JobsOhio reverts to hiding pay

State agency should open its books

From its creation by the General Assembly in 2011, JobsOhio has operated with a troubling degree of secrecy enabled by the quasi-private status lawmakers bestowed on it. The central question of how much secrecy it should be afforded is still open, but one thing should be clear: The agency should report the total compensation of its employees.

We say “should be clear” because JobsOhio’s latest filing with the state includes only employees’ taxable income, leaving off thousands of dollars per employee in untaxed compensation such as retirement contributions and health-insurance premiums.

JobsOhio similarly lowballed employees’ pay three years ago in filings reflecting 2014 operations. After The Dispatch discovered and reported on the discrepancy, the agency reported full compensation for 2015 but then reverted to reporting less than the full compensation for 2016 and 2017.

The omission isn’t hard for someone familiar with public records to figure out because, as a tax-exempt nonprofit organization, JobsOhio also has to file a federal form disclosing financial information including salaries for certain executives, and it puts the full amount on the federal form.

But for most Ohioans, if they learn anything about how JobsOhio operates, it will be from the reports it files with the state, and those records should give an accurate picture.

Transparency matters especially with JobsOhio because its structure leaves the door open to abuse.

Privatizing the state’s economic-development efforts, formerly handled by a fully public Department of Development, was a central element of Gov. John Kasich’s platform when he first ran for governor in 2010. The idea was that a private nonprofit entity would be nimbler than the old development department and thus better able to strike deals to woo companies bringing jobs.

The problem is that it operates with what used to be public money and does so essentially out of public view. The money to pay its many six-figure salaries and to offer loans and grants to lure businesses comes from profits on state wholesale liquor sales.

Before JobsOhio, those profits fed the general fund, but as part of the agency’s creation, lawmakers enabled a complex deal in which the private agency, with money it raised by selling bonds, paid the state $1.5 billion to lease those liquor profits for 25 years.

The JobsOhio law requires the agency to report some basic data, including salaries and the terms of deals (only after they are finalized). But as a private agency, much of what it does with state liquor profits is cloaked in secrecy.

This could allow a selfdealing employee or board member to steer loans, grants or tax incentives to favored companies.

Auditor Dave Yost has for years demanded the right to audit JobsOhio’s books. Republican lawmakers blocked him in 2013 with a hastily passed amendment that explicitly defines the liquor profits leased to JobsOhio as private money, putting them off-limits to the auditor’s scrutiny.

Backers of the system argue that JobsOhio needs some secrecy in order to negotiate with companies. However much truth that holds, it’s no justification for underreporting salaries or keeping the books permanently secret.

JobsOhio should stop playing games with reporting and lawmakers should open its books to the state auditor.