Shownotes
The Real Issue with Economic Incentives: "A guy from Microsoft told the New York Times, you know, we don't look at these incentive deals when we're looking to locate somewhere because they've got all these other considerations." - Marty Schladen
We welcome our guest, investigative journalist Marty Schladen from the Ohio Capital Journal, as we explore the origins, operations, and implications JobsOhio, this private corporation that plays a massive role in Ohio's economic landscape.
Key Highlights from the Episode:
- What is JobsOhio? Established in 2011, JobsOhio was championed by former governor John Kasich, intended to run more efficiently as a private corporation rather than a public entity. It manages the state's liquor franchise, and the financial relationship between public funds and private operations is examined.
- Economic Impact & Transparency: We discuss the lack of transparency in JobsOhio's operations. With the company not subjected to public audits, questions about its accountability arise. Controversially, Ohio Auditor at the time, Dave Yost (who is now running for governor), was denied the right to audit JobsOhio by the Ohio Supreme Court.
- JobsOhio's Claims of Success: The organization claims significant contributions to job creation in Ohio. However, an analysis reveals that 75% of the time, economic incentives provided by JobsOhio to businesses might not influence their decisions to operate in the state, potentially squandering resources that could have been managed publicly.
- Public Concerns: We spotlight the real-life implications for residents, particularly those whose lives are disrupted by major economic developments facilitated by JobsOhio, without having a say in these decisions. The conversation also reveals a unique perspective on how one-party rule might affect state politics, growth strategies, and transparency.
- Looking Forward: As listeners, you're encouraged to question what JobsOhio's role should be in future economic developments. Does their approach align with modern economic demands, or are they operating on an outdated model?
We loved having Marty Schladen on the show, and he certainly left us with more questions than answers. If you have any insights or thoughts, we'd be thrilled to hear from you!
For those interested in exploring more about Marty's work, check out the Ohio Capital Journal for in-depth investigative articles on various important topics.
Recorded at the 511 Studios, in the Brewery District in downtown Columbus, OH.
info@commonsenseohioshow.com
Copyright 2025 Common Sense Ohio
Stephen Palmer is the Managing Partner for the law firm, Palmer Legal Defense. He has specialized almost exclusively in criminal defense for over 26 years. Steve is also a partner in Criminal Defense Consultants, a firm focused wholly on helping criminal defense attorneys design winning strategies for their clients.
Norm Murdock is an automobile racing driver and owner of a high-performance and restoration car parts company. He earned undergraduate degrees in literature and journalism and graduated with a Juris Doctor from the University of Cincinnati College of Law in 1985. He worked in the IT industry for two years before launching a career in government relations in Columbus, Ohio. Norm has assisted clients in the Transportation, Education, Healthcare, and Public Infrastructure sectors.
Brett Johnson, My Podcast Guy®, is an award-winning podcast consultant and small business owner for nearly 10 years, leaving a long career in radio. He is passionate about helping small businesses tell their story through podcasts, and he believes podcasting is a great opportunity for different voices to speak and be heard.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/
Transcripts
Welcome to another edition of Common Sense Ohio. We are staring down the February already. Good grief. It's twenty first. Wow. Mid midway through the first quarter. And and, speaking of that, of course, you'll you see a new face here at the table. We, we'll get to to Marty here in just a second.
Brett Johnson [:Steve had to bow out and and actually make some money with the practice. So, but, Common Sense Ohio being brought to you by Harper CPA Plus. If you're, looking for a trusted advisor, can actually relate to you and your business and, making some, rectifications of what you may have made, the bad mistakes last year with your business
Marty Schladen [:That's not right.
Brett Johnson [:Harper Plus, CPA. Yeah, actually, Glenn will be on the show next week. We're gonna talk about, some tax stuff next and and not advice, but just, where it stands.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Things are really crazy.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. With the CTA stuff. Yeah. And yeah. That's just back. That's back. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:March 21 is a new deadline. Jeez. And, you know Unbelievable. I'm hoping the Trump administration kills that thing with fire.
Marty Schladen [:Yes.
Norm Murdock [:And, you know, because small business people all over the country who don't even know about it will be caught out. Yeah. And it's just not right that that there's this thing they're supposed to file and up to $10,000 a day penalty for failure to file. Right. Which is, you know, a guy running a concession on the corner, you know, like in a Bengals game or or a Brown. I mean, it's it's crazy. He's gotta file this thing.
Brett Johnson [:Right. Right. I ran into a, it was at a, luncheon talking about CTAs and and, a woman I was sitting next to, she's part of a, a title company.
Norm Murdock [:Okay.
Brett Johnson [:And she was talking about all these, real estate people that not realtors, but, you know, they just own all these buildings. And every building may be under an LLC.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Right. You know, because of
Brett Johnson [:how they've had a structure. It's like there could be somebody that's filing fifty, sixty, 70, 80 of these things online.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. And if they miss one, like, potentially, the penalties are severe.
Brett Johnson [:It's terrible. It's terrible. But but, yeah. If you need some help with with what maybe you made some mistakes last year and need some help, you know, navigating what you need to try to do better for 2025, harvard plus c p a dot com is the place to go talk to Glenn. Tell him we sent you there. At the table, you see a new face. Marty Shlatin, thank you for joining us.
Marty Schladen [:I'm happy to be here.
Brett Johnson [:Good. Now, last week, Norman and and we, all three, you know, kind of uncovered, for ourselves, this JobsOhio situation where, the funding is questionable, and it's been this way a long time. We just, you know, we, like anybody else, any other Buckeye, just doesn't really know about it or taken the time to do some research about it. So, Norman and I did some research. We all three talked about who can we bring to the table, who can bring the table, and, you know, we don't know Marty, but but I found some articles that you wrote on the, through the Ohio Capital Journal and thought, this is good stuff. Let's see if we can get him on the show to at least bring some history to what what is JobsOhio? How did it begin from your reporting? And where is it going? And how can what is there anything we can do? You know, that sort of thing.
Norm Murdock [:So how it first came to our attention, Marty, is we had this guest, a lady from Natascala, and, she told us about JobsOhio and she says, you know, they have this franchise to run the Department of Liquor Control, essentially. You know, so if you look at a chart of state government, I guess there's still a Department of Liquor Control and they do, you know, police functions and other things. But the running of the stores and the and the and the profits and the taxes, you know, that's why we have you here to to to break that down for us. But she told us, you know, about that, and I thought she was out of her cookie. Like, I just was like, you're telling me the Department of Liquor Control is essentially to benefit and and being run by a private corporation that planted this solar panel factory right next to your family farm, and that's why you're upset. Now I I we didn't debate it with her, but it was so outrageous that I said
Brett Johnson [:We just kinda left it on the table for a minute, kinda going,
Norm Murdock [:oh, okay.
Marty Schladen [:I I
Norm Murdock [:was like Yeah. You gotta be kidding. They're like,
Marty Schladen [:yeah. Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Well, I I wanna give a little background to Marty. Marty has been a reporter for decades working in Indiana, Texas, and other places before returning to here in Ohio at the, working with Columbus Dispatch in 02/2017. He's won state and national journalism awards for investigations into utility regulation, public corruption, the environment, prescription drug spending, and other matters. Again, he's a reporter for the Ohio Capital Journal. We talked a little bit about this before we started recording. Can you talk about, okay, the Ohio Capital Journal, how it's funded? I think, listeners have never heard of it. I want them to understand who you are.
Brett Johnson [:What is Ohio Capital Journal? And the the thing, actually, the changing landscape of how we, you know, cover news to a certain degree.
Marty Schladen [:And I'm happy to do it because, you know, we obviously are in this changing landscape as newspaper struggle more and more. Ohio Capital Journal has existed now, I think, for five years. It's a part of State's Newsroom, which is a five zero one c three news organization. We have newsrooms now in 40 state capitals. We have relationships with other news organizations in the other 10. The whole idea is as, you know, coverage of state government, it's really important. You're talking about LLCs. That's controlled, you know, in the you know, on Capitol Square.
