News

President Trump's budget request for the E.P.A. eliminates the $300 million a year Great Lakes Restoration initiative. Dennis McAndrew explains that companies looking to expand or relocate consider every potential risk, including water. A weakened perception of Lake Erie's future benefits is a threat to Northern Ohio's ability to attract companies.

President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence recently reached a deal with Carrier Corp., which includes a $7 million incentives package to keep jobs in Indiana instead of sending them to Mexico. Steve Weitzner discusses the dangerous precedent of rewarding companies that threaten to leave and notes that the Carrier Deal rewarded a company that is actually cutting a lot of jobs in the state. Steve's comments were also picked up by SFGATE, The Seattle Times, Philly.com, and other publications.

Silverlode structured an incentives package for a rigid plastic packaging company to expand its Bellevue, Ohio plant. Amcor Rigid Plastics will invest $45 million into a new 186,000 square feet of production and warehousing space and will hire additional employees.

The new JobsOhio talent recruitement tool is similar to Louisiana's FastStart program. Steve Weitzner's client benefited from Louisiana's program when the state recruited and trained people (at the State's cost) to replicate a sophisticated assembly operation that was moving from New England.

On September 22, the Ohio Development Services Agency (DSA) announced an additional round of training grant funding through the Ohio Incumbent Workforce Training Voucher Program. The total amount of funding available statewide will be $6.9 million, which is the same as last year.

The program can reimburse companies for 50% of the cost of employee training expenses, capped at $75,000 per entity and $4,000 per employee.