DevelopOhio

A recent Dayton Daily News investigation takes issue with the fact that the nonprofit regional economic development entity the Dayton Development Coalition "does not release its annual budgets, conflict of interest policies or financial statements" despite having received roughly 60 percent of its revenue from public sources since 2004. This totals $64.5 million in local, state and federal tax dollars. The coalition assumed more power and a new source of funding when it was designated as JobsOhio West in 2011. Despite this, the newspaper concludes that the entity "operates in such secrecy that it is virtually impossible to gauge how successful it is in bringing jobs and investment to the region or how wisely it spends the public's money," the article said. Local officials that support the coalition point to several economic development projects that it has helped bring to fruition; however, the newspaper maintains that many of the job-creation statistics associated with such projects are inflated. For more, read the full story.