When was the last time you heard Ohio referred to like this?
Ohio Governor John Kasich wants to use about $100 million in annual liquor profits to retain and recruit businesses, a sum that may ignite a jobs race among states also hungry for employment.Wow.
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The estimated revenue stream would be larger than similar arrangements in Michigan, Kentucky and California, and it would be one of the biggest such dedicated funding sources in the U.S., said Jeff Finkle, president and chief executive of the 4,500-member International Economic Development Council in Washington.
“It’s a very big number,” Finkle said in a telephone interview. “You may see some other states using the argument, ‘This is what Ohio is doing. We need to do it.”
Just keeping the businesses we have from leaving for other states proved to difficult under the timid leadership of the previous administration. But to John Kasich, even just defending what we have now isn't good enough. It's time for Ohio to go on offense, and start being one of those states that other states have to worry about.
Transferring the liquor-distribution enterprise to JobsOhio will allow “revenue growth where we can actually go out there, compete and win against other states,” Kasich, 58, a Republican who took office in January, told reporters during a March 15 budget briefing.The part that is the most innovative is tying the funding to the state liquor profits. There are certain segments of the economy that remain steady or even flourish when the economy goes down. Liquor is a prime example of this. And this is why its such a unique idea. When the economy goes in the tank, the funding for business development is needed more than ever.
“That’s huge,” said Nancy Sidhu, chief economist of The Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., when told of Ohio’s plans for a $100 million funding source.
The key is a revenue stream that doesn’t fluctuate with the budget, said Mark Kvamme, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who agreed to be Kasich’s development director this year for a $1 salary and now is director of job creation.This amount of funding for attracting business to Ohio, being higher than anyone else's, will give Ohio an advantage over every other state.
“When the economy is going down, you have less money to invest in job creation,” Kvamme told reporters during a March 15 briefing. “That’s the time you need it the most.”
Two years ago, if the terms "jobs war" and "Ohio" were used in the same sentence, you can be certain that it was referring to Ohio being on the losing end. Not anymore. Other states are beginning to take notice. Ohio is not messing around. This is bold and innovative leadership on display.
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Yeah, more corporate welfare for Kasich to do Bob Evans type deals that don't actual create or save jobs!
ReplyDeleteBut now, it'll be done in non-transparent private organization who only has to report its activities once a year!
So happy that John Kasich has started an arms race for corporate welfare. NOT.
Modern only likes adding jobs when they are government-subsidized jobs, like the supposed "thousands" of jobs that the 39-mph train would bring.
ReplyDeleteBut spending money to bring more PRIVATE sector jobs to the state...why...that's...that's capitalism! Bad bad bad says Comrade Modern!
Gov't jobs, gov't subsidized jobs and union jobs are the only jobs Democrats care about.
ReplyDeleteModern said...
ReplyDeleteSo happy that John Kasich has started an arms race for corporate welfare. NOT.
You think that has not already been happening? Ohio has been easy pickings for competitor states for a variety of reasons, one of them being the paper-shuffling governors who have recently held the office.
You both are idiots.
ReplyDeleteTaking gov't money and acquiring ownership of the economic means of production is not CAPITALISM, but communism. JobsOhio is TARP on steroids.
Kasich wants JobsOHio to be a central planning agency in which the State controls the flow of capital to certain companies.
That money Kasich's talking about is State money. That's called SUBSIDIES.
JobsOhio is about as far away from free-market capitalism as you can come up with.
Seriously, you both have no idea what capitalism even means. You're ignorant.
Anonymous- this whole "losing jobs to other States" is a red herring. How many jobs have we lost to other States in the past five years? Less than 2% of our jobs losses.
ReplyDeleteKasich is spending millions to combat 2% of the problem and his solution is to make the State a chief investor and owner of the marketplace. That doesn't alarm you AT ALL?
There is no estimate, none, in which the 3C did not create THOUSANDS of jobs. Even using Kasich's $12 million annual cost to the State (which he failed to mention wouldn't incur until after his term was up), that's still a better return on investment than the Bob Evans deal which cost as much and created zero jobs.
ReplyDeleteYeah, NCR wasn't going to leave the state, either, were they?
ReplyDeleteAww. I forgot the 39mph "high-speed" train was such a sensitive subject with Modern.
Thousands of jobs, my foot. TEMPORARY contruction jobs, MAYBE.
No one is buying your bogus train jobs numbers, Modern.
Look at Cleveland's RTA. It has 3 rail lines and almost 100 bus routes. Their total employment is 2600 people, which includes its oown police force. But that's mostly bus drivers, because of the number of routes. Each ONE of those routes includes more stops than the 3C would have.
You're seriously going to tell me that ONE rail line...ONE!!..is going to require the same number of employees that RTA has?
Keep those ridiculous statements for your own readers. We aren't buying it here.
NCR was already mostly out of the State before Strickland was Governor.
ReplyDeleteApparently, you lack the capacity to understand SCALE. Do you honestly not comprehend that Cleveland's RTA is a smaller mass transit system than 3C which was Statewide and would required STAFFED stations?
Nobody, not the Buckeye Institute, nobody, disputed that 3C would create at the minimum 4k permanent private sector jobs.
You can chose to wallow in your ignorance if you want. But the fact is that 3C would have created more jobs at the same costs as the Bob Evans deal which created ZERO.