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State legislative races focus on jobs
Officials see great potential in a coal-to-liquid-fuel plant.
SALEM — Columbiana County’s state Senate and state House candidates said in interviews their main issue is employment.
State Sen. Jason Wilson of Columbiana, D-30th, totes a piece of hot-burning Ohio coal from Jefferson County as a symbol of potential economic growth.
He was appointed in 2007 to replace his father, Charlie Wilson, who won election to the U.S. House of Representatives.
He is opposed by Republican Tim Ginther, who did not respond to a Vindicator request for an interview.
State Rep. Linda Bolon of East Palestine, D-1st, is seeking a second term. She is opposed by Republican Caroline Hergenrother, who owns and runs a health-care facility in Salem.
Wilson said, “I want to see more investment in creating jobs and developing new sectors of Ohio’s economy.”
Specifically, much of the focus has been on the Baard Energy plant. The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency is expected to soon rule on the last of the three permits needed to allow construction.
If approved, the Baard project would hire several thousand workers to build a $6 billion plant near Wellsville that would turn Ohio’s coal into liquid fuel. The proposed plant would create about 225 permanent jobs.
Wilson, Bolon, and other local officials have been talking weekly to stay on top developments.
With the end of the steel mills and the proposed Baard plant that will burn Ohio’s high-sulfur coal, Wilson said, “We’ve come full circle” to become a modern industrial area that stretches from Ashtabula County to Belmont County.
Part of the Baard project will include injecting carbon dioxide into old oil wells that would then be sealed. The process also brings up some unpumped oil.
Bolon said her priorities are identifying jobs for the community, building the local economy and trying to bring new industry to the area.
She said there is a possibility a second plant will be built at the Baard site.
Construction-wise, she said, “That’s 5,000 jobs for five years.”
She added that using carbon dioxide is “a doable science. It’s being done in South Africa.”
Members of the Sierra Club have protested parts of the Baard plan, however. But Bolon said, “The majority of our constituents are for it. I have a huge file of letters.”
Bolon said she also is working to help reform education.
“Building schools does not educate children,” she said. “We want people to come here and live because of the quality of life.”
Her opponent, Caroline Hergenrother, jumped into the race in May after Republican candidate Shar Daub dropped out.
Hergenrother and her husband, Kurt, run Holander House in Salem.
She said that as a business person, she is “all too familiar with the anti-business climate for which Ohio has become known.”
The state’s high taxes and poor regulatory environment have to stop, she said. “We have lost jobs.”
As a health facility owner, Hergenrother said, “I live, eat and breathe the Ohio Revised Code.”
Hergenrother said the state and Columbiana County need to be business-friendly.
The state also needs to invest more money in underfunded schools, parks and crumbling infrastructure, she added.
wilkinson@vindy.com