Ohio: Wilmington

Last fall, Wilmington lost approximately 8,000 jobs when private delivery carrier DHL announced a major restructuring that called for the termination of its Wilmington air transport hub (a private airport that had operately exclusively for the use of DHL since Airborne Express was brought by Belgium-based DHL. 

Today, Lt. Governor Lee Fisher announced 430 new jobs were coming back to the Wilmington Air Park.  From the Dayton Daily News (HT: Fisher for Senate campaign):

The state will provide a total of $5.2 million in assistance to a new aircraft maintenance company that plans to hire up to 430 people within three years at Wilmington Air Park, Lt.

The proposal would include a casino in Columbus, likely in the Arena District. The capital city was not included in the previous four gambling-related statewide ballot measures, all of which failed but drew support in areas where casinos were proposed.

Lakes Entertainment Inc. of Minnesota, which spent nearly $26 million to promote last year's proposal for a casino near Wilmington, and Penn National Gaming Inc. of Pennsylvania, which spent more than $36 million against it, now are working together on a ballot measure for November, sources said.

Also on their team are two deep-pocketed Cleveland investors. Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert, who also is the chairman of Quicken Loans, and developer Jeffrey Jacobs, chairman of a Colorado-based gambling company, reportedly are working with the two companies.

Airborne Maintenance and Engineering Services Inc. will receive a 65 percent, 10-year tax credit for the $5.7 million project, which is expected to create 430 positions in Wilmington, where thousands of jobs have been lost as DHL has pulled shipping operations there.

Many positions likely will be filled by employees of parent company Air Transport Services Group, which includes ABX Air and Air Transport International, both of which provide services to DHL and have operations and aircraft in Wilmington.

John Graber, president of ABX Air, said workers for the new unit could be recruited from a combination of active and laid-off ABX maintenance workers. He said that, as a free-standing company, the unit will have to compete on cost and service for the business of ABX as well as third-party companies.

Unlike previous proposals, it would not require a vote of the people. It wouldn't even need the legislature's blessing.

The River Downs horse-racing track near Cincinnati is trying to enlist mayors to lean on Gov. Ted Strickland to get the Ohio Lottery into the slot-machine business.

Strickland simply could direct the Ohio Lottery to manage slot machines at the seven Ohio racetracks and one location in each of the state's seven largest cities, said Robert Doyle, the River Downs lobbyist. The sites would get only slot machines, not other casino-style games.

An order from the governor would bypass the lengthy and expensive process by which the previous four gambling measures have appeared on the ballot: through petition drives for which hundreds of thousands of signatures had to be collected.