Employees of the state’s non-profit job creation company JobsOhio got an 18 percent raise in pay this year.
JobsOhio’s Matthew Englehart said the pay raise is warranted because the costs of benefits for employees rose by almost 25 percent. Some of those employees make more than $200,000 a year – more than Gov. Mike DeWine or Lt. Gov. Jon Husted.
Catherine Turcer with the watchdog group Common Cause Ohio said the state hasn’t retained jobs or attracted enough new jobs to warrant those high salaries. “It is not clear that we are actually getting our money’s worth,” Turcer said.
Englehart said in a written statement that the compensation packages for JobsOhio employees are comparable to those at other private nonprofit economic development organizations. And he said JobsOhio worked with companies to create more than 27,000 new jobs and $1.3 billion in payroll last year. Still, since JobsOhio’s books are not open to public scrutiny, it isn’t possible to know the details behind those numbers. Gov. DeWine has said he wants to make JobsOhio more transparent, but has not yet taken action to do that.
