COLUMBUS, Ohio — JobsOhio occupies a space unlike any other entity in state government: a private corporation funded by public money, operating behind a wall of statutory secrecy, and increasingly acting like a statewide real estate developer.
Created in 2011 under former Gov. John Kasich, JobsOhio was designed as a private nonprofit responsible for driving economic development. Its funding comes from a long-term lease of Ohio’s liquor enterprise — a revenue stream worth hundreds of millions of dollars each year. And under a carve-out written directly into Ohio law, nearly all of JobsOhio’s internal records, deal terms, and project files are exempt from public disclosure.
The exemption is not incidental. It is central to how the organization functions. Internal documents reviewed by this newsroom were stamped on every page with the same notice: “INTERNAL USE ONLY — DO NOT DISTRIBUTE. This document is not a public record.” JobsOhio’s own application templates tell prospective recipients that the information they submit will not be accessible to the public. The criteria used to award grants and loans are developed internally, reviewed internally, and approved internally. The identities of companies benefiting from publicly funded site preparation do not have to be disclosed.
The Site Inventory Program
At the center of JobsOhio’s growing real estate role is the Ohio Site Inventory Program, or OSIP, a grant-and-loan initiative created to prepare land and buildings for industrial and commercial use even when no end user has been identified.
The program was first established in July 2020 and has been renewed and extended through June 2030, representing a decade-long commitment of up to $50 million per year — $250 million over each five-year cycle. Individual grants can reach $2 million, and combined grant-and-loan packages can reach $5 million. JobsOhio’s share of any project cannot exceed 50 percent of the total cost.
The stated purpose is to fill gaps in Ohio’s real estate inventory by preparing sites that the private market has not developed on its own. Activities include demolition, remediation, site preparation, utility installation, and new construction.
In practice, OSIP functions as a publicly funded development pipeline controlled entirely by JobsOhio. The program’s guidelines acknowledge that funding will not be distributed evenly across the state and that meeting minimum requirements does not guarantee approval. All decisions are made by JobsOhio’s internal Sites Team. There is no public input, no public hearing, and no independent oversight.
Real Money, Real Projects
In Muskingum County, the Zanesville-Muskingum County Port Authority received a $3.09 million JobsOhio speculative development grant to acquire and prepare the site now known as National Road Business Park. In October 2024, Marker Development broke ground on a $13.8 million speculative industrial building at the park, supported by an additional $2 million OSIP grant and a $4 million Rural Industrial Park Loan.
In Butler County, the Butler Tech Aviation Education Hangar at Middletown Regional Airport received $1 million from OSIP toward a $15 million aviation training facility. The site sits near Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, one of the nation’s largest military installations and a major driver of defense-sector real estate demand.
The Database Behind the Deals
Behind the press releases is a statewide property inventory housed on the ZoomProspector platform. The database lists hundreds of industrial and commercial properties across Ohio, including vacant land, brownfields, existing buildings, and speculative developments. Each listing contains extensive technical data: utility capacity, rail access, fiber availability, proximity to military installations, and whether the site lies within a Justice40 Disadvantaged Community, a Coal Closure Energy Community, or an Opportunity Zone.
These fields reveal more than available real estate. They show that JobsOhio is mapping every site against every possible federal and state incentive — identifying where subsidies can be layered and where companies can be recruited with the most attractive packages. That analysis is not available to the public. It is available to the companies JobsOhio courts.
One listing for a warehouse near Gahanna highlights its distance from Intel’s semiconductor campus and Anduril’s planned drone manufacturing facility. The reference is telling: Anduril, a California-based defense technology company, is now so embedded in Ohio’s economic development strategy that its location is used as a selling point for unrelated properties. JobsOhio features Anduril’s 5-million-square-foot project as a Growth Spotlight on its website, alongside Intel. The incentives used to attract Anduril are not public records.
The Transparency Problem
Supporters of JobsOhio argue that confidentiality is necessary to protect sensitive negotiations and keep Ohio competitive. But the exemption in state law does not apply only to active negotiations. It applies to everything — permanently. Completed deals, awarded grants, loan terms, project scoring, and the identities of companies benefiting from public investment are all shielded from disclosure.
The Ohio General Assembly created this exemption.
As a result, Ohio taxpayers are funding a $250 million real estate development program administered by a private corporation that selects its own projects, awards its own grants, recruits its own tenants, and reports its results only through its own press releases.
Is This the New Way Ohio Does Business?
JobsOhio has been controversial since its inception. Critics warned that shifting economic development to a private entity would eliminate accountability without improving outcomes. Supporters countered that a private corporation could move faster and compete more effectively for investment.
Fifteen years later, both arguments hold validity. JobsOhio does move quickly. It does attract major projects. It has built a sophisticated statewide recruitment infrastructure that few states can match.
But it has also built a system in which hundreds of millions of public dollars flow through a private organization with no legislative oversight of individual decisions, no public disclosure of deal terms, no independent audit of project selection, and no requirement that the communities whose land is being developed have any say in who ultimately occupies it.
The OSIP database includes sites in Justice40 communities — places already burdened by decades of environmental and economic inequity. It includes Coal Closure communities — places that have already lost their economic base once. It includes brownfields in urban neighborhoods where residents have waited years for remediation that public money is now funding on behalf of companies not yet identified.
Ohio has decided that economic development is too important to be governed by democratic processes. JobsOhio is the result. And unless the General Assembly decides that millions in public spending requires public accountability, the organization will continue building its land pipeline in the dark — one spec building, one shovel‑ready site, one unidentified end user at a time.