central Ohio

There appears to be a tax break battle brewing amongst central Ohio locales. From the Columbus Dispatch:

Gahanna city officials lost their fight to keep a credit-card company and its 529 jobs from moving to Columbus.

Bruce Johnson, director of the Ohio Department of Development, cleared the way yesterday for Alliance Data Systems Inc. to accept tax breaks from Columbus.

Johnson found that Alliance Data Systems didn’t have enough office space and that the company could move to Texas without Columbus’ incentives, said Maria Smith, a department spokeswoman. . . .

Gahanna is still smarting over last year’s loss of EMH&T, an engineering firm that moved more than 300 employees to the Northeast Side.

Columbus has lost some smaller businesses to Gahanna such as Amerigraph in 2004 and Sort & Pack, which recently announced it would move to Gahanna. White insists that Gahanna doesn’t try to recruit businesses away from Columbus or its suburban neighbors.

Stinchcomb said Gahanna will have to move on and try to recruit new business.

While Gahanna was trying to keep Alliance Data Systems from moving, Stinchcomb received an e-mail on July 10 from Steve Campbell, the senior adviser on regional affairs for Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman.

In Campbell’s message, he calls for all the region’s mayors and city managers to meet and talk about a pact "that focuses on growing our region’s economy and discourages moving jobs between jurisdictions within our region."

No one should need the permission of the director of the Ohio Department of Development to offer lower taxes, regardless of whether the lower taxes are implemented uniformly or come in the form of a preferential tax break.

I also find Mayor Coleman's policy amusing: give away an individual tax break and then call for a plan that prevents other municipalities from doing the same thing.

On another note, there is very good news today from Ohio.