It's called the "peanut butter approach," the way Ohio politicians spread funding thin to cover as many communities and constituents as possible with a smooth layer of state money.
Everyone - the cities, the suburbs and the state's rural areas - gets something with that strategy. But economic development insiders argue it also ignores a basic fact: Some Ohio communities - including Greater Cincinnati - are simply better investments than others.
http://cincinnati.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/stories/2007/11/12/story1.h...
... "CONSTITUENTS" really doesn't have much meaning any more. Perhaps we should just adopt the term "URBANIST" to see who really merits the attention of government. Hell, while we're at it, let's go all the way in full honesty, and just say "CORPORATIST".
The article is just revealing even more about how "economic development" is just a scam. It's corporate welfare. It's designed to steal money from the public, to give it to corporations, who after a resounding decade of record profits and some validation of Capitalist enterprise, apparently need a Communist government now.
And you know what? We're going to do more of the same here in Toledo. Once Unigov gets put into place -- and why not, since all the actors are in place at the moment -- then the rest of Lucas County will have to fund every whim of the "Mayors of Lucas County" who will squat in Toledo.
There's no better time to consider moving to Perrysburg, in other words. At least Wood County doesn't seem poised to go freakin' insane like Lucas is.
The interesting thing is that is we truly spread the money out evenly, cities would be pale in comparison to the suburbs in the amount of state tax spending received. Assuming this article's numbers are right (that 71% of ohioans live in the metro areas), Ohio's suburbs should actually receeive just a little over half of all funding. For some reason, I don't think that's what the authors were thinking about when they wrote the artible.
Ohio total: 11.5 million
8.17 (71%) million in metro areas
2.34 (20.3%) million in Toledo, Cincy, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Akron, Youngstown, and Canton proper.
Suburbs: 5.83 (50.7%) million people
What doesn't add up? It seems to add up perfectly to me. Are you seeing something that I'm not seeing?
11.5 million total Ohioans
8.17 million (71% of all Ohioans) live in metro areas of which 2.34 million (20.3% of all Ohioans) live in the actual cities of Toledo, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Akron, Cincy, Canton, and Youngstown while 5.83 million (50.7% of all Ohioans) live in the suburbs surrounding these cities.
3.33 million (29% of all Ohioans) live in rural areas
20.3+50.7=71
71+29=100
...that this was more political in terms of funneling more money into the urban areas which are traditionally more Democrat than Republican...and then there's the whole issue of social engineering through government regulations - like the emphasis on 'smart growth' which has some serious detrimental impacts in unintended consequences...
but then, that's just me...
Your numbers don't add up...