Columbus and Franklin County have consistently outperformed most of the state since the end of the recession. That trend continued in August, when the city’s unemployment fell to 6 percent. That’s a half-percent drop from July and more than a full percent below the statewide average.

Regional economist Bill LaFayette says it wasn’t a case of frustrated job seekers giving up on their search.

“You have about 6,000 people more who are working now than were working in January. And so the decline that we’ve seen in the unemployment rate is for real,” LaFayette says.

LaFayette says the August report means Columbus has now regained 84 percent of the jobs the city lost in the recession. That’s more than double the percentage of jobs regained statewide, and more than double the national average.

Most other portions of Ohio saw seasonally-adjusted unemployment drop in August. All of the state’s major metro areas saw people go back to work, and only two counties – Jefferson and Belmont in eastern Ohio – saw unemployment rates go up.

The latest unemployment report from the Department of Job and Family Services lists a May jobless rate of 7.3 percent. That’s down from 7.4 percent in April and marks the tenth-straight decline in Ohio unemployment.

In a separate survey, the state added 19,600 jobs in May.

The jobs gains came across sectors, with professional and business services adding about 4,500 jobs, 6,000 new jobs in manufacturing, and nearly 6,000 position in private education.

This month, Ohio chose the contract winners that will provide health care services for more than 1.5 million poor and disabled people.

Companies that lost out on the billions of dollars in work say the Department of Job and Family Services made errors in awarding the contracts. Several companies allege scoring on bid applications was miscalculated.

A department spokesman said the protests would be reviewed but wouldn’t comment further.

Protests are common and don’t typically affect contract awards, though a financial services company found the Ohio scoring results to be especially unusual. London-based Barclays conducted the analysis on behalf of some bidders.

Nearly 84,000 Ohioans are receiving cash assistance from the state, down from 102,000 last year. Almost 36 percent of those who lost their cash assistance benefits in the last year didn’t meet a federal requirement that recipients work or participate in job training programs for about 30 hours a week for single parent families and 55 hours a week for two-parent households.

For many years, Ohio didn’t meet that federal standard. And last year, the state got slapped with the largest fines in the nation – $130 million of which could come due to the feds this fall. Michael Colbert directs the state Job and Family Services Department. He says Ohio must avoid those federal fines, but that recipients must also work toward getting off public assistance.

“What you don’t want is a population that is going to be on public assistance for a year or six months or three months and not do anything. You want to pick up a skill. If we sanction you now, it is a personal decision. You have made a personal decision that you do not want to do 32 hours of work participation,” Colbert said.

That idea – that it’s a personal decision that recipients make not to work – angers Jack Frech. He heads the Job and Family Services agency in Athens County, one of the poorest in Ohio.

“We have folks in Columbus talking about realism for these folks and how they realistically need to go out and find a job. No one knows it more than they do. These folks love their children. They want to provide a better living for them. It’s as though we accept no responsibility for the fact that we set the benefit level at $450 a month,” Frech said.

Frech maintains that benefit is so low many people his office sees can’t afford a car to get to a job – and that the state needs to go back to what it did in previous years and send more money their way.

Colbert says while cash assistance is the only real money the state puts into recipients’ hands, they also can get help with food, housing, transportation and health care. But the reality for Joel Potts with the Job and Family Services Directors Association is that the law is the law, and that the agencies have little leeway in making exceptions for recipients who aren’t working.

“If they are assigned to work, they have three choices: they can do the assignment, they can ask to have their case closed, or we will have to move forward with sanctions. There’s no fourth option. Those are the three things. In that, it is a choice,” Potts said.

Phil Cole is with the Ohio Association of Community Action Agencies – a group of 50 offices which aren’t state agencies but work with people in poverty. He says recipients are at the mercy of a system that he says doesn’t work anymore.

“They’re given up. And that’s not the fault of the director, it’s not the fault of the state of Ohio, it’s not the fault of any of Joel’s members. It’s just the way the rules are set up. And the rules are wrong – we need to redo them. People shouldn’t have to make this choice of surviving or not surviving, which is really what it is. And when you’re surviving, you’re barely surviving,” Cole said.

Cole suggests the three-year time limit to receive welfare benefits needs to be expanded to five years instead of three, because new projects and businesses that will bring new jobs often take years to develop. There are exceptions to that limit for some families, but it’s unlikely it will be expanded in the near future.

New state figures released this morning show a January unemployment rate of 7.7 percent.

That’s down from 7.9 percent in December.

The report says Ohio gained 32,000 jobs in January, with about 11,000 people leaving unemployment rolls.

Service-industry industries reportedly gained 25,200 jobs in January. Professional and business services gained 5,300 jobs, financial activities added 2,400 positions, and government employment rolls increased by about 100.

The state auditor has just investigated the program, and he’s found a suspicious number of cases where the recipients have been given multiple cards, because they’ve claimed the originals were lost or stolen. Click the “play” button at the top of the screen to hear Bill Cohen’s full report.

And the Kasich administration’s move is getting positive feedback from advocates for the 2,000,000 Ohioans on Medicaid.

Ohio is the first state to join the non-profit Catalyst for Payment Reform, an organization that’s working with major for-profit employers such as Wal-Mart and General Electric. The organization will help the state as it prepares to rebid its contracts with Medicaid providers.

Greg Moody with the Governor’s Office of Health Transformation says simply put, the state will pay more to Medicaid providers who have a track record of keeping patients healthy, and less to those whose patients get and stay sick.

“We are not trying to predict exactly what this might save. We’re doing this because we want to see quality and performance improve, and I’m confident that if we’re able to do that then there will also be savings down the road for Ohio taxpayers,” Moody says.

The state spent $14 billion on Medicaid coverage last year.

So far, Moody says, he hasn’t heard any negative response from Medicaid providers. Also supportive: groups that represent consumers in the Medicaid program, including Cathy Levine with the Universal Health Care Network of Ohio.

“The problem with our system now is that doctors are not paid to spend time with patients or to coordinate care among providers, but that doctors are paid for producing volume of care. And payment reform is at the heart of creating patient-centered, safer, better care for patients,” Levine says.

Levine says the current payment system allows health care costs to soar out of control because patients are shuffled among providers who don’t talk to each other or to the patients, resulting in unneeded procedures and tests. But Levine says the details of how the system works are important to watch.

“We have to make sure that doctors are not being paid to give less care, but rather that they’re being paid to give the best care. Therefore, the incentives to providers have to be transparent to consumers.”

Levine says patients need to have input, and Moody says that there should be a financial incentive for patients to seek primary and preventative care, which cost less. A

And Moody says he’s hoping the idea of payment reform will spread beyond the state’s reach.

“Whoever’s dollar is purchasing insurance – in this case, the Ohio Medicaid program, in another case, maybe your employer – that we expect more from our health insurance companies to not just pay the bills, but to say, ‘we’re going to do our homework to see which providers get the best outcomes, and we’re going to encourage you to see those providers,’” Moody says.

The state also wants to link providers who deal with the 190,000 Ohioans on both Medicaid and Medicare, so they would have to deal with only one agency to receive services.