Ohio’s “private” economic development corporation boasts that even though it’s legally private, it practices the “highest standards of accountability and transparency…” But when it comes to how much the agency pays its employees in what used to be public dollars, its disclosures are far from complete.
It doesn’t name the employees receiving salaries as the Ohio Checkbook does for all state employees. Instead, it uses vague and redundant job titles only. It doesn’t distinguish between full and part-year employees. And it refused to provide the information on a searchable spreadsheet, although it maintains it on one.
Created in 2011, JobsOhio has been controversial from the start. It’s exempt from open records law and its website proclaims it engages in “complete public reporting of how it spends private dollars.”
But it’s a corporation that was set up by the state legislature and it was allowed to make the only bid to run the state liquor franchise while paying the state far less than it’s worth.
The “private dollars” it spends all used to go into the state treasury. And JobsOhio “complete public reporting” doesn’t lay out the contracts for more than $1 billion in incentives it’s given to businesses, what was promised, or whether the beneficiaries kept those promises.
The agency has also stirred controversy by providing financial benefits to businesses run by people with connections to the agency.
And most concerning, perhaps, is that while it claims many wins, JobsOhio hasn’t provided hard evidence that it’s not paying businesses to do what they would have anyway. JobsOhio has been up and running for a dozen years, yet Ohio lags its neighbors and the nation as a whole in job growth.
Despite that, the Ohio Controlling Board last month extended the agency’s liquor franchise another 15 years — to 2053 — without requiring it to pay taxpayers anything in addition to the $1.41 billion it paid for its initial 25-year franchise. It’s not as if the state doesn’t need the money. House Speaker Matt Huffman, R-Lima, says Ohio can’t afford to fund its public schools — an economic development priority if ever there was one.
When it comes to how much JobsOhio pays its own employees, its transparency also leaves room for improvement.
Asked last month for a listing of compensation, a JobsOhio spokesman said an open-records request would have to be filed with the Ohio Department of Development. The department responded 19 days after a request with a PDF table listing 2023 salaries for 159 positions.
When asked why employee names weren’t listed alongside the positions and why the data weren’t on a spreadsheet so it could be more easily analyzed, a spokesman for the Department of Development referred those questions to JobsOhio, which created the document that the public has to obtain from a state agency at taxpayer expense.
The JobsOhio salaries range from less than $10,000 for interns to $709,000 for President and CEO J.P. Nauseef. But the table didn’t give his name, and it only refers to him as “President and Chief Investment Officer.
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Asked about the discrepancy, JobsOhio spokesman Matt Englehart said “J.P. Nauseef’s official title is still President and Chief Investment Officer, but the JobsOhio Board of Directors permits the President and Chief Investment Officer to also use the ‘CEO’ title.”
The other job titles listed in the PDF table are so vague as to be meaningless.
“Senior” appears in them 37 times, with salaries ranging from $64,000 for a “senior office services manager” to $362,000 for a “senior managing director, talent.” The word “manager” appears 62 times at similarly divergent rates of pay.
Englehart was asked why JobsOhio didn’t include the names of people receiving what used to be public dollars next to the positions they filled.
“To protect the privacy of JobsOhio associates,” he said. “Total compensation paid is disclosed annually to the Ohio Department of Development, as required by (the law) and the Services Agreement between JobsOhio and (the Department of Development). The agreed-upon reporting is compliant with Ohio law and is an example of how we work with our state partners and of our commitment to attracting jobs and investment for Ohioans responsibly, with accountability and transparency.”
That “accountability and transparency” is objectively less than what the state — which used to control the liquor franchise — does with its own employees. Mason Waldvogel, the Department of Development spokesman who provided the JobsOhio compensation data, makes $130,000 a year, according to Ohio Checkbook.
Englehart, the JobsOhio spokesman, was also asked what kind of document the PDF table was generated from, and why didn’t JobsOhio just provide a searchable spreadsheet.
“The document is a PDF of a spreadsheet,” he said. “It is provided in PDF form to prevent manipulation by recipients.”
Which seemed strange, given that a person with the most rudimentary computer skills was able to import the PDF back into a searchable spreadsheet and manipulate the information. Some details of JobsOhio’s 2023 compensation.
- Total amount — $21,224,256
- No. of employees making $300,000 or more — Nine
- No. of employees making $200,000 or more — 24
- Median compensation (including interns and part-year) — $113,145
- Ohio per capita income for 2023 — $39,455
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