Marty Schladen [:And the idea is to augment that coverage. You know, whenever I've been a reporter for more than thirty years now, and whenever you write stories that people in power don't like, they start accusing you of having an agenda. So we get accused of a lot of stuff about having, you know, you know, political agenda, but the fact is our funding comes from sources I don't even know about. You know, people don't call me up and tell me what to write or not what, you know, what not to write. So it's been a really wonderful experience for me. I think, you know, for you guys, it's gotta feel the same way. We've really built something. I've been I've been with the Capital Journal since the start of the pandemic, and I you know, our profile is, you know, has gradually risen, but that's why I'm really happy to be here to talk to you about it today.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. We we read your stuff, and I think it's fair. I think it's down the middle of the of the alley. And, you know, what I especially love that is almost absent from news, you know, electronic or print is you're an investigative reporter. You dig into the facts. You dig in behind, like, where other reporters might stop at a press release. That's not your deal. You you dig.
Norm Murdock [:And I I mean, that's the only way we're really gonna find out about things like JobsOhio is when people are persistent and file FOIAs and, you know, just keep banging, the the, you know, their sources to spill the beans. Well, those
Marty Schladen [:are I really love those kinds of stories that, you know, on the surface, they sound dry as dirt and, you know, no you know, who would care?
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Marty Schladen [:Or, like, with utilities or drug pricing, it's so complicated. You get a headache, you know, just thinking that, you know, about it for a second. But as soon as people start not really answering your questions or they tell you, oh, that's too complicated for you to understand, I reach for my wallet, you know. Yeah. Yeah. That that's when you know there's something there that they don't want you to know. And a lot of times, it's big money, like, you know, the whole household deal.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Oh, God. No question. Yeah. And so at the I went to one of his fundraisers when he was, gonna be speaker and former governor Rhodes was there. And it was at a shooting range. And I was sent there as the pack check delivery boy for, school business officials in Ohio. We have 800, roughly, school districts, and I was their lobbyist.
Norm Murdock [:And, man, would I like to get that check back. I mean, I had no idea how outrageously corrupt he was.
Marty Schladen [:It flowed like water. I sat through that entire trial down in Cincinnati, and, it was amazing. You know? One meeting, 5 4 hundred thousand dollar check gets slid across the table.
Norm Murdock [:Unbelievable. Yeah. You know? And you can just imagine like, governor Rhodes, you know, I mean, he had a complicated history, four term governor. He never would have been there if he knew about any of this stuff.
Marty Schladen [:I think that's right. I think, you know, there was shadiness back in the day.
Norm Murdock [:Oh, sure.
Marty Schladen [:But I think the scale is completely different now, the amount of money that flows through, you know.
Norm Murdock [:It's off the hook.
Marty Schladen [:Yeah. And working stiffs like us, we, you know Yeah. Can't even imagine. You start covering these stories and you get a newer, you know, a million dollars starts to sound like not much, And that's crazy. It is crazy. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:Tell us about, if you will, the structure of JobsOhio. You know, previously and maybe still, there was something called the Ohio Department of Development. And they would reach out to say, the German egg farmer over in Germany, Anton Polman, and then he cited his egg farm in Croton, Ohio, just up the river from me. The, you know, a branch of the Licking River that it was on and then there was a big pollution, event. And it was the Ohio Department of Development that enticed him, brought him in, and of course, all of that's audited. All of that's public record. So tell me about JobsOhio. There must have been a reason they created it, and your perception of that would be great, and how the structure works.
Marty Schladen [:Well, it was very controversial from the beginning. It goes back to 2011. It was something that was really championed by former governor John Kasich. And, yeah, there there are these rationales that are brought about. You know, one of them was that we needed a private corporation to do this because that way they could do their deals with, you know, and not show
Brett Johnson [:all their cards. They didn't need
Marty Schladen [:to be subject to, you know, the open records and, open meetings laws that, you know, a real government agency did.
Norm Murdock [:Let me let me just ask you. Of not have to show their cards, like, to whom who were they hiding the activity from in order to do this Department of Development or this jobs, recruitment? Where was it other states that, like, if we're competing against Indiana for a data center, they don't want the state of Indiana to to use public records to find out what Ohio is trying to do? Or what who are they hiding it from?
Marty Schladen [:Well, that's the rationale.
Norm Murdock [:That is the rationale.
Marty Schladen [:Yeah. You know, I've been I've been around too long, so I've been around since, I've I've watched the proliferation of, you know, open meetings laws. And even at the small town level, public officials don't like it. You know, they don't. The mayor wants to be on the phone with three members, his three allies on city council to decide strategy. They don't see anything wrong with that. But, you know, hey. You're supposed to do that in open session so everybody can hear, you know, what what you're saying.
Marty Schladen [:Well, you know, especially when you talk in the business world, these people are especially not used to that kind of discipline. And I think Kasich and his allies wanted to get out of it. So they went through this process that was extremely controversial, because they they created this private corporation, but only one group that was created by the legislature had a chance to bid on the liquor franchise. Wow. You know? So it was a field of one. And, you know, there's
Norm Murdock [:I just wanna say, as a Republican, I am in favor of market forces and open marketplace competition. And what what Marty just described is a monopoly. That it's just what
Marty Schladen [:it is. It was it was set up from the start. Yeah. And it went before the Supreme Court because my understanding is there are passages in the state constitution that say that you can't, you know, favor a a single business over others.
Norm Murdock [:Oh my god.
Marty Schladen [:And it got booted out of the Supreme Court on the grounds that the people who were suing didn't have standing because they couldn't show that they were being harmed. And this despite the fact that this was public money that was going, you know. I mean, it's
Brett Johnson [:Somebody has to represent us?
Marty Schladen [:Yeah. Yeah. Oh, wow. Okay. So that's how it was born. And then, you know, then we step into the wonderful world of economic development, which, like, what you were just describing, that there are reasons why states and local governments legitimately would wanna to go talk to businesses and say, hey, you know, if there's something we can do to help you, you know, smooth the way Yeah. Let's do it. Yeah.
Marty Schladen [:But that's grown into something else altogether. You know? JobsOhio got control of the state liquor, franchise. Their lease was way cheaper than what the amount of money the liquor franchise generates. They basically had to pay off $1,410,000,000. This was bonded indebtedness. They floated bonds on other stuff before. So JobsOhio floated its own bonds. Those are now retired.
Marty Schladen [:And then what happened last week is the, controlling board continued that liquor franchise for another fifteen years to 2053 for no additional money. They gave them
Norm Murdock [:And and they didn't insist on the right to audit them. That is still off the table.
Marty Schladen [:It's still that that's part of the law. They're this private corporation now. That's, you know, Well,
Norm Murdock [:I read about, Yost, who, of course, has announced he's running for governor, back when he was Ohio's auditor. I read this piece where he sued for the right to audit them, and it went to the Supreme Court. And it got batted down for the reason that you just said, Marty. The Ohio Supreme Court said, well, it may be public funds that they eventually get, but they're a private corporation and the state auditor doesn't have the right to, audit them any more than General Motors or Boeing. You know, like, they're just another private but but yet their sole funding is taxpayer dollars.
Brett Johnson [:Right.
Marty Schladen [:You know, this that because of this lease, this money, presto chango, goes from public to being private.
Norm Murdock [:That's outrageous.
Marty Schladen [:And and they're very adamant in in to the point of being misleading, actually. They say, you know, we're a private corporation. These are not tax dollars. They don't, you know, on their on their website, they don't say, oh, this used to be all of our money. They Yeah. You know, they they make it sound like they're the same thing as General Motors or
Norm Murdock [:something. An idea, Brett. I'm sorry. I'm I'm hopping the mic. Go for it. But but give us some idea of how that gets split. So my understanding initially was, JobsOhio got all of the proceeds from sales at liquors at the Ohio Department of Liquor Control. And I and and and I've since heard somewhere from oh, I knew who it was.
Norm Murdock [:It was our friend, Greg Lawson, at the Buckeye Institute. He said, Norm, I think possibly the amount that JobsOhio gets is so much like a percent or it's a ceiling, and then the rest goes to the general revenue fund. But I don't know if that's accurate. He wasn't sure.
Marty Schladen [:That's accurate. They return about $90,000,000 a year. There's there's this threshold after which it's a $75.25 split.
Norm Murdock [:Oh, okay.
Marty Schladen [:Okay. 75% goes back to the state, 25% continues to go to JobsOhio.
