Fiscal Responsibility Is Not the Same Thing as Being Cheap
Amy's Note: This post is longer than usual. Given what is at stake for Russell Township residents, it needed to be. And yes, I just did an interview on a national podcast to talk about it!
Please help me make sense of this, because I seem to have landed in some parallel universe where conservatism now means defunding our local police in Russell Township.
If you have been following this blog or the news coverage of Russell Township in 2026, you may have noticed a new theme developing. The theme is to defund our police services to the point of absorption: our police department consumed by the Geauga County Sheriff's Department, and our fire department left to limp along with limited staffing and ambulances well beyond their recommended service life. I addressed this in my op-eds this spring in the local newspapers.
Now I need to address it again because I fear the Geauga County Budget Commission is about to make it official on Monday, September 14.
What the Budget Commission Did
Geauga County Prosecutor James Flaiz, Auditor Chuck Walder, and Treasurer Chris Hitchcock, who together comprise the Geauga County Budget Commission, have moved to slash nearly $3 million in funding, with the majority of the cut targeting the Russell Township Police Department. Their justification is that the township is sitting on "idle cash."
Here is a recent receipt. This is what Russell Township voters actually approved on November 4, 2025, on the official Geauga County General Election ballot language for the 2025 Russell Police Levy:
"An additional tax for the benefit of Russell Township for the purpose of providing and maintaining motor vehicles, communications, other equipment, buildings, and sites for such buildings used directly in the operation of a police department, or for the payment of salaries of permanent or part-time police, communications, or administrative personnel to operate the same, including the payment of any employer contributions... for the provision of ambulance or emergency medical services operated by a police department, or for the payment of other related costs... the county auditor estimates will collect $999,145 annually at a rate not exceeding 2.5 mills for each $1 of taxable value."
That is not a levy for one detective. That is a voter-approved levy for comprehensive, long-term police funding covering vehicles, equipment, buildings, and salaries. Russell Township voters passed it. The Budget Commission is now moving
to nullify it.
Mr. Flaiz Said the Quiet Part Out Loud
During the township's 2025 annual budget hearing, Prosecutor Flaiz said on the public record:
“You wanna add one guy to the department at one position? Yet you're asking for a 50% increase in revenue forever. Think about that. That doesn't trouble you two, as trustees?” — Geauga County Prosecutor James Flaiz, 2025 Budget Hearing
That characterization was wrong then; the ballot language proves it, and it is still wrong today. Yet the narrative has taken hold. On Sunday, at the Great Geauga County Fair, I had a conversation with Commissioner Brakey in the GOP tent. She repeated Flaiz's line to me almost verbatim. The levy was not for one detective. It was for the operational and infrastructure needs of the entire department. Voters understood that when they passed it. Apparently, some of our elected officials still do not, or worse, ignore it.
During the August 18 session, Prosecutor Flaiz expressed his desire that no local writer publish a blog post claiming he stripped law enforcement of funding. That exact remark was relayed directly to me by Trustee Port and Administrator Warren Dovsek, as well as by multiple attendees of the meeting.
Consider your wish ungranted, Mr. Flaiz—here is that blog post.
Regarding who is watching: these words will extend far past our typical community followers. Following my recent podcast interview, Allison Gill from the Daily Beans podcast is distributing this message to her audience of 1.5 million readers. The citizens of our community are hardly the sole observers monitoring these developments.
One week after that statement, Flaiz moved to do exactly what he said he did not want to be accused of. That is not a coincidence. That is a record.
This is not the first time Flaiz has used the Budget Commission as a tool of pressure against Russell Township. In 2020, he told trustees on the record: "We could suspend all three of your inside mills, and you would still have plenty of money." Those three mills represent the entire funding base for the township's general fund and administration. The threat then was the same as the action now: use the county's budget authority to force a township to hollow out its own services.
The Idle Cash Truth
The Budget Commission's justification is that Russell Township's cash reserves are "idle." That framing, I believe, is misleading, and the people making it, in my opinion, know exactly why.
Far from sitting idle, those funds represent a structured capital plan grounded in the Miller-Dodson Study—a deliberate roadmap created to replace aging cruisers, address impending repairs to our police facility, and maintain long-term stability. Former township fiscal officers established and executed this strategy. Chuck Walder stepped into the township Fiscal Officer role in 2013, and upon his departure, his wife, Karen Walder, served as Fiscal Officer through June 5, 2026. Today, that very same Chuck Walder is poised to vote as part of the Geauga County Budget Commission to drain the exact financial safety net his own leadership established.
Read that again. The Geauga County Auditor, now sitting on the Budget Commission and voting to strip the township's police reserves, helped build the financial structure those reserves are part of. He is now using the existence of a plan he helped create as the excuse to take away the funding that plan depends on.
Treasurer Chris Hitchcock has openly acknowledged that Russell Township's budget issues go back to 2010. If the dysfunction stretches that far back, the people who held the purse strings during that period share responsibility for the conditions the Budget Commission is now exploiting.
What This Does Do to the Police Department
A cash reserve is not recurring revenue. Once a department is forced to burn through its emergency savings to cover payroll and basic operations, that money is gone. You cannot recapitalize a reserve fund. You cannot replace aging cruisers or address infrastructure needs with money that no longer exists.
The three police levies that Russell Township voters approved in 2013, 2017, and 2025 represent three separate democratic processes for funding of local law enforcement. The Budget Commission's action could effectively nullify all three. The 2025 levy, approved just ten months ago to generate $999,145 annually, is being chopped before it can take root and deliver on the promises made in the ballot language.
Residents of Russell Township chose to live here, in part, because we have our own police department. Since its founding in the early 1960s, voters have supported the department through every levy placed on the ballot. I am not going to be the trustee who lets a county budget commission undo sixty years of community investment.
As a Board, we proposed nearly $1 million in voluntary tax relief for Russell Township residents. We are not afraid to make cuts when cuts make sense. But there is a fundamental difference between responsible fiscal management and gutting the financial foundation of a police department that residents have voted to fund three times in twelve years. So I have to ask: what is the actual goal here, and who does it serve?
Let's Be Clear About What This Is
You cannot claim to back law enforcement while simultaneously stripping away the tax revenue that protects our community. The Budget Commission might possess the statutory power to undercut the voters who supported this levy, but having technical authority does not make an action principled or morally sound. Using administrative power to target a financial plan you personally established isn't conservative governance. It is a direct breach of public trust.
There is a term for eliminating the funding streams that keep a police department operational. The people doing it can demand whatever rhetorical immunity they want in budget meetings. Math does not care about their political sensitivities.
When you eliminate nearly $3 million in voter-approved revenue and force a police department to empty its capital reserves just to make payroll, you are defunding the police. The residents of Russell Township are watching, and so is the rest of Geauga County. And thanks to Allison Gill and the Daily Beans podcast, it is a betrayal that 1.5 million people are about to read about.
Sources: Official Geauga County General Election Ballot, November 4, 2025 (Russell Township Proposed Tax Levy, Additional); Geauga County Budget Commission hearing records; Chagrin Valley Today, March 2026; Geauga County Budget Commission hearing, August 18, 2026 (recording on file); Ohio Revised Code 5705.
The views and opinions expressed here are mine only and are intended to keep residents informed about township issues. Decisions of the Russell Township Board of Trustees are made only during public meetings.
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