The decision of the Ohio’s Bureau of Workers’ Compensation to invest $50 million of taxpayer money in a
Wisconsin real estate fund is truly CoinGate Deja vu. Not only is the Board, which is appointed entirely
by Governor Kasich, taking investment out of state, but they’re also putting it in the hands of a
prominent national Republican donor, Jon Hammes Kasich’s Democratic challenger, Ed FitzGerald, rightly
pointed out that tangled nature of that investment, saying "If someone told me when I was in the
FBI that a government board, appointed by a Republican governor, made an investment in an out-of-state
fund run by a major Republican donor and that the only other states who invested in that fund also have
Republican governors, I’d have told them that’s a clue."
Though Mr. Hammes has not as yet contributed to statewide candidates in Ohio, it is hard to ignore the
similarities of this Wisconsin investment to the Noe "CoinGate" scandal – in which Governor
Taft was ultimately fined for his involvement in the decision of the Bureau of Workers’ Compensation to
invest $50 million in an investment scheme run by a Republican donor. While I hope the similarities will
end there, after suffering through CoinGate, Ohioans deserve full transparency from Governor Kasich. The
Governor has yet to disclose all of his office’s interactions with the Wisconsin investment and, until
he does, Ohioans have a right to be worried.
Barbara Baumgartner
Rossford