The role of a county commissioner in that circumstance is to advocate, you have to work with state officials. It’s not a direct role but as a county commissioner, as a leader in the community I believe you should be advocating for women’s health, for everyone’s healthcare, it boils down to a safe community where businesses can thrive, families can thrive, residents feel safe.”
A primary focus for Rogers for several years has been right-sizing county government both people and facility-wise, that remains a priority.
Credit: Nick Graham
Credit: Nick Graham
“One thing you always have to keep in mind is what is the ultimate size of government, we have been lean but ours is still growing,” Rogers said. “Based on the population we need to make sure that stays in check.”
Butler County is a Republican stronghold and the last known Democrat to win a partisan countywide office was John Holcomb, who was elected prosecutor in 1998.
Small says the commission seat shouldn’t be viewed as partisan.
“Even though I’m running as a Democratic candidate, as a county commissioner that all goes out the door because you’re working for everyone…,” she said. “At the end of the day whatever we do is for the people, and we can sit down and have a cordial conversation about investing in the residents’ needs without bickering back and forth.”
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