Every two years the state of Ohio develops a new budget to fund all state activities and many local activities through a variety of subsidies. In fact the state only keeps 15% of the tax money that flows through their treasury and sends the remaining 85% back to the local governments. For seventy years the state has been distributing money to local governments without sufficient consideration for cost efficiencies. Greater Ohio has recently testified in the House Finance Committee that Ohio needs better data to understand how to achieve these cost efficiencies . Better data will be the key in transforming Ohio's communities to become more competitive in the global economy. Currently Ohio's fractured and duplicative layers of government undercut Ohio's economic competitiveness, and the most important tool to reversing these damaging trends is the accumulation and distribution of better data. In order for each taxpayer to get the best best bang for their buck, better data is needed to know where and how cut, merge, consolidate or share.
For more information on this topic, read Gene Krebs' complete testimony. If you're not interested already, here's a direct quote from Gene's testimony, "I can give more data about Kate Middleton’s dress than I can about most Ohio government, state and local."