Yet more evidence that Strickland's Green Ohio Economy is doomed....

As we all know by now, Governor Strickland has highlighted "Advanced Energy", or "green" jobs as central to Ohio's recovery from the Jobs Crisis.

In fact, he made Advanced Energy the #1 takeaway in his "highlights" page about his most recent State of the State...


But news released in yesterday's Columbus Dispatch has completely destroyed Strickland's argument that taxpayer-funded Advanced Energy is key to finally turning around Ohio.

State records show that 12 of the 58 nonprofit agencies in Ohio's Home Weatherization Assistance Program passed all of their state inspections in the past three years. That includes two of the agencies that serve Franklin County: the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission and Ground Level Solutions.

[...]

Overall, nearly 40 percent of the houses that state inspectors checked failed.

Why is this so significant?

I'll spell it out for you.

1) In the Governor's State of the State speech, Strickland stated:

The Council of State Governments scoured the nation to tally the total number of new green jobs created last year. And what did they find? Ohio ranks first.

We've made it this far, this fast on advanced energy because we pursued smart, responsible policies and we made smart, responsible investments.

2) In fact, Strickland is right. CSG did rank Ohio first, and by quite a bit. With 2,565 "new green jobs", Ohio left the vast majority of the competition in the dust.

3) Of those 2,565 green jobs, 2,296 of them came from the Ohio Weatherization Assistance Program. That's 90% of the total jobs that earned Ohio the #1 ranking by CSG.


Keeping up so far?

4) In the State Inspector's most recent report of the Weatherization Assistance Program, nearly 40% of the inspected homes failed. Last I checked 60% passing was only good enough to get your report card signed by your parents.

In other words, the one program that Governor Strickland relies upon to prop up his entire jobs agenda is a total and complete failure.