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Columbus Dispatch...
For $1, Kasich hires
private help to spur job creation
By Mark Niquette
Jan. 6, 2011 - A prominent venture capitalist from Silicon Valley has
agreed to run the Ohio Department of Development essentially free to
help transition it to a private jobs organization, Gov.-elect John
Kasich plans to announce on Friday.
Mark Kvamme, a partner at Sequoia Capital in Menlo Park, Calif., will
serve as department director on an interim basis for $1 for a period of
months and help start the nonprofit JobsOhio, Kasich said today.
Privatizing the state’s development department was a key element of
Kasich’s campaign for governor. He complained that the state’s current
efforts were ineffective.
Kasich said Kvamme, a longtime friend who worked with him when Kasich
was a managing director at Lehman Brothers, will help decide which
current tax incentive and other job-creation programs are effective.
“He’ll run the Department of Development and rationalize it,” Kasich
said. “He’ll say, ‘This should go, this should stay’ ... and he’ll help
me draw up the metrics for how we’re going to do these deals. I
couldn’t get a better guy.”
Details of the plan, including legislation that would be needed to make
the changes, still are being worked out. But Kasich has said he
envisioned JobsOhio being funded by both public and private sources and
run by a board of current and former chief executives who would report
to him as chairman.
Programs now housed at the agency that are not directly related to
economic development, such as home weatherization, would be evaluated
and moved to other state agencies, Kasich has said.
Kasich said he told Kvamme it would be a “four- or five-month job” and
that he hopes to have JobsOhio in place in six months. He said he would
expect Kvamme to join the new board of directors at JobsOhio.
Kvamme’s appointment is the 15th cabinet position that Kasich has
filled so far before he takes office on Monday. Outgoing Gov. Ted
Strickland had made nine cabinet nominations before taking office in
2007.
Today, the incoming Republican governor announced the appointments of
three other agency directors, including two who served in the
Democratic Strickland administration.
Kasich said John Martin, who was Strickland’s director of the
Department of Developmental Disabilities, will continue in that role
and that Tracy Plouck, the current state Medicaid director, will become
director of the Department of Mental Health.
The incoming governor also named Orman Hall of Lancaster to lead the
Ohio Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services. Hall is
director of the Fairfield County Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental
Health Board and said addressing the epidemic abuse of addictive,
opiate-based prescription drugs would be “job one.”
Kasich also said he would consider consolidating the agencies as part
of an effort to avoid turf fights and other issues that get in the way
of delivering services. He said he hopes Ohio can “be a very
progressive state.”
Kasich said such efforts also could reduce costs, tempering the need
for draconian cuts in services, even with the state facing a shortfall
of $8 billion or more in the next budget.
“This is not an area that’s ripe for some kind of devastating cuts,” he
said.
Meanwhile, Kasich declined to confirm or deny a list of proposed
salaries for his incoming staff members that, in some cases, are tens
of thousands of dollars higher than the pay for comparable staff
members in the Strickland administration.
The draft list was released by the state budget office in response to a
public-records request, but Kasich said he would provide the current
list of staff members, agency directors and their salaries on Monday
after he takes office.
The Service Employees International Union issued a statement saying
that Kasich has promised fiscal discipline but is “giving huge pay
increases to his top staff while attacking working people and the
services they provide.”
In response, Kasich said the total pay for all of his staff and his
cabinet members would not exceed what is currently being paid.
Kasich also said today that it was a mistake to propose limiting media
access to his midnight swearing-in and other inauguration events
Monday. He eventually reversed that position.
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