Job Ready Sites program rules may get deep review to loosen funding

BYLINE: Jeff Bell

Some Ohio legislators want to send the state's fledgling Job Ready Sites economic development program back to the shop for a tune-up.

The problem, said state Sen. John Carey, R-Wellston, is the program's guidelines can prevent some communities from applying for millions of dollars in state aid to prepare large business and manufacturing sites for development.

Carey's Senate Bill 24 would address that by keeping the Ohio Department of Development from writing rules that would exclude any county from applying for Job Ready Sites funding.

The bill, passed by the Senate March 28 and awaiting assignment to a House committee, would also require the Department of Development to bring all rules for the program to the legislature's Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review.

Carey said lawmakers were under the impression such review would occur when they passed a bill last year to implement the Job Ready Sites program. But that did not happen, he said, because the Development Department imposed program guidelines developed by consultants.

The rules are too narrow, he said, pointing to a promising project in Putnam County that didn't qualify because it sat 19 miles from an interstate highway instead of the 10 miles set forth in the guidelines.

And Jackson County was disqualified on a project because, according to the guidelines, the site lacked sufficient gas-line capacity though Columbia Gas of Ohio Inc. had judged the line to be large enough to serve almost any major industry.

"It is too bureaucratic," Carey said of the application process.

Competitive footing

Funding for the program comes from the $2 billion public works and economic development bond package approved by Ohio voters in November 2005. The program is to receive $150 million over seven years to prepare large parcels for development.

The program awarded $51.5 million to 18 projects in fiscal 2006 and 2007. That included $12 million for four projects in Central Ohio - Metro Equities Industrial Park in Marysville, Pataskala Corporate Park, the SciTech campus at Ohio State University and Dublin's Central Ohio Innovation Center.

But many counties received nothing, in part, because program guidelines are too restrictive, Carey said.

He said S.B. 24 was crafted after discussions with Gov. Ted Strickland's office, which inherited oversight of the Job Ready Sites program from former Gov. Bob Taft's development team.

Also on board, Carey said, are the trade groups representing the state's economic development specialists and businesses, such as Columbia Gas, with a stake in economic development.

"When you have a new program, you always realize you can improve it the second time around," said Darnita Bradley, Columbia Gas' manager of local government policy and economic development.

The goal now, she said, is to fine-tune a program vital to economic development in Ohio.

"It puts us in the driver's seat," Bradley said. "It makes us more competitive in state-to-state competition because other states already have this."

Still attractive

TechColumbus CEO Ted Ford said he understands the need to re-evaluate the Job Ready Sites guidelines even though Central Ohio projects fared well in the first round of funding.

"If some community feels shut out," he said, "then something needs to be done to moderate that. We'll still be able to put solid proposals out there."

The state expects to award $30 million in Job Ready Sites grants in fiscal 2008, according to the Development Department.

The Strickland administration is willing to listen to the issues being raised by Carey and communities that feel shut out of the funding process, said Steve Schoeny, an acting deputy director at the department.

"There certainly has been a lot of good done by the program," he said, "but there is room for improvement. We want to make sure we fund the right locations."

The guidelines may need tweaking, Schoeny said, but its purpose still has broad support in the development community.

"We need to have a program like this," he said, "so there is an inventory (of sites) sitting there that are shovel-ready."

With the stakes so high, it is easy to understand the frustrations of communities that failed to land funding from the program, said J.C. Wallace, executive director of the Ohio Economic Development Association, a 430-member trade group of economic development specialists.

"Any time you start something like this," he said, "you need to go back and make sure the guidelines and procedures work. Senator Carey's bill does a good job on that."