By James McNair
The Cincinnati Enquirer

COLUMBUS - Michigan: "Great Lakes. Great location."

New York: "New Attitudes, New Opportunities."

Pennsylvania: "Come Invent the Future."

Ohio: "The eCorridor"?

Yep, the eCorridor. A misnomer though the state's business slogan might be, it's the Taft administration's way of saying that Ohio is near the center of the e-commerce and technology universe. Bruce Johnson, the governor's economic development chief and an admirer of the state's "Discover Ohio" tourism theme, doesn't take offense when the sobriquet coined by his department fails to register recognition.

But Johnson, 42, sorely wants to do something about the way Ohio registers with the business community, especially by those entrepreneurs and out-of-state corporations looking for digs to commercialize new technologies. For all the state's accomplishments and amenities, he said, the state needs to shift gears and join the race for high-tech industries and well-paid, smart work forces.

"We're behind and we need to do better," said Johnson, a Columbus native and seven-year state senator who joined the Taft cabinet in September 2001. "We can either participate in where the national economy is headed - or we can put our head in the sand and ignore it and be a victim of other states' investment in high-growth sectors."

In an hour-long interview in his 29th-floor office in downtown Columbus, Johnson reflected on the state's slipping industrial position and Taft's big push to make Ohio more of a technology center. Those same issues were the theme of a Jan. 19 Enquirer article that showed how Ohio is being passed by other states in areas such as patents, research and development spending, investment capital receipts, new business formation and per capita income.

It's Johnson's job to help reverse those trends. His department of 473 employees last year doled out $215 million in the course of making business loans, running technology-sharing centers and such things as subsidizing new technologies with commercial potential. When an entrepreneur wants to launch a new product or a company wants to build a new plant, Johnson's their guy.

At a time when the U.S. economy might still be in recession and Ohio is facing a $720 million budget deficit, Johnson can play an even more pivotal role for the state. At the very least, he will stump for Taft's 10-year, $1.6 billion Third Frontier program, an omnibus package aimed at solidifying Ohio's standing as a technology center - a program Johnson helped draft.

For 2003, Johnson wants to get the state's technology initiatives rolling. The first $100 million installment of Third Frontier, he said, will go out this year in the form of technology grants through the department's Wright Brothers Capital Fund program

Last month, Taft unveiled the $100 million Innovation Ohio Revolving Loan Fund to help companies acquire fixed assets to develop new products.

Meantime, like the legislator he was, Johnson is pushing for passage of Ohio Senate and House bills calling for increases in technology R&D funding and tax credits. Taft is especially interested in funding leading-edge technologies such as fuel cells, biotechnology, advanced manufacturing and high-tech materials.

"I think with a diversified economy that is moving ever larger numbers of people up the value-added chain and participation in the knowledge economy, the state will be better off and more stable," Johnson said. "Someday, somebody will say Ohio always had an innovation legacy."

But Johnson - a Columbus native and graduate of Bowling Green State University - wants to fix Ohio's image soon, not later. While Michigan is known for the automotive industry, New Jersey pharmaceuticals and Illinois its collection of global companies in Chicago, Ohio's reputation is a mixed bag.

"The real objective is to change the reputation of the state," he said. "The reputation is a lot of different things."

Pausing at length to characterize that reputation, he continued, "I would say it is not good enough and not accurate, but generally Ohioans are viewed as hard-working people and Ohio is a good place to make things well - and that's an advantage. There's also the sense that we're a smokestack or farm-based economy. While those are two sectors of our economy that we'll continue to support, there's a lot more than that. I think there is a potential to create a buzz."

Third Frontier, Johnson hopes, will light a fire under Ohio's innate, but sluggish entrepreneurial instincts.

"One of the reasons we're behind is that big companies made big investments in Ohio, and it gave people less reason to be entrepreneurial. You'll find that people are most entrepreneurial when they've been uprooted from their comfort levels," he said.

Another area that Johnson said he will direct a more "critical eye" toward is the state's Job Creation Tax Credit program. The 10-year-old program allows for the reduction of corporate income taxes in exchange for the creation of at least 25 jobs paying no less than 150 percent of the federal minimum wage.

Johnson said he will continue to "compete our rear ends off" for targeted projects, but will approve fewer of the multi-million-dollar deals like those given Wal-Mart and Kroger in the last two years.

Wal-Mart, the world's biggest company, was given a $2.6 million tax credit for a food distribution center in Washington County that, according to the Cleveland-based think tank Policy Matters Ohio, was already under construction. Last year, Kroger received more than $2 million in incentives for a cookie and cracker warehouse in Delaware County, the research group said.

Zach Schiller, research director for Policy Matters Ohio, said the state should not grant incentives to companies that will be doing business in Ohio anyway.

"These examples suggest that we are not examining all projects carefully enough when we hand out incentives," Schiller said. "We need to tighten up on the process for awarding such credits. We also should not create additional incentive programs when the state is in a financial crisis and hasn't shown itself able to manage the existing program well."

Johnson acknowledges that over-reliance on incentives is a "trap" that the state should avoid. He said Ohio should be able to sell itself on its merits, by creating a business environment that the state can pitch to suitable prospects.

Taft has said over and over that that environment will be one of advanced technologies, of big and small companies engaging in world-class research and spewing out cutting-edge products. Although the state is in no position to commence a major advertising campaign, Johnson wants to craft a message - and get the message out.

Johnson is heartened by precedents in other states. Texas was an oil and cattle state before commitments in research funding put the state near the top of the high-tech game. And North Carolina was a tobacco and textiles center before the Research Triangle, sandwiched between North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina and Duke University, made it a technology contender.

"If you can take a backwater state like North Carolina and create an atmosphere that they have in and around those three institutions and create spinout support for business, you can do it in Ohio," Johnson said.

E-mail jmcnair@enquirer.com.