Ohio’s workforce development ecosystem struggles every year to stretch limited resources across training, placement services, career coaching, and the supports people need to get, keep, and advance in good jobs.

At the same time, JobsOhio — the state’s private economic development corporation — is committing $300 million over 10 years to a new Experiential Learning Initiative supporting on-the-job training in roles paying at least $20 an hour.

Before JobsOhio spends another $300 million, Ohio should ask a bigger question: Could some of those resources do substantially more if JobsOhio stopped deciding how all of them were spent?

That matters because Ohio is allowing JobsOhio to create a parallel workforce system while powerful opportunities elsewhere remain underused.

This didn’t start with $300 million.

During COVID, JobsOhio launched Ohio to Work. There was no competitive RFP. Organizations were selected across Ohio to execute the initiative — including organizations recommended by people advising on its creation — with funding flowing through JobsOhio’s regional partners.

Significant outcomes were reported, but there has been no independent evaluation and no clear way to separate those results from work participating organizations would have done anyway.

Ohio to Work did not disappear when the pandemic ended. Its infrastructure and relationships helped shape WorkOhio. This time there was an RFP for regional hubs, although the turnaround was short and relatively little funding for the role.

Now, with $300 million behind an initiative announced with the governor and lieutenant governor, there is still no publicly available record of an RFP or competitive selection process on Ohio’s procurement website, grants management website, or multiple individual agency websites.

In fact, I obtained a copy of the RFP and it states — in red — “This document is to be kept confidential and only shared within direct recipient firms.”

That should matter.

The Ohio Department of Development is already under scrutiny for its management of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership program, and the Office of Workforce Transformation’s TechCred program has documented incidents of fraud. Both use regional or intermediary structures to provide direct support to businesses.

A $300 million workforce investment could be transformational for Ohioans. But major workforce decisions continue to be made through relatively closed processes, then embedded in successive initiatives without broad co-design, transparent accountability, meaningful stakeholder input or independent evaluation.

And the opportunity costs are significant.

Ohio’s Benefit Bridge pilot was launched with just $8 million in state funds. Current data from one county projects $21 million in taxpayer savings over a decade and $6.8 million in lifetime state tax revenue from participants.

Ohio H.B. 484 seeks just $20 million over the next biennium to address Ohio’s child-care crisis — a workforce challenge shared by employers across sectors, regions, and political lines.

Federal SNAP Employment and Training rules allow states to receive 50% reimbursement for eligible nonfederal spending on employment, training and supportive services for SNAP recipients.

Properly structured investments can bring additional federal dollars into Ohio for training, career navigation, transportation, childcare and other supports.

And under 23 U.S.C. §504(e), states can use certain federal highway funds for workforce development, including apprenticeships, pre-apprenticeships, recruitment, community-college partnerships and supportive services.

None is a gold-ticket solution. Together, they illustrate what Ohio badly needs: a workforce strategy that looks across systems and asks how every available dollar can work harder.

Instead, JobsOhio has steadily built its own strategy, largely from an economic-development and employer perspective.

While announcements say workforce partners and state agencies provided input, it is difficult to see how such a rapid process could include meaningful engagement of the full workforce ecosystem.

JobsOhio’s new models can be valuable. Employers should be workforce partners.

But workforce development is not the same as economic development.

Economic development asks what companies need to invest and grow in Ohio. Workforce development must also ask what Ohio’s learners and workers need to enter the workforce, build skills, navigate career transitions, advance in wages and build economic security.

Those goals overlap. They are not identical.

Ohio should require 50% of JobsOhio’s talent investments to flow into a separate, independently governed workforce development fund, accessible through competitive, transparent, and accountable processes.

Workforce boards, community colleges, career-technical schools, community organizations, labor-management partnerships, public agencies and regional collaborations should be able to propose strategies based on the needs they see — not simply participate in programs JobsOhio has already designed.

Those investments should leverage federal resources like SNAP E&T and transportation funding wherever possible and meet the needs of Ohioans — not just Ohio businesses.

The fund should have transparent criteria, independent governance and representation from workforce, education, human services, employers, community organizations, labor and workers.

Success should be measured through wage growth, advancement, portable credentials, access for underserved workers, and federal dollars leveraged.

JobsOhio could continue using the other half of its talent resources to respond quickly to employer needs and economic-development projects.

Ohio would gain something it does not have today: a pool of flexible workforce funding capable of supporting ideas originating outside JobsOhio’s network.

JobsOhio was built to move quickly for businesses.

Ohio also needs resources that allow its workforce system to move boldly for workers.

We can have both.