Brett Johnson [:And that was extended with the additional fifteen year contract
Marty Schladen [:as well as part of that deal that was extended. Okay. But it's not that's another thing that's important to another thing that I think is a little deceptive. Controlling board, representative at the, at the, controlling board meeting or the, office of budget management rep representative, you know, was going on and on about how that amount returned to the state has grown as if that was due to JobsOhio's, stellar management of the liquor franchise. But it ignores the fact that, you know, just a lot that that franchise has increased in value. As everybody listening knows drink more now. Drink more and and everything, including booze, is more expensive.
Norm Murdock [:And they and they did privatize, liquor stores, you know, so that people who wanna, you know, sell booze, they don't do it in a state owned facility like we did, I don't know what, fifteen years ago.
Marty Schladen [:I used to know, I think it was longer than fifteen years ago. Maybe twenty. Or even thirty maybe. But it
Norm Murdock [:used to be you had to go in a state.
Marty Schladen [:I remember.
Norm Murdock [:And I bet I bet part of the increase in sales is just the convenience factor that you don't have to drive around to a specific store in your city or village. There's
Marty Schladen [:I hadn't thought of that, but you're absolutely right. You know, I grew up in Springdale, Ohio, North of Cincinnati, and I think there was one state store in our neighborhood, you know. And I mean I mean, it was a thing to my parents. Like, I'm going to the state store.
Norm Murdock [:Right. You know?
Brett Johnson [:Well, and that's a good point because I know, as an example, Giant Eagle makes a big deal out of oh, god. Well, they must have some kind of whiskeys or bourbons that come in infrequently. And and and I'm not a bourbon drinker, but I've heard people that do drink bourbon. They it's lined up. Yeah. To get it because it's limited. They make it a big deal versus the state stores probably never did. It's a it it's definitely the revenues coming from, you know, the Giant Eagles of the world or Krogers of the world making it a big deal.
Brett Johnson [:They're making it a a profit center for them. I'm sure.
Marty Schladen [:It's one of those examples where privatization probably was a good thing. I mean, you know, people are probably drunker, which may not be a good thing. But,
Brett Johnson [:but it opened up. Yeah. If you think about it, the local breweries and that's where the thing too. I'm sure yeah. The access point
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:For local stuff is probably easier because of it. So, yeah, you're right. There's always goods and bads. Right. Probably. I'm just speculating.
Marty Schladen [:So But in terms of marketing liquor, you know Yeah. You know, private, companies are better at that than the state's
Norm Murdock [:gonna be. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. For sure. Well, so if you if you have the most recent year figure approximate in your head, what is the what is so that's pretty cool. So so if at least we know what that split is, '75, '20 '5. So whatever the receipts are for the state of Ohio, we can do the math and figure out what jobs Ohio is at least getting in raw funding, from this franchise.
Norm Murdock [:Do we know the latest figures? Do you have that roughly, I think, 300,000,000 or what was it?
Marty Schladen [:Well, that was a year.
Norm Murdock [:You know That's what I meant.
Marty Schladen [:Yeah. Per per year, roughly. And I'm I imagine it's grown since then. That's a two year old number,
Norm Murdock [:three well, hell. Two two and a half years ago. Well, it
Marty Schladen [:goes back to '21, actually.
Norm Murdock [:Because you wrote this mega article about jobs, and that's where I'm getting my info. It's it's from you because you dug it out.
Marty Schladen [:And it's well, and I haven't because I'm doing a lot of different stuff right now. Sure. I guess everybody is. We're only a five member newsroom. But, when I dug in then, that was in 2021. It was, like, I think, $330,000,000 a year they were getting from that franchise, which struck me because the initial pay down they were doing was $1,410,000,000, which meant that, you know, with those numbers, you've you've got that thing paid off in five years.
Norm Murdock [:Absolutely. Mhmm. You know? Right. Yeah. So everything else is gravy. I think in that article, and and again, I could be mixing articles because I've I've tried to research it a little bit before our show here. I think you mentioned or one of the other reporters that they have on hand either in cash or in some kind of investment vehicle, as much as 2,300,000,000.0.
Marty Schladen [:That wouldn't surprise me.
Norm Murdock [:That they have socked away to use us for whatever purposes they wanna use it for.
Marty Schladen [:That wouldn't surprise me. I mean, another two year old figure is, at that point, they had dispersed over a billion dollars in incentives to companies to come to the state. Okay. You know, and that gets to the thing that's the real question.
Norm Murdock [:Right. Right. Right. So one of the thesis upon which is this this entire contrivance is founded is we need to keep it secret from competing states. Okay. And and the second assumption is that the future is gonna be large footprint businesses with huge amounts of employees at the same site. And that's really not the way our economy is going. Like, I guess you gotta go back to, Ross Perot when when NAFTA was first passed, and he said, those are your jobs leaving.
Norm Murdock [:And everybody said the future is going to be, online, electronic, people working out of their homes. I mean, we have this figure from Doge. Only six percent of federal employees are actually going to the office because aft during COVID, they they had to stay at home, and they did the work from home. And so you're wondering, well, is Ohio really, like, fighting the previous world war when the future is gonna be totally different? We're gonna have dispersed employees, you know, and and Brett has mentioned that at these data centers, there's a very small number of actual human beings in some of these buildings. Even Amazon, their warehouses have these robots and, again, just a just a small skeletal number of employees. So the pretext for JobsOhio seems to me to be an older pretext. Like, let's bring in a Honda factory where there's gonna be tons of people working in Marysville or something. And and, of course, they had nothing to do with that.
Norm Murdock [:That was that was a department of development way back when. So I'm just wondering, like, what do you see on the business side? Like, does does the pretext, the thesis for under law underpinning a job to Ohio, is that a thesis that's gonna make sense in five or ten years even,
Marty Schladen [:you know? They would say yes. They they are they say they focus on 11, I think it is, you know, sectors that they think are growth employment sectors. But you're raising these really great questions, and that's where more transparency is in order. You know? Let's I mean, you know, somebody from JobsOhio ought to come on this show and talk about, you know, this is why we think this is the future of economic development. Yeah. And, you know, with these data centers, that's a you know, we're we're passing out, these huge incentives like they're candy. A guy from Microsoft told and this is what I think is the real issue. A guy from Microsoft told the New York Times, you know, we don't look at these incentive deals when we're looking to locate somewhere because they've got all these other considerations.
Marty Schladen [:You know, you know, you think about Intel locating here in Central Ohio. We offer a lot. You know, we're really close to a town with a major university. That means you've got a workforce.
Brett Johnson [:Mhmm.
Marty Schladen [:And those are thirsty factories. And, you know, so they they've been locating them out west, and I've spent some time out West writing about the unavailability of water. Well, Central Ohio's got plenty of water. You know, so we're giving them $2,000,000,000 in incentives to build a $20,000,000,000 plant, and there's just no reason to suspect that they wouldn't have just built that plant here anyway.
Norm Murdock [:Anyway.
Marty Schladen [:And and that's a big deal. I remember I was on And
Norm Murdock [:and and Indiana can know all about it, and it still doesn't matter.
Marty Schladen [:It you know? No. I mean, I think that another thing that why it was located there, and this was some this is secondhand, so I probably shouldn't repeat it. But I understand that Les Wexner played a role in working out the real estate deal up there.
Brett Johnson [:Oh, I wouldn't be surprised if you think about the proximity of where it is. Exactly. I mean Yeah. He was called at some point in time, probably. You know? Come on. Yeah.
Marty Schladen [:I think that think that's how it worked. But, you know, I was right after the great recession started, I was on the business desk in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and, you know, it's a big GM town. Mhmm. And I was talking to the guy who was the head of the head of communications for Volkswagen North America, and it was about these these economic incentives. Mhmm. You know, that they've located some auto plants down south, and the numbers are, like, you know, a billion or a million dollars per job for those plants, which is essentially essentially what we're doing for these data centers now.
Norm Murdock [:But at
Marty Schladen [:that time, that was a shocking number. Yeah. And this guy from Volkswagen told me on the record, a reporter, that, oh, yeah. We don't even really consider those those incentives. We know they're gonna come. We're we've got other more pressing considerations
Norm Murdock [:Wow.
Marty Schladen [:When we decide where we're gonna locate.
Brett Johnson [:And that's So they they knew that in 02/2011?
Marty Schladen [:Yeah. This was 02/2007 or '8.
Brett Johnson [:When when you know, referencing the time when JobsOhio was created.
