Several Ohio cities put in bids with Amazon for its second headquarters, complete with offers of tax breaks. But in an interview for "The State of Ohio", Gov. John Kasich says while he’s hoping high-tech firms are looking at Ohio, he maintains the state does not – in his words – “buy deals”.
Facebook’s Columbus-area data center will create around 100 jobs, with $37 million in state and local tax incentives. Three Amazon data centers in Ohio will create 120 jobs with $82 million in state and local tax incentives. Kasich said the state calculates a return on investment before offering incentives to companies. “If they do not pay back the investment of the state over a reasonable period of time, we don’t make, we don’t offer them the deal. And we don’t get in a race with other states to buy deals,” said Kasich.
Though he didn’t elaborate on the ROI formula, he cited the deal offered by Ohio to Foxconn – he said it was a third of what Wisconsin offered, which was nearly $3 billion in incentives.
