The heavy lifting ahead

I love listening to Ned Hill. What makes him enjoyable is the verbal wave that he sometimes surfs. Take this quote from Jay Miller's article in Crain's:

"Edward W. Hill, interim dean of the Levin College, whose teaching specialty is economic development, called the plan, “the first time any (state) department of development in the country is being held accountable for something outside of deal flow.”

That would be news to economic developers in Colorado, Oregon, Indiana, Virginia, Massachusetts, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Hawaii, Arizona, New Mexico, Minnesota, Maine, Wisconsin and California.

Ohio now joins a growing crowd of states embracing innovation and metrics to measure progress. See the national Governors Association publication on state policies to promote clusters. (Statewide Innovation Indexes trace their history back to Massachusetts which launched an index in 1997.)

Ohio's innovation hub initiative follows similar statewide strategies in Pennsylvania (Keystone Innovation Zones), Michigan (Smart Zones) and Washington (Innovation Zones).

Ohio's got a good strategy, but we are late to the game. Execution represents the critical next step. It's important to focus on the heavy lifting ahead and maintaining focus.

Lee Fischer has done a good job barnstorming the state and raising awareness of the stakes. See for example this article from Mansfield or this article from Youngstown. We face some really tricky challenges.

Take the important area of workforce development. Ohio operates one of the most dysfunctional public workforce systems in the country. While the Ohio Skills Bank looks very promising, there is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the details.

In another important area, Ohio has an antiquated public sector. This "overhead" is costly and places persistent upward pressure on tax rates. Addressing this challenge with government innovation will be tough, as the McKernan-Shepherd Commission is learning in Indiana. The editors at the Chillicothe Gazette got it right:

The Strickland administration has given Ohio a workable, sustainable plan for its economic future. The turnaround comes in how well they live up to that plan's details.