LEGISLATIVE FRIENDS — Ohio Democratic gubernatorial candidate Richard Cordray, left, talks with Jerry Krupinski of Steubenville, a former state legislator who served with Cordray when he was in the General Assembly, during a meet-and-greet with area Democrats at Scaffidi’s Restaurant Friday afternoon. - Paul Giannamore

STEUBENVILLE — Ohio can do a better job of taking care of its mid-sized cities, such as Steubenville, than it has been doing during the past eight years.

That was part of the message during a meet-and-greet session by Ohio Democratic gubernatorial candidate Richard Cordray Friday afternoon at Scaffidi’s Restaurant.

The former federal consumer czar, whose career includes service in the General Assembly and as Ohio attorney general and treasurer, said he tried to be sure the area was included in thinking in Columbus.

“That’s not always the case,” he said.

Cordray said for 80 years Ohio kept a promise to its communities by sharing sales tax receipts in the form of local government funds. He said the drive the last few years was to keep the money to make the state budget look better while shortchanging local governments. That has led to failure to invest in local infrastructure across the state. He said the next governor will have to be an advocate for communities to be sure Washington lives up to commitments to infrastructure projects. He said while there has been a lot of talk about projects from Washington, it’s not been backed with money so far, and he called the talk of private investment “hypothetical offers of money that might not materialize.”

“We have been pennywise and pound foolish in not supporting our infrastructure for years,” he told reporters prior to talking to the Democrats gathered to meet him. “Now, everybody keeps putting that off, and who ends up paying? We do.”

He said when he was state treasurer, he supported bonded financing for road and infrastructure improvements across the state and added more can be done.

Further, he said, those investments create good jobs in communities.

He said Ohio can’t fight the opioid crisis by taking away money, then putting it into the state rainy-day fund and “bragging about how great our fiscal condition is.”

“It aggravates me when I see the auditors holding up cities and counties as being in fiscal distress. If somebody puts their hand in your pocket and takes your money, you’re going to be in fiscal distress,” Cordray said. “There’s no mystery there. To ask local communities to deal with something large that’s beyond everybody’s control initially, like the opioid crisis, when they already have less and they’re already able to do less because of less funding is not the way we’re going to solve that problem in this state.”

He said he helped bring groups together when he was attorney general to help recover from the housing crisis, putting together Save Our Homes task forces and uniting nonprofit organizations and the private sector to save thousands of homes.

“That’s how we do these things. We bring people together in partnership, especially state and local government working together. They’ve been pitting state and local government against each other for the last several years. They’ve taken a lot of money out of the local government fund. They have hurt local government at every turn. They have centralized municipal tax collection so there won’t be a way of knowing what they’re doing there,” he said. “When I’m governor, we will change that and make sure the local governments know exactly what is happening.”

Cordray said he and running mate Betty Sutton are running on “kitchen table” economic issues including affordable health care access, education and training to meet the needs of individuals and the work force, and spreading economic opportunity across the state.

He noted that Sutton’s involvement with making sure changes were made to health care legislation, ensuring portability and pre-existing condition restrictions were readily available instead of phased in was a bipartisan effort.

“I think when you do good, smart economic things for people and families, you can get that bipartisan support,” he said.

He said the state education program needs to be improved and said the state will never see $70 million lost to online for-profit charter schools again, as well as the $1 billion that went into ECOT.

He recalled backing the “Grow Now” program for helping small businesses that was his initiative when he was state treasurer, and said small business growth can be a key to keeping young people in Ohio after college. He said low-interest loan programs can help.

Growing native small businesses doesn’t pit Ohio against other states in expensive deals to land new jobs.

“I’m open to all suggestions,” he said. “But if we don’t win, we will be set back for another four or eight years, and if I win and then can’t deliver for all of the communities that need support, then I will have failed.”

He said he will take the same attitude to the governor’s job as he had with the consumer protection post in Washington: “To stand on the side of people in the community, in the marketplace and make sure they’re treated fairly.”

The Democratic field for the May 8 primary is crowded — joining Cordary in seeking the nomination are former U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, state Sen. Joe Schiavoni and former state Supreme Court Justice Bill O’Neill.

Attorney General Mike DeWine and Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor are seeking the Republican nomination.

They are each looking for the chance to succeed Gov. John Kasich, a Republican, who is term-limited.

(Giannamore can be reached at pgiannamore@heraldstaronline.com.)