How can this report be accurate. Minn didn’t borrow $1.4billion like Ohio did with the 3rd frontier program. Minn doesn’t have a groups like Jumpstart, Bioenterprise, Nortech, Magnet who have the best and highest paid taxpayer funded experts on how create a conducive environment for cultivating entrepreneurship and startups.

Is it possible that all these amazing and unaudited and unverified accomplishments all of these groups claim responsibility for would have happened without their existence. I don’t have a problem when these funds go directly into startups. I do have a problem when a taxpayer funded group like Jumpstart needs a 47 person staff and $10m budget for overhead to invest a little over $2m?

Is it possible that the reason these groups won’t let any 3rd party group independently measure their impact is they are more concerned with taking credit for things they had nothing to do with so they can protect the multiple $400k+ salaries, large staffs and overhead with the taxpayer picking up the tab?

The problem lies with ODOD as they control the third frontier money. They want good news so badly to make themselves and their efforts look effective that they rely on groups like Jumpstart to produce their own reports on how effective they are without verifying or auditing it. This region spends about $1m a week in the name of economic development if you add up all the state money and taxpayer funded non profit groups. Outside of the well paying jobs at these non profit groups, only a small percentage of the impact they take credit for wouldn’t have occurred if any of these groups didn’t exist.

Somehow, a state with half the population and only one major market outpaced Ohio and they did it without all these non profit groups and this vibrant ecosystem these groups claim they created and wouldn’t exist without them.

Mike Burkons
Mburkons@chariteegolf.net