Marty Schladen [:Oh, yeah. Oh, they knew that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is I mean, this has been a question that people have been raising for a long time, but, you know, you're kind of the turd in the punch bowl when you raise raise this issue in certain company.
Norm Murdock [:So let me ask a very impolite question. It's public record, but you would know because I frankly, I was not tuned into this. Like, this. You and Alana almost everybody else know all now. This little farmer lady from Pataskala who was our guest here started this ball rolling and then Brett and I have been getting more and more exercised over the thing. But the impolite question would be, when this thing passed and again, if you will, at the controlling board just last week when it passed a second time, basically. So they're in the middle of this twenty five year franchise deal that they they they got going back in roughly, say, 2013, and then that kicks off twenty five years. And then in the middle of that, it's not even run its course yet.
Norm Murdock [:They get another fifteen years. And so what I'm wondering is, has this become a partisan issue? That's how dumb I am on this issue. When Kasich pitched this and it got debated, you said it was controversial. I can see some Republicans not voting for this, but obviously, the majority did. What about the Democrats? Where are they on this? Is this a partisan thing now? Are both parties kind of okay with JobsOhio?
Marty Schladen [:Yeah. I'm not in the state house every day like my other, colleagues, so I'm not expert to say. But I think that this was a Main Street Republican issue or whatever you wanna call it when it got got started. But now, you know, there was one Democrat at the at the controlling board meeting, only person to raise questions. Yost, after he raised questions prior to the meeting, didn't send anybody. They wouldn't get back to me about it. So I wonder whether, you know, there's just
Norm Murdock [:And we and we reached out to them too. And you didn't
Marty Schladen [:hear back?
Norm Murdock [:Didn't hear back. Right?
Brett Johnson [:So yeah. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:Didn't hear back.
Marty Schladen [:So I wonder whether, you know, there are people, you know, as we all know Dave's running for governor, I wonder whether people are like, look, you know, this is the deal.
Norm Murdock [:because the governor gets to appoint the board. Yep.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Well, when I brought this up last week too, it's like, okay, the timing. It's like, well, if Yost is running, they're probably doing some chess going, okay, we need to get this renewed now because in two years, Yost could be governor.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Brett Johnson [:He could be.
Norm Murdock [:That's right.
Brett Johnson [:Who who's to say? He's got just as many odds as anybody else at the right now, looking at it at twenty twenty five.
Norm Murdock [:He's probably the leading candidate. Could be.
Brett Johnson [:Actually. And if we don't, right now, because we have a friendly governor then I'll have friendly ears.
Marty Schladen [:Well, you know, and I have to be careful that and, you know, I'm I'm speculating a little bit and I need to label it clearly as speculation. So Yeah. You know, I don't know about this that, but I do know that the case they made for the extension is highly suspect. Exactly. They said that Crazy. They said that, you know, these these, contracts we're entering into are multi decade. We need predictability. Well, you know, if your lawyer colleague were still at the table, he could say it better than I can.
Marty Schladen [:A contract is a contract. A contract is sacred.
Brett Johnson [:Exactly. Right.
Marty Schladen [:If we've contracted with you and said you're gonna get thirty years worth of benefits, you're gonna get your thirty years worth of benefits whether
Norm Murdock [:And that's assignable back to the Department of Development. I am certain a law could be passed. That says obligations incurred by JobsOhio. If we wanted to wind down JobsOhio, put it back under complete public control at ODD, I'm sure you could pass legislation. Anything they did and committed to, we will assume those obligations.
Brett Johnson [:And then it begs the question who's writing the contracts and who's benefiting. If you're if if JobsOhio is not writing the contracts, then it or if they are and they're not benefiting from them, they got some stupid people writing contracts.
Marty Schladen [:Well and that's actually not a news story. I you know, it and I don't think it's gotten enough attention because I think people across the political spectrum are interested to know what they're getting for their money. Yeah. Absolutely. And over and over and over again in the history of economic deal deals going back fifteen, twenty years, we sign these contracts. We go, oh, we've got these ironclad guarantees and then you're gonna create this many jobs. You're gonna stay here this long blah blah blah And they don't perform on them and there's no real way to make them
Brett Johnson [:No teeth. No teeth. Exactly.
Marty Schladen [:Was this
Norm Murdock [:in your article again, I could be confusing what I discussed with Buckeye Institute. But, yeah, I think in your article you talked about a professor in Michigan who studies development expenditures and tries to figure out, but for, you know, say JobsOhio's activities, this job would not have been created or brought to Ohio. And he has found out, again, this Michigan professor did this study that what you said, oftentimes, it turns out that whether or not development dollars were given to that entity, it would have gone there anyway. Or that those jobs we're we're we're paying too much, to get those jobs. Like, if it's if it's a guy making 50,000, sweeping the floor at the Amazon warehouse, right, and we're spending, Department of Liquor Control tax receipts, say, $2,000,000 to get that guy. Well, that's crazy. That's that's absolutely nuts because his income tax back to the state of Ohio will never offset the 2,000,000 it took to get him there.
Marty Schladen [:So the guy's name is Timothy Bardic, and he works for, an, nonpartisan think tank called the Upjohn Institute. Okay. And Michigan's obviously this highly industrial state that's really taken its lumps over time. So they've talked a lot you know, done a lot with
Norm Murdock [:So he's like an economist or something. Yeah. Okay.
Marty Schladen [:And it's called a but for analysis. And he took, you know, he looked at it's like a, you know, a study of studies. He looked at 30 studies of these economic, incentives, and he concluded that somewhere between only 2% of the time or 25% of the time did these incentives make a meaningful difference. Wow.
Norm Murdock [:So at most 25%.
Marty Schladen [:At most 25% of the time, which means that 75% of the time, at least, we're giving them money for doing what they'd have done anyway. Wow.
Norm Murdock [:That's crushing.
Marty Schladen [:And and the one and the one that I wanted to touch on that I've always found particularly, questionable or dodgy is the job retention. And it's not just JobsOhio. Economic developers anywhere wanted to tell you in my mind, I may be overstating this, that every day that a business doesn't fire all of its people, that's a success for the economic developer. You know? And it's like how do you how do you even measure that?
Norm Murdock [:Claim that but for you, that job stayed here.
Brett Johnson [:Right.
Norm Murdock [:So I'll give you a good example, and this this goes back to my father who was a state representative from Hamilton County, Ohio. When Governor Rhodes succeeded in getting Honda to Ohio, you can imagine Ford and General Motors and Chrysler up there, you know, the Jeep plant. Well, at that time, it was American Motors. But you can imagine they're all throwing a fit that all of this largesse is being given to Honda. Well, we can pack up our Lorraine GM factory, or we can pack up the Sharonville Ford transmission plant, and we'll just take that to Kentucky or Indiana because they'll give us some goodies. So they threatened to leave Sharonville, the big Ford transmission plant in Sharonville, Ohio, which is a suburb of Cincinnati. And, dad, you know, got some kind of tax package, to keep Ford in Ohio because because there's this trickle down effect. Right? If you're going to give, say, Intel or Anduril or, Honda or whoever the the the the Chinese, solar panel, factory in Pataskill.
Norm Murdock [:If you're gonna give them all the goodies, then what about the companies that are here that are, you know, doing work here and staying here? In effect, we, the taxpayers and those companies, we're paying for other people to have these goodies that we're not getting.
Marty Schladen [:And I think that
Norm Murdock [:It's it's a rip off.
Marty Schladen [:I I think it is, and I think that, you know, the bidding war part of it is, you know, has really amped up. And probably the most tangible example of this that people can are familiar with are professional sports teams. You know? You
Brett Johnson [:don't have to Oh, god. That's that's where my mind was going to. Oh, the Browns so
Norm Murdock [:the Browns stadium.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. It's so transparent. Yeah. Of of the bribe not bribery, but the dollars just like, come over here. Go you know, exactly.
Marty Schladen [:As if the you know, every NFL franchise is worth more than a billion dollars. So the owners are literally billionaires, but they can't afford to build their own place of business.
Brett Johnson [:Right. Exactly. What a great way to put that. They can't afford the to build their own place of business.
Marty Schladen [:Yeah. And so it's
Brett Johnson [:Or so so they say. Yeah. Exactly.
Marty Schladen [:And it's and they're especially with NFL franchises, there's so much emotion tied up that they've really got city leaders over a barrel, but, you know, I mean, losing the GM plan is actually more important to the community.
