A report over the weekend suggested that Ohio’s job growth for the last two years under Republican Gov. John Kasich was only slightly better than in the last two years under Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland. Now the state auditor wants to check into the state’s public private jobs creating entity.
Republican Auditor Dave Yost says he’s been talking quietly with lawmakers for months about a one-time five-year performance audit of JobsOhio. His call for an audit comes after the Columbus Dispatch reported the state gained just 12,500 jobs last year – worse than in the final year of Kasich’s predecessor.
“I felt that it was appropriate to take a look at the performance and see how we might tweak JobsOhio. This latest story sounds like maybe it needs a little bit more than a tweak," Yost says.
But Kasich called the report “fake news," saying the state gained more than 32,000 jobs in 2017. Those figures were actually revised down on Friday to just over 30,000 – which is the weakest one-year growth the state has had since the Great Recession.
