Monday, October 20, 2003
If you're still trying to decide whether to support the $500 million statewide bond issue that will be on the Nov. 4 general election ballot, consider this: Between March 2002 and March 2003, Ohio lost 118,000 manufacturing jobs. That fact was featured in an editorial Oct. 14 in the Wall Street Journal, dealing with Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell's campaign to repeal the sales tax increase that was imposed earlier this year by the Republican-controlled General Assembly.
Here's what the Journal had to say about the job loss: "Some of those losses are inevitable given global competition, but Ohio isn't doing much to help them stay."
Passage of the $500 million bond issue will not only give the state the ability to bring new products to the market, recruit world-class researchers, entrepreneurs and industrial fellows and support existing and stare-up companies to create more jobs, but it will silence the critics.
That's because it is the third piece of the $1.6 billion Ohio Third Frontier Project. The other two pieces are $500 million for biomedical research and early stage capital funds and $100 million in low-interest loans to support high growth job opportunities and advanced manufacturing. That money is coming from Ohio's share of the tobacco settlement payoff and capital budget bills.
We embraced the Third Frontier initiative when Gov. Bob Taft unveiled it in his 2002 State of the State address, and the more we've delved into it the more our support has grown. This is Ohio's chance to become a major player in the global economy and to compete with other states that are growing their high-technology economies. We cannot afford to squander this opportunity.
The people of the Mahoning Valley know firsthand just how difficult it is to make the transition from one employment base to another without having the financial wherewithal to initiate programs. The region still hasn't fully recovered from the demise of the steel industry in the mid-1970s.
Local benefit
The Third Frontier program in general and State Issue 1 in particular will benefit Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties. There are local high-technology companies that stand a good chance of sharing in the money set aside for research and development and both Youngstown State University and Kent State University Trumbull Campus can make strong cases for support for initiatives that will help Ohio become a leader in high-technology research, create technology-related jobs and recruit high-tech companies.
During his re-election campaign last fall, the governor pointed out that Youngstown Business Incubator in downtown Youngstown, which is providing assistance to a dozen start-up companies, would benefit from his Third Frontier plan. Through his efforts, $2 million has been set aside for the construction of a market-ready office building to accommodate the high-tech companies that graduate from the business incubator.
The building would be adjacent to the incubator, and Taft has pledged to work with the Youngstown Central Area Community Improvement Corp., a quasi-public entity guiding the redevelopment of downtown, to make the office building a reality.
State Issue 1 is not a tax increase, nor will it require a tax increase in the future
Ohio cannot afford to stand on the sidelines while world changes.
In the words of the governor, "It's a matter of our economic survival."