Brett Johnson [:Well, it it is because you're dealing with every day a GM plan. Every day, somebody going to work.
Norm Murdock [:That's right.
Brett Johnson [:Football, six games a a year. If if that. Right?
Marty Schladen [:Most people can't afford to go to the game. Exactly. Tickets are a hundred bucks and beers are 15.
Brett Johnson [:Right.
Norm Murdock [:When the Bengals were just stinking up the place, you know, pre Joe Burrow Mhmm. They had about a fifteen to twenty year run of horrible Mhmm. Right? So, the Brown family rattled their saber. We're gonna we're gonna go to LA, or we're gonna go to San Diego. We're gonna go we're gonna go out West. We're we're we're thinking of of bolting. And they got, by every report, the best deal, the bet this is the worst team in football, got the best deal for a stadium. And and and if, Taylor Swift, plays a concert, you know, in the Bengal Stadium, not only do they get the revenue from renting out the stadium, they get all the parking.
Norm Murdock [:If they get they get all the concessions.
Marty Schladen [:If I can enter just insert parenthetically, The Wall Street Journal at the time called it the worst stadium deal in the history of stadium deals.
Norm Murdock [:History of stadium deals.
Brett Johnson [:Cincinnati doesn't have a great track record for making deal City the deals. Right?
Norm Murdock [:No. They don't.
Marty Schladen [:No. It
Brett Johnson [:just don't. It seems like
Norm Murdock [:look at Cleveland, they're about to enter into the same nightmare. And I'm sure it's it's playing on people's heads up there that we lost our our first team, right,
Marty Schladen [:to Baltimore. Oh, yeah.
Norm Murdock [:And and we gotta do whatever it takes.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:Whatever it takes to keep them in the area. So if they go to what is it? Brook Park? It's
Marty Schladen [:out around this the airport around near Berea. I my understanding is it's in the middle of a lot of land that the Haslam Zone. So all of a sudden, they're real estate. It's that that's my understanding. I haven't reported this.
Norm Murdock [:But I think you're right. I think the
Marty Schladen [:label is I
Norm Murdock [:think it's at that Brook Park exit.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Something like that.
Norm Murdock [:You know? Where that what is it? The IX Center or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Like, it's right near that. Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. So, you know, you talked about efficiencies or, you know, that all the way from 2% to 25%. So you did a nice article on this as well too, and I want to put some spotlight to it. That I mean, how how do we gauge that JobsOhio is actually doing a good job?
Marty Schladen [:Don't ask them.
Brett Johnson [:Well, from, you know, from what you reported doing, I wanna bring light to this that, you know, they said they're doing a, you know, a fairly good job, but they paid for the research done on themselves for that report, but they still still didn't come out stellar at all. So I I I, again, it's our if if I buy a bottle of booze, I wanna know my my money's going in the right direction.
Norm Murdock [:Sure.
Brett Johnson [:Just just with anything else. Because it's
Norm Murdock [:being taxed by the state. Right. And you're like, well, then that's revenue that is is belongs to the state. And if you then give a monopoly to a private entity that the state created, why why can't that be audited? And why would so Yost, when he was auditor, argued for this audit before the Supreme Court. Why would he not then advocate as AG now? And this is what I would ask him if they if they were at the table. Why then you why did you not put in a term that okay. We'll give you the fifteen years, but henceforth, you're under auditable, notice. And and you agree to that in the extension.
Norm Murdock [:As as a term of going forward, we have to know what you're spending this on.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:You know, Marty came up. I think that this was in your article. Net 2022 stats, a hundred and six employees, a 80,000 average pay for those hundred and six. I
Brett Johnson [:saw that too.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Two I think it's $2,000,000 for the five or is it six board members. We I don't know what the executive director makes. It's gotta be a million or whatever. I mean, he's there next to DeWine and Biden at the intel site with his shovel. Mhmm. Right. And I'm like, oh, JobsOhio.
Norm Murdock [:That's a friendly little name. That's probably the Ohio Department of Development. Mhmm. And then I find out, oh, no. Actually, it's an unaccountable organization, which we don't know anything about once they get the money. Yeah.
Marty Schladen [:And I was neglectful in not pointing out too that in several instances, I think at least five, JobsOhio incentives have gone to the companies of members of the JobsOhio board.
Brett Johnson [:I was gonna ask about that too. But talk a little bit more about that. Oh, my. Yeah. Yeah.
Marty Schladen [:I don't know a ton. I just but I know that, I mean, like, Laura Bischoff wrote a bit about it when she was still with the Dayton Daily News. Some of them one of the companies was Marathon. Oh, I forget some of the others. But, anyway, you know, they're you know, because they do big projects and small projects. And so and I don't know the nature of what Marathon got or whatever, but there's just the simple fact that Norm's sitting on the Marathon board and JobsOhio is awarding them a deal. And, there was another one where because JobsOhio now has set up these regional entities. And last year, the leader of or one of the leader of one of the regional entities got, like, a $2,000,000 grant from JobsOhio.
Marty Schladen [:And JobsOhio tried to tell me, well, this is not really a JobsOhio entity even though it was created by JobsOhio.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. That's it yeah.
Brett Johnson [:JobsOhio is an a a unique entity. Correct? No others it doesn't it's not replicated anywhere. Is that correct?
Marty Schladen [:I wish I knew, but I don't.
Norm Murdock [:I thought I would I
Marty Schladen [:would be surprised.
Brett Johnson [:I thought I had learned
Marty Schladen [:that somewhere.
Norm Murdock [:Maybe you and Greg ought to talk at some point, but the Greg at Buckeye said he knew of no other state like this. He would know better than me. I mean, he said it is totally unique to Brexit.
Brett Johnson [:That's what I thought. And and in the guise of they wanted to hold the cards, you know, and and we're gonna one up states around us and that sort of thing. So I was just curious if that had come up or just to confirm. And I think it's it's confirmed. I don't know of any not that I'm in that world, but I would think that it would come up especially with, looking at how well JobsOhio supposedly is doing or not well that they would compare it to, comparable entities.
Marty Schladen [:Well, so that's something I tried to do, and this is probably, you know, should another thing I should have said earlier. You You know, they say they focus on these 11 or so sectors. They have not shown me any, you know, any statistics. In fact, they refused to show me some statistics that would indicate they're doing any better than our neighboring states, which could be a fair comparison, or the country as a whole in those areas. And then in the top line and this was, you know, I think this is always important to look at is how are we just doing generally in job creation. And numbers I dug up last week with a Google search and they're similar to other numbers is, you know, Arizona State University ranked Ohio thirty fifth in job growth last year, and the Economic Policy Institute in 2023 looked at unemployment rates by states since 2020 02/2007, which is when the great recession hit, and we're near the dead bottom of states. Wow. You know? So and they don't wanna be they've actually said it's not fair to evaluate them on statewide job growth.
Brett Johnson [:That's in their name. JobsOhio. Sorry. You're gonna get looked at that way.
Marty Schladen [:And it's the state.
Brett Johnson [:That's moronic. That is
Marty Schladen [:the state liquor franchise. You know? So why wouldn't the entire state? Correct. You know.
Norm Murdock [:And I would just point out, by the way, in his state of the state, DeWine has proposed upping the tax, on liquor Yes. Which would devolve to the benefit of JobsOhio.
Brett Johnson [:Right.
Norm Murdock [:I, you know I mean, the tentacles and the connections, the the connective tissue between the state and this private entity
Brett Johnson [:And the and the extension of the lease right now too.
Norm Murdock [:The whole thing reminds me of how the federal government created the the Federal Reserve System and and it can't be audited either because it's separate from federal government. And and that's outrageous because they're printing our money. They're, you know, they're doing all these public things, but we can't get in there.
Marty Schladen [:So I don't know much about the accountability of the Fed. So I I'm not really qualified to go there.
Norm Murdock [:It's a rough analogy. That's all I would say.
Marty Schladen [:Yeah. Well, I think that what we're left with here is we've got a lot of people who are making, you know, at JobsOhio, we're making, by my lights, really good money.
Norm Murdock [:Really good money.
Marty Schladen [:You know, that used to be public money. They're giving private businesses billions of what used to be public money, and they are not showing that they're making any kind of a difference at all. I mean, if you if you watch the controlling board hearing, the woman from OBM as evidence that JobsOhio was
Norm Murdock [:doing OBM?
