Fisher wearing 2 caps


staff - Posted on 28 November 2006

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.

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No reason to be even a little surprised. The Plain Dealer said Fisher was in line for Development Director in its election results story on November 8. (They also said Eric Fingerhut was in line for ODJFS.)

Also, remember that Development runs a lot more than business development programs -- e.g. Federal HEAP/weatherization, community action agencies, CDBG for non-entitlement communities, etc.

Someone said that it was kind of a given because Bruce Johnson currently holds this assignment. Does anyone know what Johnson has accomplished or worked on in this role or has he been as invisible and ineffectual as his head guy?
Let's work together to retire Ken Blackwell from politics

You don't seriously expect anyone on this blog to have anything positive to say about the accomplishments of a Republican-run state agency do you? However, from an admittedly partisan viewpoint, there doesn't seem to to have been a heck of a lot of economic development in Ohio in recent years.

I'm sure though that if you check the Development website (http://www.odod.state.oh.us/), you'll find many many press releases extolling their accomplishments. "One man's meat is another man's poison!"

I was simply asking what programs or plans he had worked on. I know Taft has largely been the Great Invisible Governor so I wasn't expecting a lot more from Bruce Johnson. However, if he'd done anything more than make encouraging speeches at Chamber of Commerce lunches, surely it must be a matter of record. Anyway, this sounds like the type of a position that a knowledgable go-getter like Fisher could really do something positive with.
Let's work together to retire Ken Blackwell from politics
what Development has been doing, then go to their website, read the press releases, and try to separate the wheat from the chaff. My point was, don't ask BSB participants to tell you what the GOP Development Department has accomplished because no one here is likely to have the foggiest idea.

I missed that.

I do think one of the lackings in the political coverage of the Gov race was who these men wight appoint to their cabinets. It's as important as what they think policy should be.

Watch now for Stinzi to come back as Insurance Director.

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