Eagerly anticipated details on the All Ohio Future Fund (Fund) are beginning to come to light. Ohio’s Office of Budget and Management (OBM) has scheduled a hearing December 11th on proposed rules for the Fund, which underwent a name change – from Investing in Ohio Fund – during the state budgeting process in 2023. Through the Fund, the Ohio Department of Development (ODOD) will spend up to $750 million to develop “project-ready sites to improve the economic welfare of the people of the State of Ohio.”
A summary of the proposed rules is listed immediately below. (The complete list of proposed rules can be found here.) Although OBM is only proposing such rule provisions, we can begin to see how ODOD likely will administer the Fund in the details that follow:
- Forms of assistance under the Fund are loans and grants, at ODOD’s discretion (working with OBM).
- Applicants’ sites must be larger than 30 acres.
- Eligible applicants include local governments; port authorities; CICs, including county land banks; conservancy and park districts; not-for-profits organizations, and for-profit organizations.
- Proof of county and local government support for a given project is required. In those instances in which for-profit companies are the applicant, a letter of commitment is required from a unit of local government (in whose jurisdiction the project is located) that pledges to collaborate on the project.
- Eligible costs are tied to infrastructure; namely, public roadwork, water, wastewater, design and engineering, demolition, wetland mitigation, and utility connections.
- An applicant’s scope of the project should address what type of end user is being targeted, once the site is ready for development.
- Projects will be evaluated by ODOD according to the typical evaluation metrics: quality of jobs expected to be created at the project site; local community support; regional economic impact; and, public ownership and local control of the to be improved.
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