JobsOhio big on promises, taxpayer dollars — short on transparency, results: Part 2
JobsOhio’s severe ineffectiveness prompts justified questions.
Previous Ohio.news reporting, which shows JobsOhio has created only 25% of Ohio’s new jobs at an exorbitant cost, exposes its abysmal return on taxpayer dollars.
Quantifying the success of JobsOhio’s mission—to create jobs in Ohio—reveals a reality directly at odds with leadership talking points. The following analysis of where JobsOhio spends its funding highlights the nonprofit’s failures.
A major corruption scandal involving FirstEnergy in 2020, a multi-million-dollar grant to Intel that has produced no jobs, and massive funds to universities without transparency or accountability all raise questions about “pay-to-play” politics.
A public fund with private rules
JobsOhio leadership has repeatedly promised that the organization’s status as a private entity—rather than a state entity—is a benefit. They tout the nonprofit’s ability to make fast, effective decisions with prospective Ohio employers, leveraging non-disclosure agreements to secure confident business interests.
This opacity in JobsOhio operations, however, results in a lack of accountability to Ohio taxpayers. There are closed-door deals without oversight and leadership that sidesteps the public reporting required of the state-run Department of Development.
JobsOhio’s lack of public transparency is reflected in the grant approval process. Unlike state agencies, private organizations are not required to disclose grant applications or the process by which grants are approved. JobsOhio does not publish its complete grant criteria, there are no board deliberations, no clear scoring system, and no job guarantees.
This secretive process effectively funnels money away from the still-existing Department of Development into an unaccountable organization run by lobbyists and politically connected parties who must take great pains to deny any conflicts of interest.
Some Ohio politicians, like state Rep. Tristan Rader, D-Lakewood, decry JobOhio’s operation model, saying it “operates behind a wall of secrecy, using public dollars without the oversight Ohio taxpayers deserve.”
FirstEnergy and proven corruption
Questions about JobsOhio’s legitimacy do not exist in a vacuum. In 2020, arrests were made in a $60 million racketeering and bribery scandal involving FirstEnergy and Ohio politicians. The scheme included money being funneled to FirstEnergy through 501(c)(4) organizations and bribing politicians to pass and protect nuclear bailouts.
JobsOhio 990 filings show a $12.5 million grant awarded to FirstEnergy in 2017. Public lobbying disclosures also show Josh Rubin, the board chair of JobsOhio, was lobbying for FirstEnergy between 2019-2021. Following the massive public scandal, documented lobbyists for FirstEnergy dwindled to a lone lobbyist named Andrew Shaffer between 2021-2024.
JobsOhio’s second largest grant of $38.5 million was awarded to Sherwin-Williams in 2023. This came shortly after another scandal where former Ohio Senate President Tom Niehaus admitted an ethics violation, failing to disclose lobbying clients while serving on the board of the Ohio Air Quality Development Authority. From 2019-2024, Sherwin-Williams was one of Niehaus’s lobbying clients, according to public records.
These scandals make it clear that corruption exists in Ohio politics—but where and to what extent, many Ohioans still do not fully understand.
Intel’s massive money grab
In 2022, JobsOhio made a deal with Intel to build a microchip plant in New Albany. This resulted in the single largest JobsOhio grant of $123,181,109, awarded to Intel Corporation in 2023. However, Ohioans have become increasingly outraged by Intel’s failure to deliver even one of the deal’s promises.
The corporation failed to meet its 2025 production deadline and has pushed back plant construction multiple times to 2027, 2028, and now 2030. Amid news of Intel’s financial struggles and international microchip manufacturing competition, Intel says the project is at a standstill due to a lack of federal funding payouts from the Biden-era CHIPS Act.
Federal lobbying disclosures show Intel and Taiwanese chip manufacturer TSMC lobbied the U.S. government in support of the CHIPS Act, which provides federal funds to support microchip manufacturing in the U.S., beginning in 2020. Intel spent around $1 million per quarter lobbying for these federal funds.
Lobbying disclosures also reveal that Josh Rubin lobbied for Intel in the state of Ohio as early as 2022 and as recently as Q1 2025. This lobbying activity has taken place during Rubin’s tenure as Board Chair of JobsOhio, which began in 2023.
Given the history of bribery and corruption in Ohio politics, Ohio voters would be right to press JobsOhio for explanations on why its Board Chair would not have a conflict of interest as money flows from Intel to his lobbying firm the CJR Group, to the state of Ohio, and back to Rubin who sits on its board.
Universities and the CID
Other major recipients of JobsOhio grants include universities and affiliated health systems in Ohio. From 2020-2023, JobsOhio awarded $87,000,000 in grant money to five universities and health systems for the Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland Innovation Districts.
These innovation projects are touted as drivers of economic growth with the goal of creating 60,000 jobs and $9 billion in economic impact. The promise is that collaborative development projects will foster innovation in technology and healthcare, producing STEM talent and advancing research to enhance Ohio’s global competitiveness.
JobsOhio announced its partnership with the University of Cincinnati in 2020, promising to create 20,000 jobs over the next 10 years. However, five years into that timeframe, there is no indication of progress on the 20,000 job creations.
A 2023 annual report from JobsOhio detailed progress in the form of “new program strategies to attract new workers to Ohio” and “monitoring university partners in Innovation Districts (STEM growth commitments).” The report did not, however, detail or quantify jobs created.
The Distraction Game
Despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent on the promise of jobs for Ohio workers, JobsOhio has a knack for selecting projects that underdeliver while exacerbating the appearance of picking winners and losers.
Records show massive spending on third-party consultants for things like ad campaigns, which seem to be successfully convincing the public JobsOhio does not have a track record of lackluster results and raising suspicions of conflicts of interest.
Public sentiment data collected by EyesOver shows a low volume of discussion mentioning JobsOhio in online voter conversations, but high sentiment in the conversations that do exist. This suggests little awareness of JobsOhio’s controversial performance, despite outcry from activists.
Expenditures of nearly $40 million to ad agencies like Madwell LLC and Click Here Digital appear as part of JobsOhio’s ongoing pattern of prioritizing narrative over impact. Without tangible success stories, it appears the organization is left spinning campaigns of aspiration and promise, rather than producing receipts for jobs created.
Who Profits, if not Ohioans?
Despite intentional opacity, an objective analysis of public information suggests that JobsOhio grant money is selected and disbursed based on proposals, not results. Ohio voters have remained mostly uninformed about the net negative ROI for Ohio residents when it comes to money spent versus jobs created.
The appearance of corruption and pay-to-play will again worsen when Ohioans begin to ask who benefits from the JobsOhio grant model. The next installment of Ohio.news reporting on JobsOhio will look closely at the flow of money and influence in Ohio politics.
