Before you startpicturing our governor a Trekkie — there's no Jean-Luc Picard twinkle, no Captain Kirk swagger — be assured that this ship's captain is eyeing a more earthbound frontier, with some high-tech and only a little bit of sci-fi thrown in.

        The governor's Third Frontier Project is a 10-year plan to pump $1.6 billion into certain high-tech research facilities and companies. It's supposed to create high-paying jobs and set the state up like North Carolina with its Research Triangle or California with its Silicon Valley. In other words, Ohio's economy would be based on future discoveries rather than on its manufacturing past.

        “It's our turn,” the governor says. “We are the pioneers of Ohio's third frontier — a frontier of exploration and discovery, where knowledge is king.”

        Be on guard, pioneers, for the pricey pipe dreams, potential boondoggles and corporate slush funds along the way. Beware of squishy accountability.
       

An expensive future

        This trek will take money. According to Gov. Taft, over the next decade:

        • Five hundred million dollars will go into two funds: the Technology Action Fund and the Biomedical Research and Technology Transfer Fund.

        • Another $500 million will go into new buildings and equipment for “globally competitive centers of innovation,” named, for your marketing pleasure, after the Wright brothers.

        • Another $100 million will go into an Innovation Fund, to finance “targeted industries with high-growth, high-wage potential” and support existing industries with advanced manufacturing.

        • And next year Ohio taxpayers will be asked to approve $500 million in bonds to help recruit “world-class” researchers and bring “state-of-the-art” products to market in Ohio.

        But the truth — such as who will get to spend these funds, under what kind of public oversight and with what kinds of guarantees on taxpayers' investment — is still out there.

        “We won't spend money just to spend money. We'll demand and achieve results,” Gov. Taft says. But the results he lists — 25 percent more private and federal research dollars to Ohio, record amounts of venture capital investment and record numbers of patents, licenses and new business start-ups — are all too modest, given their $1.6 billion price tag.
       

A bit of sci-fi

        The funds, the governor says, could go into polymers in Akron, fuel cells in Cleveland, biomedical research in Cincinnati, or nanotechnology in Columbus. Now, that's the stuff of science fiction.

        I keep hearing an alarm, like a foghorn in the mist. Danger! Corporate Welfare, it says.

        I'm all for Ohio reaching for the stars with taxpayers' millions. I just think we ought to pursue the ones still out of reach in our own solar system first.

        How about graduating more than 69.5 percent of kids from the state's high schools?

        How about fishing Ohio out of the bottom of states based on school building conditions?

        How about ensuring all grade school children can read before they graduate?

        If those goals sound familiar, it's because they were Gov. Taft's, last year, when he wanted to be the Education Governor. Now, he's re-adopting the politician's bromide, “You can't fix education by throwing money at it.”

        And this scattershot projection of hundreds of millions of dollars into the corporate and research stratosphere is a surer mark?

        Denise Smith Amos can be reached at 768-8395. Fax 768-8340 or e-mail damos@ enquirer.com.

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