Marty Schladen [:Oh, Office of Budget Management.
Norm Murdock [:Thank you.
Marty Schladen [:Sorry. Yeah. Alphabet.
Norm Murdock [:For the for the audience.
Marty Schladen [:No. I it drives me crazy when I read news stories.
Brett Johnson [:Alphabet soup. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Marty Schladen [:I have an old editor who called it that. He's like, don't do that. But, you know, as proof of JobsOhio success, she pointed out two things. Ohio's triple a bond rating. I don't know how what does JobsOhio have to do with that. I asked for proof. They referred me to JobsOhio. And, you know, the diversity of our economy, which we were ranked by some, you know, some outfit as having the eighth most diverse economy in the country.
Marty Schladen [:But once again, you know, no no evidence of how, JobsOhio help with that. But when I asked for, you know, what the AAA bond rating had to do with JobsOhio, when I asked OBM, they said, well, you gotta ask JobsOhio. And
Norm Murdock [:when
Marty Schladen [:I asked JobsOhio, you know, what evidence, again, what evidence did they have that their incentives were, you know, guiding these business decisions, They just came back and said they they are. No no evidence. Just
Norm Murdock [:And what I love about your writing, Marty, what I absolutely so I have a journalism minor from UC. They didn't have a major back then. But when I went to college, I did as much as I could at the university. And what I love about your writing is that you just state like, when you don't get an answer or they fail to supply, stats or any kind of written evidence, you state that in your articles. And I just I I can't tell you how much as a reader of your journalism, I appreciate that night. It is very professional of you to do that because, you know, you you could choose to just leave it out of the story, but you you bring up an issue, you ask people, and then they stiff arm you, and you put that right in the article, which is what you should do.
Marty Schladen [:Thank you. Yeah. Especially in these kinds of stories, no answer is an answer. Absolutely.
Brett Johnson [:Oh, yes. It is.
Marty Schladen [:That's right. And and and yeah. And you need to I mean, like like with the attorney general, there we've worked closely on some things that I'd, you know, be happy to talk some other time to your audience about, like, why do your prescription drugs cost so much, you know, and we've worked closely on that. He's one he's the leading state attorney general in the country on that issue. But there are other times when they don't wanna talk about what I wanna talk about and, you know, and it's not, you know, some, you know, self interested thing. It's in it, you know, matter of public interest and, you know, they don't answer. I write they don't answer.
Norm Murdock [:Well, when he tried to do that audit, went to the Supreme Court as Dave Yost as state auditor and got slapped down, I am told and I this was in a different article. I think it was off of Dave's, Davios website. I was able to find some article about his attempt to audit JobsOhio. And and when he got slapped down by the Ohio Supreme Court, and lost the case, they, he wrote a letter to the general assembly, a public letter, basically stating that there may not be any scandal at the present time. But you have set up a perfect scenario Mhmm. For insider dealing, for unethical behavior, and for unaccountability the likes of which, I mean, when you consider the numbers, two years ago, income to this entity of $330,000,000 and 2,300,000,000.0 currently is the estimate in assets on hand to play with. And and in knowing that the public can't see what you're doing, I mean Yeah.
Marty Schladen [:Well, not for nothing, but Dave used to be a reporter. I believe, for the Ohio Citizen Journal.
Brett Johnson [:Oh, really? I had no idea.
Marty Schladen [:Yeah. And I think that helped make him an effective auditor. Sure. I mean, you guys have been around Cap Square longer than I have, but you know, but I've been around a while. He's the most effective state auditor I'm familiar with.
Norm Murdock [:Wow. Interesting. So yeah. Again, running for governor now. So he's up against Vivek Vivek Ramaswamy and, possibly Jim Tressel, you know. Yeah. And so he's the auditor that wanted to audit JobsOhio. Vivek is the cofounder of Doge, which, of course, at the federal level is tearing into every activity they can find and and seeing, you know, where the where the fraud is, where the waste is, where just incompetence or just sloppiness is, etcetera.
Norm Murdock [:And you have to wonder if Dave Yost and or Vivek Ramaswamy will will pick up that Doge concept and do a Doge on Ohio or recommend that it be done. Because I think if there's a swamp in DC, there's a swamp right out there on Capitol Square.
Marty Schladen [:Well, I have my questions about how effectively Doge is doing. That's fair. That's
Brett Johnson [:fair.
Marty Schladen [:You know, I've been around I I came up through small papers in Indiana. Okay. And, anybody who's been doing this for a while, you know the guy who hangs around the courthouse or city hall, and then he runs for mayor, and he goes, you know, I'm gonna cut your taxes. I'm gonna do this, and I'm gonna do the that. And you ask him, how are you gonna pay for it? Waste, fraud, and abuse. And you say, well, like what? And they'll say things like, well, I need to get in office and look at the budget first even though the budget's a public document. But what they find out is that things are a lot more complicated than they think they are. And so, you know, like, I've got a friend who administers, nationally administers these public social service grants that are federal.
Marty Schladen [:Mhmm.
Norm Murdock [:And they
Marty Schladen [:have been locked out of all their money by Doge several times now. And what that means is, like, this little agency she deals with on the edge of Indian country at the Pine Ridge Reservation, the Indian health care service is far away, and there's a lot of poor people who don't have ways to get to the doctor.
Norm Murdock [:Is that in Arkansas?
Marty Schladen [:This is in South Dakota.
Norm Murdock [:South Dakota. Okay.
Marty Schladen [:Yeah. I forget what
Norm Murdock [:tribe it is. But anyway Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:Probably Lakota. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:I think you may
Marty Schladen [:know more about that than I do. But anyway They're
Norm Murdock [:the ones that kicked Custer's ass.
Marty Schladen [:That's there you go. But this poor guy, I mean, that's what he does is basically, you know, help people get their medicine, get to the doctor, whatever. He's so small. He's got no, you know, base of funding to get through an extra couple weeks. He's been flat broke. He's been, you know, basically made flat broke by Doge just coming in and saying we're shutting down these grants without anybody doing you know, taking some careful look at, okay, is this waste or is this a worthwhile program? They're just my I'm hearing directly from people. They're just swinging the ax kinda wild.
Brett Johnson [:Kind of a bull in a china shop.
Marty Schladen [:Yeah. And I think it's partly because, you know, Elon Musk has never, you know, run a government. He thinks he knows everything because he's surrounded by people who tell him he knows everything. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:I think that there's a good room for criticism. I guess I envision what Doge is gonna have to mutate to is bringing in, experts on budgeting, experts on spending. Not the twenty two year old kids, you know, who have a high school degree, who may be wizards, and they're a lot smarter than me. But I think that eventually, the complaints are gonna pile up. My favorite example of Doge exceeding its brief, if you will, was when they came out with this claim no. No. No. Don't don't get me wrong.
Norm Murdock [:I'm in favor of Doge. So we we we may differ there. But I'm in favor of a Smart Doge, and and I and I don't like the bull in the China shop.
Marty Schladen [:Well, then I'm in favor of a Smart Doge too.
Norm Murdock [:There we go. Yeah. But when they came out with a statement that $50,000,000 had been spent on condoms in Gaza, they had the wrong Gaza. It was not the Gaza of the Gaza Strip. It was a city or a capital in a nation in Africa, also named Gaza, and it was to address AIDS, which is a perfect good use of condoms. Yes. Yes. So so so they went, you know, I can almost see the kid, like, super excited.
Norm Murdock [:Oh, my god. $50,000,000 in Gaza.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. And and and that's some of it too is they have to move information so fast to justify. Well, in all
Norm Murdock [:Well, they don't have to.
Brett Johnson [:They don't have to.
Norm Murdock [:That's my point.
Brett Johnson [:But they want to, and they're moving it too fast, and they're not giving it a giving it a a day. But Brett As soon as they find it, boom, we gotta get it out.
Norm Murdock [:Show results. Yeah. So it's it's it's crashing and burning in those areas
Brett Johnson [:Mhmm.
Norm Murdock [:Because the new White House press secretary,
Brett Johnson [:I can't hear
Marty Schladen [:what I mean.
