JobsOhio board named

Governor John Kasich, in addition to having had a busy weekend, today named the board members for JobsOhio, the state’s new private economic development nonprofit. In doing so, he has harnessed quite the brain trust, some of the leading minds in our state.

Board members such as Bob McDonald, CEO of P&G, Gordon Gee, president of Ohio State University, and of course, his right hand man in economic development, Mark Kvamme, will serve on the JobsOhio Board of Directors.

In privatizing economic development in Ohio, the governor and Kvamme have cooked up an ingenious plan. That the entity is private allows it, and the state, essentially, to take an equity stake in the companies in which it invests. Beginning with a modest budget allocation, and the leased profits from Ohio’s liquor control apparatus, JobsOhio will begin investing in early 2012, enticing companies to do business in Ohio while strengthening our state’s bottom line by taking a profit and rolling it back into its portfolio.

Not a bad plan. Happy to see this level of talent willing to serve for our great state.