Restoring Prosperity
The Greater Ohio Policy Center Blog
As Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) Director Jerry Wray observes, Ohio’s transportation network serves a vital role in allowing Ohioans to get to their place of work. In ODOT’s press release from this past April, Wray noted that Ohio’s transportation network “is Ohio’s most valuable man-made asset” and “gives us the ability to move goods to market, get to work, [and] take our children to school.”
This past April, Greater Ohio Policy Center (GOPC) convened a second statewide affordable housing learning exchange at the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA) offices. Affordable housing practitioners and advocates from Columbus, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Toledo discussed local housing challenges and identified successful initiatives to build on.
In his recent post on Urbanophile.com titled “Bribing People to Move to Your City”, blogger Aaron M. Renn discusses the Hamilton, Ohio’s incentive program to attract talent to their city. Unfortunately, it seems Mr. Renn did not take the time to properly understand the full context of this policy and in doing so misses the tremendous amount of work Hamilton’s leaders have put towards revitalizing their urban core and renewing the community’s economic prospects.
Earlier this month, I had the honor of joining the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy’s board and senior staff on a day trip to Worcester. LILP has been a long-time partner of GOPC’s and most recently published Regenerating America’s Smaller Legacy Cities, a policy focus report written by Torey Hollingsworth and myself.
Last week, the Ohio legislature gave final approval to House Bill 122, a bill sponsored by Representatives Steve Hambley (R-Brunswick) and John Rogers (D-Mentor-on-the-Lake) which establish the Regional Economic Development Alliance Study Committee to review the benefits and challenges involved in creating regional economic development alliances.
