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Ohio ranked No. 4 in ‘business climate’

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By Thomas Gnau, Staff Writer Updated 1:57 AM Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Site Selection magazine has ranked Ohio No. 4 on its list of the “top ten business climates” in 2009, an improvement of three spots from last year, the magazine said Monday, Nov. 2.

The top five states on the magazine’s 2009 list are North Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Ohio and Tennessee, the magazine said today.

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland said the ranking didn’t surprise him. On Monday, he visited with a partnership between Voith Hydro and American Municipal Power, which is creating 40 full-time jobs in Hannibal, Ohio to produce parts for hydro-electric generators.

“In spite of this economy, we have really focused on trying to make Ohio an attractive place for investment,” Strickland said. “Quite frankly, that’s why I fought as hard as I could with this budget to keep from raising taxes.”

Site Selection magazine has been kind to the area and the state in the past. In March 2009 — at a time when Ohio unemployment was 8.8 percent — the magazine rated the Dayton region at the top of a list of metro areas for welcoming commercial activity and development. (The Dayton region ranked in a category of metro areas with populations between 200,000 and 1 million.)

Also in March, the state received from the magazine its third consecutive “Governor’s Cup award,” its fourth in six years of the magazine’s competition.

The September 2009 Ohio unemployment rate was 10.1 percent, down slightly from 10.8 percent in August, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

“The ranking does not say the economy is wonderful,” said Mark Arend, editor-in-chief for Site Selection magazine. Instead, the ranking gauges the costs of business expansions, the level of bureaucratic “red tape” and taxation, he said.

The business climate rankings are determined by a business activity-tracking database run by Conway Data Inc., publisher of Site Selection, and by a survey of corporate site seekers across the country, the publisher said.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2390 or tgnau@DaytonDailyNews.com.

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