MANSFIELD, Ohio – The Richland County Development Group (RCDG) hosted a number of visitors from the Statehouse in Columbus at their Tuesday meeting.
Senator Larry Obhof, Representative Mark Romanchuk and Dan Risko of the Ohio Treasurer’s Office were present Tuesday to update RCDG on progress in the state and recap the year’s successes in business development.
Risko introduced to RCDG the site OhioCheckbook.com, a government transparency website launched by the Ohio Treasurer’s office. The website first went online in December 2014.
“We decided to put all state spending online in an easy-to-navigate site for the average taxpayer,” Risko said.
Starting this year, the Treasurer’s office is offering local governments the opportunity to participate in OhioCheckbook.com. Risko explained the Treasurer’s Office is covering all costs for local governments to post their respective checkbook-level spending online.
“Some local governments think this is a long process, and sometimes it’s a fear of the unknown,” Risko said. “So far we’ve heard nothing but positives from the local governments currently online.”
Roughly 162 local governments have their sites live. The city of Mansfield launched its website a few months prior.
“The data is only as good as what they give us,” Risko noted. “We don’t touch the data, we help put it online and format it in a way that is navigable for taxpayers.”
Visitors to OhioCheckbook.com are able to perform searches of state and local spending, and navigate through interactive charts and graphs. Richland County Commissioner Marilyn John also noted the county is in communication with the Treasurer’s Office to consider joining OhioCheckbook.com.
Senator Obhof shared with RCDG that Mansfield’s unemployment rate is 4.7 percent and Ohio’s unemployment rate sits at 4.4 percent, making unemployment rates in Ohio half a point better than they are nationally.
“Ohio has made pretty significant strides in the last five years to get us there,” he said.
One of those strides includes a net tax cut of approximately $5 billion since the year 2011. In particular, Obhof highlighted tax cuts aimed at small businesses.
“Small business is the backbone of the Ohio economy,” he said. “They employ the largest number of people in the state, and for too long people paid lip service to that part of the economy but didn’t come through in Columbus or in Washington.”
Obhof touched on the state’s common-sense initiative started in 2011, looking at regulations and applying cost-benefit analysis. Approximately 7,700 have been reviewed, with 58 percent of those rules amended or rescinded, and there has been a 46 percent decrease in new regulatory findings.
“Old regulations are getting long hard looks and going back to the drawing board so we don’t have people in Columbus sitting around all day coming up with new ways to get in the way of you growing your business,” Obhof said.
Obhof also highlighted House Bill 3, which he worked on with Romanchuk to cut the filing fees for new businesses in the state of Ohio by 21 percent.
“It sent the message to people thinking about doing business in Ohio or who are already here and thinking of expanding that this is a place where you want to do business,” he said. “Ohio is the cheapest place to start a new business and has the largest tax cuts in the country.”
The Richland County Development Group also announced the hiring of two new positions. One of those positions was present on Tuesday, as Barrett Thomas was introduced as the director of Business Retention and Expansion.
“I’m excited to visit lots of you and work with you to make this county a better place,” Thomas said.
