Kasich called Kvamme, a venture capitalist from California, an essential part of Ohio’s effort to create a job friendly climate.

Kasich says Kvamme plans to stay in Ohio and continue to contribute to the state’s economic revival.

And the Republican governor said replacing Mark Kvamme is a tall order but there is no one better to do it than John Minor.

But this time they’re getting help from an unlikely ally.

Progress Ohio and Democratic state Sen. Michael Skindell and Rep. Dennis Murray filed lawsuits claiming Gov. John Kasich’s public-private entity JobsOhio was an unconstitutional corporation with minimal transparency.

Two courts threw out their lawsuits, saying they didn’t have standing to sue.

Now they want the Ohio Supreme Court to hear their arguments.

“The public is not permitted to file a lawsuit against something potentially unconstitutional. In my view that leaves our Ohio constitution essentially defenseless,” says Brian Rothenberg with Progress Ohio, which is joining the Democratic lawmakers in their legal challenge.

And they’re getting help from Maurice Thompson at the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law, a Tea Party-backed offshoot of the conservative think tank the Buckeye Institute.

“These are just judges subjectively imposed their own personal preferences on deciding who can access court and who can’t. And that’s dead wrong,” Thompson says.

Rothenberg and Thompson are also concerned that lack of standing was the same decision given when the lawsuit challenging electronic slot machines at horseracing tracks was thrown out in May.

The 25-year, $1.4 billion deal will keep control of licensing and operations related to liquor with the state, but the profits would go to JobsOhio, the non-profit private entity set up by the legislature last year and headed up by Mark Kvamme.

“Since JobsOhio is a private entity, it will be 100 percent private funds, because we are paying a fair consideration of the liquor business,” Kwamme said.

The process will start on Monday, when the state will go to a panel of lawmakers who approve non-budget related money items and ask for permission to transfer $237 million in liquor profits from last year to JobsOhio. That will be used as seed money for its tax incentive program.

JobsOhio will also seek $1.5 billion on the bond market to cover the transfer of the profits and other extra expenses. But budget director Tim Keen says there’s no risk for Ohio taxpayers in the process.

“JobsOhio will issue long-term bonds backed by future revenue from the franchise,” said Keen. “The franchise transfer agreement ensures that debt raised will be a liability of JobsOhio and not the state, and the state will never assume the debt, even if JobsOhio should go out of business.”

Once in JobsOhio, the money will be used for attracting and retaining companies, for cleaning up environmental problems and brownfields through the Clean Ohio program, for workforce training, and for marketing. And Kvamme says there’s an extra bonus in JobsOhio taking over certain functions that the state is paying for now.

“Not only are we going to be utilizing 100% of the funds for economic development and revitalization here in the state, we will be saving the state approximately $60-80 million dollars a year in past general revenue funds.”

Kvamme says the success or failure of JobsOhio will be measured on three things: net new jobs created and retained, new capital investment in the state, and return on investment to the state. And he says the state’s goal is what he calls sustainable economic development – for instance, the taxes that come in to companies given incentives need to exceed those incentives in the first year.

As head of the Department of Development, Christine Schmenk will be auditing JobsOhio to monitor its results.

“If JobsOhio substantially fails to execute its responsibilities or continuously underperforms on the metrics despite the economic climate, the contract does allow for termination.”

And for Ohioans who don’t have any contact with JobsOhio, but do drink alcohol? They won’t notice a difference, says David Goodman, director of the Ohio Department of Commerce, which will keep control over licensing and other operations.

“For consumers, nothing changes. Bars, restaurants, and others follow all the same licensing and other processes they currently use. They will see no change.”

And the Department of Development will soon be no more. It will be renamed the Ohio Development Services Agency, in a bill that was nicknamed “JobsOhio 2″ by House Republicans last week.

As the jobs-development functions are split away and assigned to JobsOhio, some services will stay in the ODSA, such as tourism. Schmenk says she doesn’t anticipate big layoffs, but that the agency will have at least 30 percent fewer employees than it had when Gov. John Kasich came into office.

Earlier this year I laughed at Kasich’s insecurity about his manhood. It was funny when he suggested he’d look into changing out the pink from the drivers’ licenses because it somehow offended his tough guy image – but now that he’s actually doing it – changing the color to blue – suggests a significant flaw in our governor.

By his pursuit of a personal agenda at the state’s expense, instead of dealing with the real pain Ohioans are facing, Kasich’s continues to add insult to injury.

Consider the cuts to the local fund Kasich championed. He asserted that municipalities could then make their own choices about their own money (what money?!) so state funding wouldn’t be necessary.

And how’d that one work out? Well, in Kasich’s own school district, Westerville, there are at least 62 fewer jobs due to cuts after the most recent school levy, meant to shore up budgets against those cuts, failed.

You might think that would wake Kasich up, given that he lives in Westerville – but Kasich isn’t worried, he sends his daughters to private school.

And those jobs? Kasich doesn’t fear adding more people to unemployment, Kvamme will find them jobs.

Of course JobsOhio is claiming it’s created jobs – unfortunately the jobs it’s referring to came about before Kvamme’s organization existed. Even the Columbus Dispatch hypothesized that JobsOhio has yet to actually do anything, that current successes were achieved without them.

But I digress. What about those drivers’ licenses?

The current State driver’s license contract, according to public records, is with a company out of Massachusetts for an estimated cost of about $14 million – no small change. How much is this design change going to cost the state? I mean, just consider the recalibration of every drivers’ license printer statewide alone; what about reprogramming the system, etc.? And since this is a Massachusetts company doing the work, how many of those dollars are staying in Ohio?

Which brings me back to Kvamme. Let’s tally up his record so far. Kvamme claims credit for jobs saved or created by the Department of Development – which according to Kasich is broken – thus the need for JobsOhio, now, instead of hiring an unemployed professional, Kvamme got free labor from a college student for unnecessary design work, and may be sending hundreds of thousands of dollars to Massachusetts, just to change the gender of our drivers’ licenses.

Phew! Personally, I hope Ohioans give Kvamme and Kasich another pink to worry about – a pink slip.

Ohio’s job engine stalled earlier this decade

“We have lost over 400-thousand jobs in the past four or five years,” says Mark Kvamme, the Chief Investment Officer of the state’s new semi-private job board JobsOhio. At a meeting of central Ohio business interest groups, Kvamme outlined a new plan to bring employers to the state.

“The status quo, the way things have been done in the past is not working. Oh, and by the way, its not working on a national level, its not working on a state level, its not working on a municipal level. we’ve got to make changes,” Kvamme says.

Kvamme says JobsOhio will now use leads from regional chambers of commerce to attract new business.

While JobsOhio does not control tax incentives offered by individual cities or suburbs, it will jawbone competing local governments to give potential employers the best deal. Business recruitment groups, such as Columbus 2020, will get $2.5 million in state grants to dovetail its business recruitment program with Jobs Ohio. Columbus 2020 executive Kenny McDonald says the state funds will be used, in part, to add staff and meet more often with regional job development officers.

“We think there’s so much change going on in Ohio, in our region, in the economy that it requires three to four hours every month,” McDonald says.

McDonald says Columbus 2020 will help negotiate state loans and grants with businesses in an eleven county region surrounding Columbus.