Fisher wearing 2 caps

I was a little surprised to see Strickland nominate LT Gov. Lee Fisher as his econ Development Director. I had expected Fisher to play a more "Cheney" like role in the administration and help formulate broad policy and help navigate it through rocky legislative process waters. It's a lot to ask to have him do that and head the crucial role of spurring much needed economic development in Ohio.

Hypo has some thoughts, and I think "we'll just have to wait and see" is probably the only answer that can be given right now.

As a few starter ideas for economic development I'd suggest some of the following

1. Helping small businesses with health insurance costs. Good benefits help attract and retain the best employees. Allowing small businesses to pool might be a good place to start

2. Sharing some risk with established small businesses that require capital to expand. Unlike new startups where the rate of failure is high, the risk here is much lower.

3. Sometimes it's the simple things. There ought to be a way for new startups to be able to easily hunt out the available grants and VC outfits. Aggregating this information would make life much simpler for a lot of people.

There's obviously going to be focus on emerging tech such as energy and biomed. But these are quite risky, R&D capital intensive and long term.

Whatever they come up with I hope it's comprehensive and not piecemeal.