TEXT OF STORY

Steve Chiotakis: The state of Ohio has an unemployment rate of 11 percent. But voters there have just OK’ed a ballot issue they think could help lower it. Reporter Bill Cohen has the story.

Bill Cohen: For the last five years, Ohio’s government has borrowed $500 million and funnelled it to emerging high-tech businesses that seem to be on the verge of taking breakthroughs in the lab and applying them to new products. An independent study showed the Third Frontier program had helped create more than 50,000 new jobs.

Using that as a sales pitch, backers of the third frontier have now convinced Ohio voters to renew the program for another four years. That way, Ohio can borrow another $700 million. Ohio development director Lisa Patt-Mcdaniel says a who’s who of movers and shakers endorsed the campaign:

Lisa Patt-Mcdaniel: Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives — everybody’s backing it, because there’s nothing partisan about good jobs for Ohioans.

The only critics were free-market economists and activists in the tea party movement, but they never mounted an organized “vote no” campaign.

In Columbus, I’m Bill Cohen for Marketplace.