The Strong Ohio Communities Coalition raised a total of $838,000 for its campaign, including $141,000 detailed in a new report the group filed with the state on Friday. The group spent the money promoting Issue 2, which will allow the state to sell up to $2.5 billion in bonds to fund local infrastructure projects over the next decade after voters overwhelmingly approved it in the May 6 election.
The Ohio Construction Information Association – the political arm of the Ohio Contractors Association, an advocacy group for the construction industry – contributed $150,000, making it the campaign’s biggest backer.
Other big contributors include the Ohio Laborers District Council, which represents union construction crews that generally do manual labor, kicked in $50,000; the International Union of Operating Engineers, a union that represents heavy equipment operators, gave $50,000; Flexible Pavements of Ohio, a trade association that represents paving contractors, contributed $30,000.
In total, contractors or construction companies – the kind that benefit from state construction work – gave about $448,000, or a little over half the “Yes on 2” campaign’s total haul.
Another big contributor was the Ohioans for a Healthy Economy Action Fund, a political group with close ties to the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, which gave $25,000.
Another category of donors was trade groups representing different forms of local government. The County Commissioners Association of Ohio and the Ohio Township Association each contributed $5,000, while the Ohio Mayors Alliance, which represents the state’s largest cities, gave $2,500.
Nearly all of the money the group spent – $772,374 – went to Kestrel Communications, a firm started by Jonathan Varner and Jen Detwiler, two longtime Capitol Square consultants in Columbus. The report said the firm provided digital advertising to the campaign.
The infrastructure program funded by Issue 2, helps cover the costs of road, bridges, sewer and other local infrastructure projects, and is a particularly important source of funding to rural communities that lack the tax base of more developed areas.
The state must pay back the bonds over a 30-year period, much like a mortgage loan. With interest, the total cost will be $3.84 billion, according to an estimate from the Legislative Service Commission, the state legislature’s nonpartisan research arm.
Note: An earlier version of this story misspelled Jen Detwiler’s last name. It has been corrected.
