Ohio Third Frontier leaders briefly patted themselves on the back Wednesday for a voter campaign that won an additional four years and $700 million for the state’s largest and most successful economic development program.
It was the first meeting of the program’s advisers and commissioners since Ohio voters approved Issue 1 by a margin of 2-to-1 on May 4. Issue 1 extended and expanded the 10-year, $1.35 billion Third Frontier program.
“This experiment in bipartisan campaigning worked,” said David Wilhelm, co-chairman of the Issue 1 campaign who was tapped for his success running Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. Wilhelm, now an Athens, Ohio venture capitalist, is a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
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From the other side of the political aisle, Jo Ann Davidson, the first woman speaker of the Ohio House in the mid-1990s and c0-chair of the National Republican Committee, also was co-chair.
At Wednesday’s meeting, Mark Collar, chairman of the Third Frontier Advisory Board, took off his jacket and rolled back his shirt sleeves as a symbol of getting to work on the program’s strategy for the next six years.
Collar threw out a challenge: A bigger budget — $175 million in fiscal 2012 through 2015 — means more public scrutiny and higher expectations, as well as greater accountability for the board, he said. By comparison, voters approved a $500 million bond issue in 2005, which with general fund money has given Third Frontier an annual budget of about $160 million.
A wide-ranging discussion followed, punctuated by phrases like the “innovation ecosystem” the Third Frontier is helping to foster in Ohio, creating a “sustainable competitive advantage” with industry and job growth in the state, and the “continuity” of existing programs, which need continued investments.
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Dr. Lloyd Jacobs, president of the University of Toledo, summarized the advisory board’s need for future discussion:
- A more formalized search for “emerging peaks” in research and industry that might merit future Third Frontier investment
- How to spread “a more entrepreneurial, innovative culture throughout the state”
- Increasing academic productivity, in terms of transferring technology to industry and spinning off companies
- Partnering with neighboring states on technology economic development
- Increasing grants to institutions that need money to match a growing volume of federal grant opportunities
The advisory board also talked about job creation within Third Frontier. “The ultimate achievement should be full employment and widespread prosperity for every Ohioan,” Jacobs said. “I believe that is the voter mandate.”
The advisory board ended its meeting by recommending to the Third Frontier Commission a tentative program plan worth between $124 million and $143 million for fiscal 2011.