Norm Murdock [:Kath Catherine or Karen or
Brett Johnson [:something Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:With the blonde hair and the crucifix, she she she she's being fed this information and she's she kicked off the list of DOJ's exposes with that example from the White House microphone and then had to correct herself. And that's because they're not taking their time.
Brett Johnson [:Right.
Marty Schladen [:Right. And that's a discipline you learn coming up through newspapers, you know. And and they would benefit from this.
Norm Murdock [:Like, which Gaza are you talking about?
Marty Schladen [:Well, if you're if you're Or
Brett Johnson [:even to know there's more than one Gaza, which I wouldn't know either.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Brett Johnson [:They cannot mind people, but anyway, yeah, go ahead.
Marty Schladen [:Especially, you know, even but especially back when newsprint was such a big deal. You write something, it's gonna be on tens of thousands of doorsteps in the morning. People are not shy about pointing out when you're wrong.
Norm Murdock [:That's right.
Marty Schladen [:So you make damn sure you're right. You make sure you got the right answer. And, I mean, I've written my share of corrections. Sure. Some of them were embarrassing, but
Norm Murdock [:it's painful. Let me ask you, and this this I hope you give me the right answer because I wanna love you guys. And I do. And I do love you guys. But, like, what's driving me crazy as an old, print guy, you know, trained in college, worked on the student magazine and newspaper and all that. So I have some familiarity with meeting a deadline. I was one of the editors there of this little well, you see No. A newspaper's a newspaper.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. It's called the news record. And, yeah. So what that went to was something in the newspaper business we called the morgue, and that's where the the clippings all get stored, like, forever. And so to your point, you make a mistake in print. Now what is going on in the electronic age, and I hope you guys aren't doing this. So if you make a mistake, I hope you correct it and never delete your mistake. But, like, the New York Times is actually rewriting old stories, leaving out their mistakes.
Norm Murdock [:And I that bothers me because then when you go research their morgue, you'll never knew you'll never know that the reporters initially made a major mistake.
Marty Schladen [:So what I do what I can when I've got something pointed out to me that I think is a substantive error, I append a correction at the to the top of the story in italics. I was gonna say itau, but that's jargon journalism jargon. You know, I say what the mistake was. The the way I was taught to write corrections was you don't repeat the mistake in the correction. I do that now. I say, you know, what was
Norm Murdock [:Dude, you're a badass. Then You're you're a badass reporter. That is that is awesome. Yeah. Why how ethical. That is the thing you do. We do so if if I get something wrong and and and a listener viewer reports it and we we figure out, oh, yeah. We were way wrong.
Norm Murdock [:We open the show with what we got wrong. Good on you. Hell, yeah.
Marty Schladen [:Well, you know, and what that does too is, you know, it is painful to write corrections. Nobody likes it. That I was wrong or whatever. No. But it at the end of the day, ironically, it burnishes your credibility.
Norm Murdock [:Yes. It does.
Marty Schladen [:You know? If Right. You know, it's like, yeah. I was wrong. I'm telling you I was wrong. Yeah. That way you can believe that I'm trying to get it right tomorrow, you know?
Norm Murdock [:Well, Marty, the last piece I know we're it's been an hour. But the last piece that I have on this situation, because I live out in Intel country, and I've seen how what happened to the original New Albany people when, and, you know, I'm not condemning mister Wexner. I'm not condemning the New Albany company. It's just a fact of what happened. When they go in and they gentrify or whatever you wanna call it or develop, rural land, and I'm sure urban land, right, like the Over The Rhine where they put the casino in Cincinnati. When when you go into a low income, low property value situation with one of these incredible projects, a $20,000,000,000 project, what JobsOhio is not helping with and what I find to be just outrageous at the statehouse because the politicians aren't helping with this, is imagine your grandmother, let's say, living on five acres in New Albany or Johnstown. Okay. She her sole income is is maybe whatever is left in the bank account from grandpa who's passed away.
Norm Murdock [:And she's living in this place paying her her real estate taxes twice a year with her social social security check. Right? And and the homesteading thing, I looked into that because I'm starting to get up there where, like, I could qualify. And my real estate taxes, I don't mind saying it, are about $8,000 a year. They went they went they doubled from what they were because of Intel coming in. And, but the homesteading savings would be 200.
Brett Johnson [:It's not a lot.
Norm Murdock [:It's not a lot.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. It's not.
Norm Murdock [:So so what is happening? What is happening, right, is is the vultures are circling the little old ladies and saying, well, now your five acre farm is worth $4,000,000, and the Licking County Auditor is sticking you with, I don't know, a $25,000 a year bill and you're getting maybe 15 in Social Security. So they're instantly upside down. And where the hell is JobsOhio to help those people who are impacted by these development projects? I that's a major beef that I have. If you're going to be in charge of development and you basically, you know, plant a Hiroshima level event into a farm community, there are gonna be a lot of people there that can no longer afford to stay there. And what are you doing to help them? I'm sorry. I gave a speech.
Marty Schladen [:No. That's a wonderful question. It's an aspect of this story I hadn't thought of. I've got a friend who's in the business. They all I won't go too far, but I'm gonna suggest this to him because this is right in his wheelhouse. But sure is funny how the little guy or girl or grandma or whoever Mhmm. Who's buying the liquor, is at the bottom of the priority list
Norm Murdock [:That's right.
Marty Schladen [:When it comes to Or
Norm Murdock [:not even on it.
Marty Schladen [:Not even on it. Yeah. That's but, yeah, what becomes of the people I mean, does grandma have to just start selling off her land to pay her taxes, you know?
Norm Murdock [:Well, the vultures are circling, so I happen to know one of those vultures. And, you know, he's he's in, he's in this social circle that, I'm also in. And he tells me what he does. Now he he thinks he's being humane with this, but what he does, he approaches people in these, development scenarios that can't pay their property tax. And he basically says, I'll buy your property. I'll pay the real estate tax. You can stay in the house until the day you die or or wanna leave.
Marty Schladen [:Kinda like a reverse mortgage. A reverse mortgage.
Norm Murdock [:But it but it's private. And, of course, it's on his terms.
Brett Johnson [:And, you know And when she passes, it becomes hers.
Norm Murdock [:And she has no credit rating. So So, you know, how she gonna how she gonna pull this off down at the local bank?
Marty Schladen [:And there's every chance that she's not a sophisticated negotiator like he is. You know?
Norm Murdock [:Exactly right. And he's done this multiple dozens and dozens of times all over Ohio. It's it's how he makes his money.
Marty Schladen [:Yeah. And, you know, I'm for free enterprise, but there and and capitalism, but there are some kinds of capitalism that really are unappetizing.
Norm Murdock [:There's a there's a bill to address this that was introduced last session, to cut, property taxes. Basically, to retain the old property tax Mhmm. Not not to cut it, but but so it didn't so it doesn't go up on impacted people, you know. So in effect, like, if you're homesteading, if you will, if if you were there before this, you know, Hiroshima event happening and, your property taxes that, let's say, were 3,000 a year, or or 1,500 every, half year, that it might go up a little, but it wouldn't do this huge jump because now your property is assessed from, say, a hundred thousand dollars to $25,000,000.
Brett Johnson [:Well, they could put it on a a time scale of of, you know, grandfather in at the original and maybe over a fifteen year period, it's going to go up. Yes. Certainly. There has to be a growing degree. There has to be.
Marty Schladen [:Yeah. I've seen some analysis because they this has been tried in California. I've worked in Galveston, Texas and, you know, the northern part of Galveston County borders on Houston, which is this high growth area. And when you do the sorts of tax controls, the argument goes, what you do is you, artificially block up the market because people have a really, you know, strong incentive not to sell even when it's in their interest. But, you know, I mean, that this is a you know, gentrification is a really tough nut to crack, but it seems to me that maybe a consideration should should be the beneficiaries of this Hiroshima event ought to subsidize the people who are impacted by it, you know?
Brett Johnson [:Well, that's true because of all the money that they didn't necessarily have to have from JobsOhio Right. Could go to help,
Marty Schladen [:you know, pay for what you're taking from everybody.
Norm Murdock [:There is one family there. I've said this in previous shows, but this is a remarkable statistic. So it's a $20,000,000,000 project, they say. It'll go over budget. We all know that.
