House Candidate: Secret Recordings Taken Out of Context: Video

MACOMB COUNTY, MI — In a conversation secretly recorded by by Michigan Democrats, Macomb County commissioner Steve Marino, a Republican candidate for House District 24, allegedly bragged that he his Lakeshore Drive home is listed in his father’s name to reduce his property taxes, according to media reports.

The new allegations came Monday after Marino, a registered lobbyist at the Statehouse from 2013-2015 who represented Delta Dental and IBM, said he made up the stories that were detailed in “A day in the life of ... Lobbyist Steve Marino,” paid for by the Michigan Democratic Party.

In the conversations, the Harrison Township Republican claimed that his lobbying firm paid for the bar bill at the wedding of former Sen. Roger Kahn, R-Saginaw, and paid the bar bill and taxi fare for House Appropriations Chairman Al Pscholka, R-Stevensville.

In the recording,, Marino also claimed that as a lobbyist for “IBM and Delta Dental … I get pretty good access to (Gov. Rick) Snyder.”

Marino said Monday that the conversations are “gross mischaracterizations ,,, by me” of what actually took place, that he “didn’t know I was being taped” and that he “was just trying to illustrate some of the silliness” that goes on in Lansing, the Detroit Free Press reported.

“I was talking to someone who I believed was a constituent concerned about campaign finance reform and numerous issues despite his concealed identity and hidden tape recorder,” Marino said, according to The Macomb Daily.

Both Kahn and Pscholka have denied ever having met Marino.

“Rumors in Lansing are a dime a dozen, and he has admitted he lied,” Pscholka told the Free Press. “The allegations made in a recording related to me are false. I take my responsibilities as a legislator and my role in leadership very seriously. I have no idea what he is talking about.”

Michigan Democratic Party Brandon Dillon said Monday that he will ask the Secretary of State’s office to launch an investigation into whether Marino violated lobbying disclosure laws. The tapes are also sure to surface in the fall campaign for House District 24, where Democrat Dana Camphous-Peterson, of Harrison Township, is also running for the open seat.

“I simply don’t think that you can take him at his word — that he made it all up. In any other investigation that would not be the end of the investigation, it’d be just the beginning,” Dillon told The Macomb Daily. “If they are (true), they’re serious violations of the law. If they aren’t, he’s a serial liar.”

On Monday, Democrats released another audio tape in which Marino describes that he would pay three times the amount of property taxes on his Lakeshore Drive home if it were transferred out of his father’s name.

During a Dec. 7, 2015, “coffee hour” meeting with constituents at a St. Clair Shores restaurant, he said he has a land contract on his house and that the “deed is in my dad’s name because the second I transfer it to my name it pops that inflation cap off, the house gets re-assessed, and I would basically have to pay three times the property taxes that I'm paying now.”

Dillon told the Free Press he’s not sure if Marino is breaking the law, but said "bragging about the scheme that he's concocted to avoid paying his fair share of property taxes" is "cause for concern" and appears unethical.

In an email to the Free Press, Marino said his remarks at the constituent meeting were “taken out of context,” that he is buying the home through a land contract and “the process has taken much longer than anyone of us would have desired.”

Photo via Steve Marino for State Representative website