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Dayton
Business Journal...
Kasich
stands firm in push for Ohio
turnaround
by Joe Cogliano, DBJ Senior Reporter
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Ohio
Gov. John Kasich refuses to budge
for his following of highly-vocal critics.
After
pushing a flurry of initiatives
during the first seven months of his term, Kasich seems pleased with
what he
sees as the state’s dramatic turnaround and dismisses those who say he
is
moving too fast and trying to force reform without much room for
dissent or
discussion.
“Thank
goodness we’re moving quickly
because if you got yourself in deep trouble, if you’re one of three
states that
have lost more jobs than any other state, what are you supposed to do,
sit
around and relax?” Kasich said during a recent interview with WDTN-TV’s
Dan
Edwards in Columbus. WDTN is the Dayton Business Journal’s TV news
partner.
Kasich
said it didn’t make sense to
stay on the same path and points out his policies — such as balancing
the
budget, eliminating the estate tax and pushing to privatize numerous
government
services — triggered a dramatic rise in Ohio’s credit rating, something
that
attracts out-of-state investors.
“You’ve
got to tax less, you’ve got to
regulate less, you’ve got to create your priorities and you’ve got to
get Ohio
in an environment where people say ‘I’d like to locate my business
there,”
Kasich said “We’ve balanced the budget, I mean we had an eight billion
dollar
hole and we didn’t have to raise taxes to make us less competitive, in
fact
we’ve cut taxes and maintained the income tax and killed the death tax
so our
best and brightest don’t have to leave Ohio as they get older.”
In
his first seven months, Kasich
ruffled some feathers and made no secret about how he would eliminate
Ohio’s eight
billion dollar deficit, the largest in state history.
This
includes the high-profile
initiative to lasso collective bargaining, which will be a referendum
on the
November statewide ballot.
But
he also claims some big economic
development wins as well, such as keeping companies such as Diebold
Inc. , Bob
Evans Farms Inc. and American Greetings Corp.from leaving the state.
Other
wins include relocating Wendy’s
headquarters back from Goergia and expansions or new facilities planned
for the
state by Caterpillar Inc. , General Electric , Procter & Gamble
Co. and
Johnson Controls Inc.
Read
it with links, including a
database of all 50 state credit ratings, at Dayton Business Journal
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