Marty Schladen [:Yeah. And it of course, even that's even contemplated. It also may be bigger, you know.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the original company that got all this, you know, may not be the company in the final analysis that owns and runs it. Because Intel's already created a subsidiary for the project in Licking County, and they have other partners in that in that subsidiary. So you wonder at some point, does it get, you know, spun off to one of the other chip names?
Marty Schladen [:Follow the bouncing ball.
Norm Murdock [:But what you know, it just it just is, you know, it it it's wrong as an ethical thing to kick grandma. Essentially, this happened in New Albany. New Albany used to have a high school that graduated 23 kids a year. Wow. Look at New Albany now. Yeah. So that's that's New Albany, you know, thirty five, forty years ago, 23 graduating kids in a high school class to whatever the heck they are now, you know, a thousand or whatever they're at. And so when a community goes through that kind of mutation, to leave to to tell a grandma, look, you know, sorry, you can't pay your taxes.
Norm Murdock [:We're either gonna take the farm away from you because you've got all this built up, all these unpaid taxes. And when they go to the seniors' home, inevitably, their health declines and they're done. So you're literally killing people. I know that sounds overly dramatic, but when grandma doesn't get to stay at home with her kitty cat and her her little pony out back and she's raising tomatoes in the summer, and that's her lifestyle until the day she goes to be the beyond, and you take that from her. Okay? I'm a little less excited about JobsOhio. You know? Like, I I'm looking at the people it impacts at the bottom end versus there's one farm family. If you add up the uncles, the cousins, the sons, you add it all up, that one family got $800,000,000 for their land, and they're gone, man. They're they're that mean, they're living on an island in The Bahamas now.
Marty Schladen [:Put it in a trust
Brett Johnson [:and Right. Yeah.
Marty Schladen [:Well, you know, that that's another aspect that you just made me think of, Norm, to all of this about, you know, the the quasi private nature or, you know, the legal fiction that JobsOhio is a a private company. They're making these really profound economic development decisions, and we, the people whose money that used to belong to, we have no say.
Norm Murdock [:Right. You know? Our county commissioners in Lincoln County and our trustees and the village councilman all signed an NDA. And and I got even legal? Yeah. I know. It's crazy. So they're elected by me and my fellow citizens, right, to represent us. But they signed NDAs to JobsOhio and to Intel. And so we all found like, they could do their little jockeying behind the scenes on real estate deals months, maybe years before us, and the skids were greased to annex into New Albany, that Johnstown property or Licking County property.
Norm Murdock [:And so all of that was done. We woke up, read it or heard about it in the in the media, and we're like, well, we didn't we had no say so. If I wanted to open a lawnmower repair shop in Johnstown or Monroe County or Monroe Township, I would have to go through public hearings. I would have to advertise in the local paper. I would have to, notify all my neighbors by certified mail that there is this hearing, and they can come and listen to what I wanna do in my garage. There was nothing intel I mean, there was nothing that it was just a done deal to your point, and we just found out about it. And our local officials signed NDAs, and they told us nothing about it.
Marty Schladen [:It's as if they think they know better. They, you know, they've, you know, just trust them.
Brett Johnson [:Well, it's that competitive edge quote unquote. That's why they signed it as well too. Yeah.
Marty Schladen [:That's not how we operate in an open society. Exactly.
Norm Murdock [:It should not be. You know, the public should have had an opportunity to go in front of their elected leaders and say, hey, I I I like it or I don't like it, and here's why, here's why not, whatever. That is supposed to be how a representative democracy works.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:And it's and it's not working that way.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:You know
Marty Schladen [:what I love about this discussion? Is this has nothing to do with party
Norm Murdock [:No. It's not an r and d. Isn't it fun? It's not an r and d thing. I will say one, and this militates against me. See, I've said I'm a Republican. There is one aspect of this that's also true, and that is I believe in competition. I believe that's how so so when there is a public thing to be bid, you have two or more entities competing with each other. This was a monopoly.
Norm Murdock [:Mhmm. And this can only happen, and that's why I asked early on about the politics when there's one party rule. And I will say, as a Republican, that when the Democrats either have the Senate or the House and the Republicans have the other Mhmm. Okay, even though I don't like that because, like, my legislation doesn't get steamrolled. But what it creates is openness. Mhmm. There is open debate. There are there are people competing.
Norm Murdock [:The ideas
Brett Johnson [:compete. Competing ideas.
Norm Murdock [:And then we resolve it.
Brett Johnson [:Mhmm.
Marty Schladen [:So I've worked
Norm Murdock [:That's my election. Oh, yeah.
Marty Schladen [:Oh, no. You're absolutely right. And I know this from personal experience. I've worked in one party rule places in a couple of you know, here in in Ohio since I've been here, it's been one party rule Republican.
Brett Johnson [:What do
Norm Murdock [:we get? Long time.
Marty Schladen [:ECCOT House Bill six. I've worked in The US Virgin Islands. 1 party rule Democratic. We had this giant scandal where they ripped off a
Brett Johnson [:sewer escrow account if you can believe it.
Marty Schladen [:They stole from a $10,000,000 sewer fund. I've I've been in El Paso, Texas, which is one party rule democratic. Plus that these guys stealing $600,000 from a program for children with severe mental illnesses. Oh my gosh. But you're absolutely right. When you have one party rule, you lose the openness. You also if you don't have, you know, competitive elections, then they can get away with being corrupt.
Norm Murdock [:You know? That's right.
Marty Schladen [:You know?
Norm Murdock [:So That's right. And and and I say that as a conservative Republican, that you gotta have competition. And this is this is a failure of the Republican party if if if way back in 2011, and I believe you, that it was Kasich's idea and he ram rotted it through. If it if it was a Republican house back then and a Republican senate and they rammed it through, shame on them.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah.
Marty Schladen [:Yeah. And, I mean, I don't know. I wasn't here, but I've seen a number of situations too where, you know, they can get Democrats on board as well. This is good for everybody. It's gonna create jobs. If you don't get a lot get on board, you're against jobs.
Norm Murdock [:Sure.
Marty Schladen [:All that stuff.
Norm Murdock [:All that stuff.
Marty Schladen [:But I I wasn't there, but I do I am very, very convinced that when you have one party rule
Brett Johnson [:Yeah.
Marty Schladen [:And there's darkness, and that's where all the bad stuff grows. Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Well, Marty, let's talk as we end the show here, talk about we're gonna get comments on this, I'm sure. But if anybody would, you know, throw some story ideas at you and such, how can they contact you? How can they find what you're writing? You know, let's go over your whole bio, I guess, when it comes down to where
Norm Murdock [:you are. How how do how do people read your read your articles first?
Brett Johnson [:Exactly.
Norm Murdock [:Your website, Facebook, whatever you got.
Marty Schladen [:We've got all that stuff. We're at wwwohiocapitaljournal.com. And capital is spelled capital. Okay. And then my email address is m schladen, that's schla,dasindog,en@ohiocapitaljournal.com.
Norm Murdock [:Excellent. Excellent. Cool.
Brett Johnson [:And I'd love
Marty Schladen [:to hear from anybody, you know. Yeah. And any reporter wants people to read his stuff.
Brett Johnson [:We'd love to have you back on the show too. You know? I'd love to say I'm even
Norm Murdock [:more upset.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. I
Norm Murdock [:mean, we bring we bring Marty in.
Brett Johnson [:You thought it'd be a little bit of a salve and
Norm Murdock [:it's not a salve? Oh, I I am. I am so exercised and upset and so disappointed in, Ohio politics right now. I this is I hope I hope, I hope, they compete, the Republicans running for governor, compete on the basis of opening up these records. Yeah. I hope that I hope I hope, Yost goes back to his auditor days and goes, hey, you know what? We are gonna audit these people. I'm gonna submit legislation, and we're gonna insist on it. I hope he does it. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. I'm challenging him right now, Dave, to do that.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Exactly.
Marty Schladen [:I think that there are a lot of discussions to be had around these things, you know, ways that taxpayers don't know that, you know also in the utility space and, you know, I've like I said, I've been doing a lot of stuff around drug pricing and then also antitrust.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Yeah. They're that Well, we want you back.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Let's do it. Yeah. We'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. We'll really enjoyed it, guys.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Well, find everything on our website, commonsenseohioshow.com. Of course, seeing we're brought to you each and every week by Harper plus CPA. You can find them. You'd find all the links and stuff on our show notes as well too. And, we'll, we'll be back next week.
