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Innovation will keep young people in Ohio
First of a three-part series
By Marc Kovac
COLUMBUS
Attend one of Gov. John Kasich’s speeches and you’ll likely get a history lesson on Ohio’s economy in the past, present and future.
Kasich has a vision of what Ohio can become — a place where the tax and regulatory environment help support and encourage new energy, biotechnology, information technology and other emerging industries alongside the state’s mainstay manufacturing and agricultural base.
It’s the innovation, Kasich told an audience of business people recently, that’s going to help drive young people to stay or relocate to Ohio.
“These are the things that will keep young people here,” he said. “What really gets young people pumped up is the ability to see the future through the jobs that they do. That’s what we have to drive in Ohio. And that means we must have an environment in Ohio that attracts that. We have to have an environment in Ohio that really encourages entrepreneurship and small businesses, because small businesses drive change.”
He added, “We need a great mix both of the new industries of the 21st century and retaining and improving the industries that have been around in Ohio for a long time.”
Kasich offered the comments during a year-end speech before chamber of commerce groups from Columbus and elsewhere in the state.
He used the occasion to tout his administration’s work to expand Ohio’s jobs numbers and his plans to continue such efforts during his new term.
Kasich said Ohio’s workforce has expanded since the recession days before his first term.
But he said he’s not satisfied with where things stand today.
“The situation in this state, as best I can tell, we’re up about 260,000 jobs, which is a great comeback from 350,000 down,” he said. “People say, ‘Why aren’t you all the way back?’ Come on. That’s kind of a ridiculous question. When you grow 260,000, you’re definitely on your way, and no one ever said we’re unfurling a banner that says ‘Mission Accomplished,’ because the mission is far from being accomplished, and I’m going to tell you why: Ohio lulled itself into a false sense of security and got themselves into a very comfortable pew. In other words, while the steel mills are churning out the smoke ... and we’re making those cars and the farmers are farming and that’s it, we don’t need to worry about anything else, we’ll be good forever. Well, we lost vision, and, you know, people who lose vision perish. So right along the time when IT, information technology, the new industries were coming to the forefront of America, Ohio was asleep at the wheel. We know this. For a while, we’ve been losing those old-line industries. ...
“I have to look at the cold, hard facts sometimes, and they’re not always fun. We were losing those industries. We’re not losing them anymore. Some of them are actually coming back because of economic conditions worldwide. Raising wages in China, higher transportation costs — these are reasons why a lot of them are reshoring. ... Today, at Honda, where they make cars, is one thing. They’re now 3-D printing materials that are just absolutely unbelievable. So in the old-line industries, we’re beginning to see the application of technology and in some of these companies actually advanced manufacturing. ... We are landing a cloud-computing company with a billion-dollar investment, once all the bows are tied — IBM data analytics, a new industry.”
The governor wants Ohio’s education system — primary, secondary and higher — to be more geared toward preparing young people for jobs that exist in the state.
“We just have to make sure that our people are being schooled for the jobs that exist,” he said.
On the Coming Term
Kasich vowed to continue to push policies that will strengthen Ohio’s economy, whether he has support initially from business groups or not:
“It would be easy for the Legislature or easy for a governor to kind of cruise for a while, OK?” he said. “It’s unacceptable, because if we don’t push forward in a very aggressive way, we’ll go backwards again and Ohio will be a flyover state.”