Issue 2

Imagine that you own a business. After years of operations, you receive a notice from the utility company stating that because of a new state law, your utilities in the state of Ohio will be doubling.

What do you do?

Option 1 You could simply raise your prices and pass along the additional costs to your customer. If you used this option, you must understand that companies in neighboring states are not subject to this law. Therefore, your product will be less price competitive and you will ultimately lose market share.

Option 2 You could cut costs in other areas such as wages or other expenses. Again, this may make you less competitive since you have less to reinvest in the production of your company.

Option 3 You could take less for your return on investment. A viable option but what business owner wants to take less for their efforts when there is yet a better option available.

Option 4 You could move your company to Kentucky, West Virginia, Indiana where you could keep your profits and not sacrifice customer service and/or lost business.

This is the exact impact that issue 2 will have on businesses in the State of Ohio. Ohio is already one of the most employee protectionist states in the union and what do we have as a result of that protection?

We have an unemployment rate over 1.0% higher than the national average. You can practically see the moving vans hauling people and goods out of the state to reside in employer friendly states like Tennessee and North Carolina. Manufacturing expansion in this state is practically non existant already.

States, like companies, have to make themselves competitive for employers to want to locate there. This issue makes Ohio tremendously less competitive than our neighboring states. So I'll rephrase the question that I have in recent posts.

Would the passage of issue 2 make it more or less likely that the Honda plant going to Greensburg Indiana would come to Ohio? I'm sure the average Ohio would rather have those jobs than pizza delivery jobs in their communities.