“Do Big Good.”

That short but snappy commandment served as a fitting motto that Dave Yost lived by to characterize his mission as chief legal officer of Ohio.

Though prissy grammar purists might take issue with his phrasing, few would deny that former state Attorney General Yost succeeded in fulfilling that promise to state residents. As he left office this week for a new job in the private sector, he also leaves behind a legacy of large-scale achievements to benefit Ohioans for the better for years to come.

Yost on Monday ended a 25-year stint in public service as Delaware County prosecutor, Ohio auditor and, for the past seven years, Ohio attorney general. In each of those roles, he consistently brought his A game.

“We work to constrain evil and empower good, without partisan preference or subjective judgment,” he once stated in one of his many well-researched state reports.

And though his advocacy on a few issues — defense of abortion restrictions and the EdChoice school voucher program among them — generated friction, on most of his fundamental foundational issues, his action-oriented initiatives brought near universal support and commendation..

And why shouldn’t they have? Collectively, they served to constrain evil and empower good — big good.

Consider just a few of those advances Yost engineered.

As state auditor and attorney general, Yost waged all-out war against the opioid epidemic that took tens of thousands of lives in our state and our Valley. Yost secured hundreds of millions of dollars for Ohio communities through landmark multi-state and localized lawsuits against major opioid distributors and consultants that fueled the epidemic. Today, the severity of that scourge has been significantly lessened.

In combating public corruption, the former journalist secured convictions against 170 public officials and uncovered more than $30 million in stolen and misspent funds during his tenure as auditor. As attorney general, he rose as a champion against the historic corruption of the FirstEnergy $60 million bribery scandal. He filed lawsuits that blocked a massive nuclear energy bailout, saved Ohio ratepayers nearly $2 billion and brought criminal charges against key players in the scandal.

As a champion of consumer protection, Yost has busted many shady contractors, including several in the Mahoning Valley, who swindled homeowners by taking hefty deposits but doing shoddy work or no work at all. He filed major lawsuits against ambulance providers charging unexpected and exorbitant fees and has shut down many illegal robocallers and telemarketers.

Most recently, he has exerted considerable energy cracking down on human trafficking by strengthening victim services and targeting sex buyers who create demand. Just last week, he issued a report showing 762 arrests of johns in the Valley over the past six years, a bounty he achieved with the help of the Valley’s Human Trafficking Task Force his office helped to create.

In all of those arenas and others, Yost placed a premium on achieving utmost transparency and accountability to the public he served. He established model training programs to ensure public officials at all levels of government understand and follow the letters of the law governing the state’s open meetings and open records laws. He also launched an online consumer protection lawsuit tool and just last week debuted the Ohio Crime Statistics Dashboard to give all residents the opportunity to monitor felony cases and convictions (as well as slaps on the wrist) to cretins in all 88 counties.

Perhaps one of Yost’s most enduring attributes — particularly for those of us in the Valley — has been his steadfast advocacy for victims’ rights in general and his loyal and unwavering support for Miriam Fife in particular. Justice for Fife, whose 12-year-old son Raymond was raped, mutilated and murdered 41 years ago en route to a Warren Boy Scouts meeting, has been a hot-button priority of Yost for years.

The former attorney general consistently worked alongside respected Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins and others to uphold and apply the death penalty for her son’s killer, Danny Lee Hill. He also made the grisly and heartbreaking Fife case the centerpiece of his annual Capital Crimes Report earlier this year in his appeal to safeguard the state’s death penalty.

As Yost leaves government service and begins his role as vice president of strategic research and innovation for the Alliance Defending Freedom, he clearly becomes a hard act to follow. His successor, Andy Wilson, former director of the Ohio Department of Public Safety, will have some mighty big shoes to fill as attorney general over the next seven months of his limited term.

Fortunately for Wilson, Yost has left firmly in place a robust foundation of responsible initiatives and a well-trained crew of committed staffers to ensure his legacy of “doing big good” can endure for the betterment of all Ohioans.